Desicritics Author: Unknown

Elegy

Unknown — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 10:09:10 EST

Holden got up

Wore the shirt

Belted the pants

Tied the laces

And went down

He went down

Holden drove out

He just drove.

Buendia pulled in

Took the elevator

Garrisoned the cube

Fought the war

Lost the war

Screamed and peed

Resigned to shame

He just lost.

Plath came back

Turned the door

Depressed and bemused

Cracked a joke

Opened a beer

Then one more

Drowned the sorrow

Looking at tomorrow

Slept it off

She just slept.

Movie Review: Hancock

Unknown — Thu, 3 Jul 2008 13:44:01 EDT

I’ll rate the movie, just for you, against my will: 3.5/10. I won’t tell you why. That’s for you to find out.

*** WARNING SPOILERS ***

The movie starts with this guy sleeping on a sidewalk bench, snoring, drunk out of his stocking cap, macho-ising big-ass, Burger King’s burger-sized sunglasses. Suddenly, some cops are shot at from a van on the interstate. This awakens the badass superhero and taunts him to save this fucked up world — fucked up at least for me. The superhero clutches a bottle of I-have-no-clue-what and begs his pardon and lets the cutie know to mind his sweet, little ass business. At least, he doesn’t shoot him on an intergalactic trip, as he does later. Now, I could write the whole storyline and bore everyone to chronic constipation, but I know better.

The movie raises many questions. I enjoy questions. There is a delinquent superhero. Fantastic. Many bagfuls of points to the writer. The writers create a superhero, but with a twist. This time the superhero is fighting himself more than any bad guy. The first question is whether he can fight himself better than fighting anyone else. Good. Over this fuming cauldron, they add Charlize Theron and make the superhero like this goddess. He does. He likes her. To connect all this up, they make the goddess’s husband want to change our delinquent superhero’s image and add a little heart shape on his chest. So the story kicks in. Superhero. Goddess. Public Relations Expert.

Flying, bullet ricocheting, wolverine flying suit. All that nonsense. Then, the meat of the story. The superhero gets back with the fucked up world. Truce. Clap clap. He saves people, police officers. He says Goo…d Jaaaab to everyone, several times. Cool. Before that he goes to jail, where he sticks someone’s head up someone else’s ass. Good stuff. There is some cute humor, too, which I liked, at the very beginning of the story, when the Public Relations Expert brings the superhero home, after the superhero saves his life from a fast-moving train.

The first part of the story ends here. Go get some popcorn.

The Goddess is a superheroine. She had lived through ages. 4 BC, too. People came after her with swords, and our superhero saved her, so he did in Miami, the last time around. Confused? Hehe. Ok. The superhero and superheroine are…I won’t tell you, go find it out. They are immortals. They were not alone, once. There were others of their kind, but they all died…because…because they became human. They died because they fell in love, just as humans do, and became mortals. Sorry shit. They were made in pairs. They were love bluebirds, cooing somewhere in the desert. So the deal is to choose between a normal, loving life and wife, and a life full of frolicking, drinking, flying, immortality, over that a superhero status, badass image, and droves of Los Angeles bitches, and truck and whale hurling, and finally a chance of being an asshole. Ooooh. Ooooh. Ooooh.

The second part ends. The fucked up writers of this fucked up world weren’t happy with just one story. I hate it.

Now, the big question. Would our superhero worry about the second part of his name or would he like to stay alive (staying close to the superheroine means death, remember?) and jump in out of the planet and hurl whales and trucks everywhere in the atmosphere? That, my friend, is the question that touched my heart. It has a direct relationship to human life. God fucked this world up by giving two things to men (women bear a similar analogy. Please sit down and keep your gun away, feminists of this world. OK. Write an article and publish it — you know where). First: Brain. Second: Something Hancock has, a man has, the name “Hancock” has, and the husband of a hen has, however small. That’s a fucked up mixture. Right? Why do I have to go after this half-species called women? Why? I spend so much of my time around the two things, of course, only when they work in tandem, not as separate entities, because separately at least one is endearing, I mean the brain is.

So our superhero has to make a choice, which is the climax. The movie starts with our superhero being lonely and shit pained with his bad image and ends with making the choice between “ahem ahem” and flying in the Los Angeles sky. And he makes the choice, as we all make at some point in our lives. Booty or Boom Boom? I say booty. Oh yeah?

A Letter To My Boss

Unknown — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:19:22 EDT

Bob:

I’m writing this to tell you that you won’t find me in the office, today. I’m working from home, just as Lene did yesterday and Kel did the day before, and, yes, you did the whole last week. I haven’t come up with the reason for not coming to the office yet, because unlike Lene’s reasons, my car hasn’t broken down again, in the middle of nowhere, not far from the office, and I haven’t married recently, or unlike yours, I’m not going to the dentist for the two millionth time.

I was thinking of using Kel’s reason of having every phone, every computer, and every Blackberry in my apartment out of juice, so that I could call you instead of writing this and inform you that the phones at my apartment aren’t working. But then I thought otherwise, having not found any relationship between driving one’s car to work and Tesla and Edison not doing their jobs.

I thought maybe I could argue high-gas prices as a reason, just as Kel sometimes uses to go back home early with her husband in the same car, but then I don’t live far from the office (I never told you that…aahaa…wink…wink…I can maybe use it at a later time), so I dropped it.

Yesterday, I drank a complete, 750 ml bottle of the most expensive ten-dollar scotch, without thinking about the Indian rice and chicken I had bought for twelve bucks. I‘ve a puke-inducing hangover now, as a result, and I thought about using it as a reason for not coming, but Greg came in with a similar condition to the office yesterday, and I don’t want to piss him off by not coming to the office drunk. He mustn’t feel left out. It has to be some other reason.

I don’t have three kids—oldest being 12—as Kel has, so I can’t even use that for a reason, because kids help in focusing, I know. And moreover having kids help you learn what they do, all day long, over and over again, and what they are good at and what they aren’t, and who’s the momma boy and who is not, and things that you can use for not coming to the office, simply because you don’t want to fall behind on knowing their patterns. You have to have some stories to tell at work, too, so there.

I don’t even have a wife to take care of, and there is no way I can find one just for today. She could have cooked meals for me as I would have worked from home. She could have even sat in my lap and typed reminder emails to people who don’t respond unless I’ve written to them as many times as you have visited the dentist.

How about my visiting the doctor? I haven’t visited the doctor in a long while, and I feel bad about it. I can make up a reason, just as I did for not coming to the office, and surprise him, even take some red, purple, yellow helium balloons with me. I’ve even forgotten the name of the receptionist, how bad of me. So what do you think I should tell him is broken in my body? Arms? Legs? Nuts? Not brain, because then you will fire me, I know. I remember it feels good to drive to the hospital, pay a fiver for parking in the melting sun, and fill out those disclaimer forms, just to say ‘hi’ to the doctor and his aides.

I feel that sometimes I should be allowed not to come to the office without any reason. Coming up with reasons is harder than doing the job, so if you do the cost benefit analysis, you will know what I’m talking about. Otherwise, we can schedule a conference call and discuss over a period of many long hours the pros and cons of this method of not showing up at work.

Just a passing note, not to keep you in dark, I feel that before writing this I was stuck in a house burning to ashes and nobody was coming to my rescue, even though I had been screaming for help by writing reminder and status emails to everyone, but just as I’m finishing to write this, I feel that I’ve walked out of the burning house, all by myself, on my feet, like a hero, you know. I want you to feel like a hero too, so don’t come to the office again tomorrow and write me a letter.

Your subordinate,
Dee

It's Saturday, So Eff You

Unknown — Mon, 9 Jun 2008 03:14:35 EDT

These people were out there. They didn’t stop. They didn’t know any better than what they were doing, smug about it, and silly too to some extent. These people were outside my girlfriend’s apartment, right there where no one should be at 3 AM. They were awake, smashed, and moreover disturbingly loud. They were loud with their giggles, especially this one girl, I remember the pitch of the voice, who tittered and guffawed in regular intervals.

For holy mother of god Jesus, what were they doing outside? Honestly, I didn’t know. Had I been outside at that time, I would have been moon-bathing, silently, with my lips sewed together, with nothing but the heaviness of the air, the drabness, to unsettle me, because that’s what no one does. But I was inside, in bed, drifting down into my subconscious, oh it was good going down there. It was a good beginning, and as always I was doing well, slipping into sleep. In and out, in and out, yes, that was it. Different corners were approaching in, zeroing in for attention. Oh, it was REAL heavy. And those three glasses of Chardonnay I had drunk before were helping me make peace. It was gently mellow, similar to walking on a beach on a sunny afternoon, ocean waves lapping up and down, the gentle stuffy breeze carrying scorched, spicy fragrances on its wings, making one drowsy, turning in the screw without notice. It was nice, like the first sip of beer on a rough day with no lunch, and it was yanking me down.

Oh, and this voice, the human rendition of fun. Fun at 3 AM.

I was sitting in a coffee store, stealing a glance or two of the girl in a miniskirt. She wasn’t alone, she was hobnobbing with someone, turning her gaze up and down and sideways, writing, reading, and talking, all at once. I was in her line of vision. Once our eyes met, and she snickered, so did other people, in unison, intimidating me. I looked at my watch—3 AM. What the fiddlesticks? Her voice was like the sound of daintily pouring wine, gurgly, splashy, deep.

It was hot inside. I shifted my legs to bring them out of the bedspread. A hand fell on my chest. It was still 3AM. The drone was on. The choices were clear—stay in bed or draw the blinds away and flick at the flock of bozos, the middle finger. Motherfucking bitch raising hell at such hour. Why? Eh! Why? What for? If only I could stomp outside, do my war dance, request a beer, drink it, draw an ‘Z’ like Zorro, cut the strings of her black grape sun dress, stare groggily, yawn, tootle, and come back; but how?

I turned sides. Ku Klux Klan. Get the hollering Jesus back to sleep. McDonald's. Or she will bring her aides to throw Hamburgers at me and my girlfriend, but she won’t mind; she is sound asleep, nicely asleep, and she never snores, nor do I. But this goddamn din, this ruckus.

I lifted my air-gun sized cellphone off the nightstand: 3 AM. Are we standing still in Time? Heh? Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva, what the fuck is this? Heh?

Writing, Toilet Seats, and Everything in Between

Unknown — Sun, 8 Jun 2008 00:41:55 EDT

This terrible feeling of never being able to achieve what seems so dear to my heart is pulling me down into ravines of ghastly, sinister, Edgar Allan Poe’s mind-like, darkness. In this jungle of bottomless dross, the struggle between working to pay my bills and doing something to pay respect to my passion seems long and pointless. Can I really write? Or is this just one more dream? With hours dwindling to nothing as my life progresses, how will I accommodate variegated things writing well requires?

I see myself in this world, evolving, learning more, more about the mechanics of this world, which makes me confident about publishing something soon. But then when I see myself having not published anything, having not received any professional feedback, I find myself stuck in a bubble of self-fulfilling thoughts and feelings. Is it not just a figment of my mind, where I’m a great writer and my books bestsellers? So why bother? One moment I’m a writer, and the other, one more of 3 billion people who write and publish, many on them on their deathbeds.

My friends say two-and-a-half years is not long enough a period of time for you to put so much unnecessary pressure on yourself, but what seems pressure to my friends is actually the high standard of reading and writing I seek to maintain, and while maintaining it, I fall into this ditch of excessive dreaming. It hurts me then, and I cry, not always with tears, but with a heart-tearing grunt. Why is writing so difficult? Why does it involve so many dimensions? Why do I have to read The Economist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, and Sri Bhagavadgita, all at once, in one day, and when finished flitting between these authors and books, listen to my girlfriend’s distress calls that I don’t spend enough time with her? Am I really wasting my time doing something I don’t fully understand the scope of?

Last year, I spent sleepless nights working on English grammar, and this year I spent time filling out forms for writer’s workshops. I got a hang of the language, but I am too fucking old to fully digest something only an infant can swallow: I am too fucking rotten, barren, and hopeless that no crop of structural congruity can ever grow strong. I always run into messiahs of language piety. Between the English grammar and writer’s workshop phase, which was jeopardized by shortage of money and the bitches’ reluctance to give me aid, I found myself seated on the western-style toilet seat (I live in the godforsaken US of A) pushing so hard that my intestines might squeeze out but not turds, reading American Usage and Style books, feeling a whit in comparison to 900 pages of finely printed word-feast.

There, there I stand, on the platform of utter confusion and simple-heartedness, maybe simple-mindedness too, trying to solve this conundrum of life. Why live?—to write? Sure!

It took me 15 minutes to write this piece of crap, and I'm not willing to revise it, edit it. Yes, to hell with it. And It takes me three months to write a short-story, which is read by three people, all friends with a slightly piquant literary tastes. So where is the balance? No balance—just a dream of broken aspirations, or a broken dream of just aspirations. Amen.

Satire: Bucknor & Benson

Unknown — Tue, 8 Jan 2008 00:46:04 EST

I wanted to become a suicide-bomber. Ever since I saw people dying for no reason on Channel Nine, I was infatuated by the idea. There was nothing else I wanted to do. Umpiring was just a pretext to attract attention, so that I could prove my worth to the people who hired suicide-bombers. I thought it was romantic, more romantic than a double-deck airplane crashing in the mid-Atlantic. It was like a dream—a dream where I blew up a herd of innocent chickens. Chickens flying out. Chickens dying. Chickens crowing. And more importantly chickens appealing, looking at me as if I were to withhold what I saw, heard, or thought was right. But no, I blew them up, all of them.

“Bucknor, you’ve a strange face, more of a sorry-looking face like that of Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. And with those glasses, you look cute,” Benson said.

“Eeee, I know, but you know what—I’ve a twenty-twenty vision. I don’t need them; they are just for show. I want the Al-Qaeda to see me in these strange, innocent-looking contraptions and look at the way I umpire in the Sydney test. I hope the Al-Qaeda has more channels than just Al-Jazeera on their TV. They will surely see what I’m capable of in this match,” I replied.

So I went in to the Sydney test. I enjoyed wreaking havoc on the innocent Indians. They appealed, begged, shook their heads, but I didn’t budge. Once I saw the kiddo Ishant to beg me as if I were a Czar and he a hungry peasant. He kept the appeal on for more than thirty seconds and the nick, I heard it, was louder than my wife’s moan during Symonds’s visits to my home. But I only made a point about excessive appealing in my notebook and went on with the game, so did the Indians.

Later that night, Benson revealed something about Ricky.

“Have you seen Ricky? Have your seen those tight curves? His underwear’s lining beneath his lower, those devious looks, the lump in his pants, and those huge muscles, have you seen any better? I cannot spend a second without thinking about the moment when he nicked it around his legs. He winked at me for the first time ever. I dreamt about his cornering me on the Sydney Harbor and giving ‘it’ to me. I couldn’t give him out,” Benson said.

“Why did you give him out later then?” I said and threw my head back.

“I asked him during the Gatorade drinks-break to take me out the same night, but he said he had a date with Michael Clark, so he could only go out with me once the game was over. I got angry and gave him out. I regret my decision now though,” Benson replied and sighed. He stared out of the window and seemed lost.

“It’s okay Benson. At least you’ve him talk to you. Al-Qaeda hasn’t contacted me yet. I want to become a suicide-bomber. And like these ugly decisions, I want to turn this world into an ugly hodge-podge. Just think about the world when there will no order, just bombs. It would be like it’s now in the West Bank. The Israelis and Palestinians battling over a piece of land is what I want to see happen in the whole world. People, speaking different languages, read their holy books and proclaim ownership to the same piece of land. I think I am going to write a holy book myself called “Holy Bucknor” and own the whole world,” I said. A fuzzy feeling enveloped me. I could see the future. I was the owner of a popular suicide-bomber firm.

*

“What’s going on between you and Symonds?” Benson asked.

“He said he had contacts with the Al-Qaeda. That son of a bitch was out thrice. I had to close my eyes every time the Indians came down running on me. Once, I almost peed my pants,” I said.

“That Ishant guy is cute, don’t you think so?” I asked.

“He is. He’s tall, you know what I mean,” Benson replied and winked.

“He, he,” I replied.

*

I loved Benson so much. He helped me a lot in realizing my dream of becoming a suicide-bomber. After Australia justly won the Sydney test, Ricky took him out and gave ‘it’ to him. That day, Benson was over the clouds and confessed to me that Ricky actually belonged to the third gender.

“He doesn’t even have one of his own,” Benson remarked, “That son of a bitch uses a strap-on. But something is better than nothing. I like his butt anyway.”

“Did you hear about the furor over the Sydney test?” I asked.

“No; what happened?” Benson replied.

“Nothing; some Indians thought we didn’t umpire well. But then on Symonds’s recommendation the Australian Cricket Board is going to facilitate me for being a wonderful ambassador of the world cricket,” I said and slightly turned my head to face Benson’s.

“Heard anything about Al-Qaeda?” Benson asked.

“Yeah, the CEO called. He said he wanted to see one more ugly performance before deciding on my resume,” I replied.

“Good. You have Perth for your rescue. I say this time give an LBW even when an Indian cover-drives the ball for four. I’ll sleep with Malcolm Speed for you. I am sure he’ll back you up after I’ve slept with him. This is called strategy, just as Plato himself explained: Make plans and then do everything to achieve them, by hook or by crook,” Benson said.

“What happened Bucknor? Why are you crying?” Benson asked.

“I cannot do it. I just cannot do it. In the morning before checking out of the Hilton, this Indian kid ran up to me and shook my hand. He said I may have got a few decisions wrong this time around, but I was still the best umpire the game has ever seen since Venkataraghavan and Shepherd. He wasn’t older than six. These Indians are funny. They still love me,” I replied, wiping off my tears.

“They do. An Indian couple on my way back from the date invited me to an Indian feast full of curry. They even asked me to invite you to join them,” Benson replied.

“I don’t know what to do with my life,” I said and hid my face in my hands.

“Don’t worry Bucknor, you got to do what you got to do,” Benson said, coming close to me, and kept a hand on my right shoulder.

This was it—life. Indians stood in my way, just like Mahatma Gandhi stood in the way of Britishers. I couldn’t bring upon myself to overcome their love of cricket and stay on with my ugly umpiring, so I left the world. Without any goodbyes, I left it. That was the end of my dream. I didn’t know how Freud would have explained it, but I couldn’t explain it at all. I packed my bags and hit the road to the Caribbean with the dream of becoming a suicide-bomber gone into the gutters.

Short Story: Irony

Unknown — Fri, 4 Jan 2008 00:26:05 EST

It was the night of the twenty-sixth of September. I was returning from Johnnie's Pub, the usual drinking-place for me. It wasn't late but with the arrival of winter, it appeared gloomy even at that hour. It was around six, an early evening for me which was slightly unusual. Equally unusual was the road I had taken to go home: Saint Symonds Cemetery.

The cemetery was silent and truly speaking I hadn't expected it to be otherwise. But there was something more about the place--something more profound--that troubled me. The vampire bats and spotted-owl were there, looking straight into my eyes as if I were some giant insect or rodent, destined to be eaten by them. Also present were the rodents, the fireflies, the wind, the gray, lightless night, though there was a welter of stars peeking from behind the mist. And with them was this man, sitting on a grave.

"I'm not scared. I'm just lonely," I said, getting up, as I had fallen down upon spotting the man.

"Why are you sitting here?" I said.

"I have been waiting for you" he said.

"Why?"

He looked at me; a slight smirk ran through his face. Then he cocked his head and said, "You will know."

I spotted a crow perching on a tree. Then, I spotted a pitch black cat walking right in front of me. And just a few seconds later, I saw a nightingale alighting on his arm. Crow. Cat. Nightingale. The grave-man. Stephanie's death. My wife's death. I. My bad luck. Crow. Cat. Nightingale. The grave-man. I was scared. The world started spinning in a mad war between angular momentums. I whirled around this way and then the other way. The ground rose up in front of me. I stuck to it at a right angle. 'Oh, ooo, ohh, aaaa, oohh," I said and came swooning down on the ground.

"Which way is my home?" I said after opening my eyes.

"This way," he said, pointing toward the grave he was sitting on.

"I don't like you," I said and got up, ready to leave.

"You don't like anyone, do you?" he replied.

I didn't like this man. He was rude, and I never liked rude people. Bryson who crashed into Stephanie's car was rude too, and I didn't like him either. I even told him that I didn't like him when I saw him walk through this cemetery. It was the last time I saw him; he just disappeared after that.

"I liked my daughter St-St-St-Stephanie," I said and dilated my eyes, trying to scare him.

"Sure," he said and snapped his fingers.

I felt a burning sensation in my eyebrows.

"You don't know anything. And I don't like you. Why should I listen to you?" I said and turned my back to him.

It started raining then. The sky was let loose. I liked rain. The big water droplets thundering down showered all around me but not on me. I moved around and the dry patch moved about with me. I ran and the area of no-rain ran with me. It was annoying for the rain to fall down but not wet me.

He squawked, looking at my desperate effort to catch the rain.

"When I was a kid, I played soccer in the rain. I'd revel in the muddy soccer-field and run, slide, tackle, kick, and dance in the rain. I would trip the opponents and kick them in their guts. What do you know about rain? You fool," I said.

"That rain is for happy people," he said and smiled.

"I don't like you. And you're lying," I said.

"You think the rain is not touching you. Take that paper out of your pocket," he said.

I took Stephanie's death-certificate out of my pocket. Wet, crumpled, the fibers of the paper were entwined in a watery embrace. I transferred the paper from the left to the right hand; doing so, I tore the paper into two.

"Amazed?" he said and pouted his lips in some kind of divine interference.

"I don't like you," I said.

"When did your wife die?" he asked.

"F-fa-fa-five years back. Sh-sh-she died in her sleep. She had said, 'John...... I love you. You know I'm going to die of this cancer. But before I die.......... I want...... you........to promise me that you will forget about............Stephanie and stop...........drinking. Death is part of life. Let it go.' She said that and died the same night," I said.

"What do you have in your hand?" he asked raising his eyebrows.

"These, oh, these are my wi-wi-wi-wife's earrings. She liked them so much. I bought these on our first anniversary. Sh-sh-she wanted Topaz. I got her the best topaz Jared jewelers had; the light blue Topaz earrings. Have you ever seen more beautiful earrings than these?" I said and wiped my tears.

"You mean these," he said, pointing to his palm; he squinted, smiling gently.

"Give them back to me. When did you steal them?" I said.

"Right when you batted your eyes. I even stole the bottle of bourbon you had in your other pocket. I know you have been drinking all night," he said.

"Give them back to me," I shouted, as I dashed to catch him. The turmoil that followed saw me scrabbling on the ground just as if I were trying to catch my own shadow.

"Where did you go?" I looked around. My mouth formed an inverted 'C,' my eyes moistened a little, and I sobbed, "Where did you go? I want my wife's earrings back. I want them back. Please, come back. Please--I want them." I covered my face with my cupped hands and cried.

"Hey, there!" he tapped my shoulder from behind and nudged me to sit down on the grave with him.

"I will return your wife's earrings, but before that I want you to see this," he said as a ram sheep and a Bengal tiger made their way to the scene.

Within seconds, the ram sheep ripped the tiger to pieces. The laws of life as well as physics ceased to exist. The sheep soared in the sky and came crashing back to kill the tiger with a cosmic punch. The oxygen I had been breathing ceased to exist. I exhaled a pink-colored smoke, which smelt like blood. The blood-washed muzzle, the white fur, glowing ambers of the eyes, and the torn pieces of the tiger, all stared at me with equal desperation. A sheep had just killed a tiger. How did I live to see this, I asked myself? The three-dimensional world had slowly slipped into a mystical multi-dimensional world where Newtonian Mechanics was just another dream. The mysterious Quantum Mechanics took the front seat and started to whirr the engine of life with a Hamiltonian operator. I had more than two arms and my eyes burned like red-hot iron, giving out monochromatic light. Goose-bumps surfaced on my skin, as I buried my head into my knees.

"Open your eyes," he said.

"Please, stop," I pleaded.

Slowly I opened my eyes and saw the sheep eating the tiger in a fast-forward mode. One, two, three, he counted; first the meat, all eaten up, and then the sheep, disappeared.

"You want to see something else?" he said.

"Please, stop. I want to go home," I said.

"Look there," he pointed to the left of me.

I saw Stephanie crying in a gray mist. I saw her being tied down. Her lips were pressed together, turning into an inverted 'C.' She didn't recognize me. As the cloud of Stephanie's image faded away, another cloud set in, and this time it was Deitra, my wife. She was sleeping when she first arrived, but soon after she opened her eyes and looked at me the same way she had looked on the night she died.

"How?" I asked, still weeping.

"You just think," he said, and then squeaked and winked.

"Who are you? Please, please, please tell me, who are you?, " I got down on my knees and crimped my hands.

"I," he smiled, and turned his head to face mine, "I'm...you know who I am. I'm God," he said.

"Am I dead?" I asked.

"You wish you were dead. Life is a mystery, isn't it? You are here to suffer. I want you to suffer. Bear this pain; I enjoy teasing people like you. And rest assured, you're going to live a long life. I pity your life," he said.

Then he made an 'L' with his right index finger and the right thumb. He rocked the imaginary gun and pointed it at me. With a bang, the wind picked up intensity and gashed my face. Inside ten seconds, the wind settled down and there was nothing more than a wisp of cloud where he had stood.

Fiction: Conspiracy Theory

Unknown — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 03:09:13 EST

White flakes; little white flakes, showering down from my pompadour, that’s what I am talking about. They are little source of itchiness. And they sparkle on the brown bedspread on my Ramberg bed; not just around my head, but everywhere. I hate it. Or I should hate it as Ash told me.

He said, “You look lousy. Look at yourself. You need to get rid of it or your hair. You cannot have dandruff and hang out with us. What will happen if we go to a club and hit on women? They will look at your dandruff and think that we the stereotypical Indian guys in the US. Yaar, we need to show these Americans that we are a good-looking race. Look at Aishwarya Rai. Look at yourself. If you take care of your dandruff, you are better looking than Hugh Grant. Please, please, yaar, try this, or I will think that you are a faggot. Faggot. ”

Today, I bit my lip. I got up, looked at myself in the bathroom’s ten-inch mirror and couldn’t see anything—my eyes were glazed. Corona Light, that’s what I had drunk the last night. Not one, or two, but ten—ten bottles of piss-colored, lemon-contained, five-bucks-priced, beer. I couldn’t see anything. I swear to my various gods. My eyes had white-colored, pus-looking, globs of dirt mixed with tears lining my eye-lids. I was so confused. I called Ash.

“I cannot see anything. I have this weird feeling in my stomach,” I said.

“It’s okay yaar. You have what men call a hang-over. You have a faacking hang-over. Just listen to me. Yaar, take some water and rinse your eyes. You are such a faggot. Should I come and rinse your eyes for you, yaar?” Ash said.

“You are coming to the club tonight?” Ash said.

“If only I finish writing the story. I only get weekends to work on my stories. I cannot promise anything. My eyes hurt. I feel like throwing up. Why do you guys force me to drink?” I said.

“yaar, it happens. Be a man now, or I will call you a faggot. What story? When the whole world is crazy about pussies, you want to write stories. Yaar, this is the time of your life when you can have fun. The day your mum calls you about marriage, like mine did, you know you’ll have only one pussy for all your life. I cannot have one pussy. I am a pussyaholic. Yaar, don’t be a spoilsport. You can write stories when you are old, like other old men, like my dad. Now, you should come to the club with us. We will get you laid, yaar,” Ash said.

“Okay, let me see,” I said and hung up.

“Did you get her number, yaar?” Ash said.

“I didn’t ask for it. She gave it to me. She said I looked like Henry Fonda in ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’ She was okay. Should I call her?” I said.

“Yes yaar. You should. But not tomorrow. You should call her exactly after three days, yaar. I read it in a book. It’s customary for American girls to respond to phone calls in three days. If you call earlier, they will think you are desperate. If you call later, they will think you are not interested. Yaar, I am not as good looking as you. I am going to get a prostitute, rather. Yaar, I have to fuck, too,” Ash said.

“Okay. Is there anything I should be worried about? What should I say to her? Should I ask her out? I said.

“No. You shouldn’t let her know that you care for her. That’s the rule, yaar. These bitches want someone to kick their ass. You need to show as if you didn’t care about her. Don’t ask her out. Call her and hang up on her. You got to be a step ahead of her, yaar. Anytime she thinks she is superior to you in any way, you are fucked, yaar,” Ash said.

“What about this Dandruff? What if she comes to know about it?” I said.

“Yaar, you can always say that it’s not fault. Tell her you got it by sharing a bathroom with a white guy. Yaar, you got to spin her head. Show off. Tell lies. Make up stories, yaar. You got to be Tom Cruise for her,” Ash said.

“But I don’t want to lie. I want to keep it straight. I want to tell her upfront that I have dandruff. My room is cluttered with books. I write stories. I have a four point ooh from MIT. I never had a girlfriend. And I am not Italian or Brazilian—I am Indian,” I said.

“yaar, you are so handsome. You should not say such words,” Ash said.

“What happened with the girl?” Ash asked.

“Nothing. I took her on a date and it just spilled out of my mind that I am Indian. She thought I was some exotic Italian dude. I told her that I have always been Indian, in case she thought I had changed my nationality because of all the jobs Indians were getting. Then I told her about how I wanted to become a writer, not a financial expert or a computer specialist or a call-center representative, but a writer. She looked at me as if I were dancing the YMCA. After eating her meal and drinking two more drinks, for which I paid, she left without saying a word,” I said.

“Yaar, you are such a faggot. I told you to lie. Look at yourself. If I were half as good looking as you I wouldn’t be fucking prostitutes. You should have told her a bunch of lies, yaar. A very old man said, ‘any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to tell lies.’ You should have listened to him, yaar. You are such a faggot.”

“It’s for the better. Now, I can write my stories. And this dandruff?” I said.

“You are such a faggot, yaar. Who wants become a writer; become a model or something. With those looks, I say, I would rule the world, yaar. I have dandruff, too. But I never let you know that. I always blame it on you. That’s the way yaar. Now, tell me—do you want the number of this prostitute?” Ash said.

Fiction: Diary of an Open-Eyed Traveler

Unknown — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:24:50 EST

I observe. I am a visual person. I see, smell, feel, hear, and taste through my brown eyes. These cute little buckets of light sparkle at the slightest variation in color, brightness, or shade. They capture the most beautiful and the most obscure instances of human behavior. They are attracted to hives of human beings portraying any form of emotion. They have been bright, they have been right, and if luck has it, they will always stay as a guide—a guide to understanding what all goes into life. One of my favorite places to observe is the airport.

It may seem idiosyncratic but I consider my eyes a thing of amazement. They are instrument of visual delight, a probe to appraise the sanity of the surrounding world, a film to record the titillating moments of female sexuality. I relish them as my best friends; accept when they foster growths of sties. I hate sties. They make my eyes look like ripened watermelons, not as big as watermelons but at least as rotund and bloated. I hope they don’t forsake my love, again, and leave me writhing in my dreams.

I observe people, as if there were no other thing to observe; but observing people is an art. You need those devious looks to size people up without having them misunderstand your visual research as the stare of a psychopath. With every passing year, I have honed my people-watching skill just so well. I anticipate their head-movement usually augmented by rolling of their eyes. I skulk behind the book I usually carry with me, pretending to be reading, and capture the rouged emotionless face of a soon-to-be playmate, the sorry face of a I-don’t-want-to-travel toddler, or the fake smiling face of a I-earn-more-than-you business traveler . There are a few genuine travelers too that are going to Hawaii, Alaska, god-forsaken France, or the fast east corners of medieval India. These people are different. They don’t wear a look of pretension. Instead they are happy to be given an opportunity to travel and get off of work, leave home, take a vacation from the real world. They are free. And with freedom comes the flight. With the flick of my eyes, I capture the nuances of their nature.

The other day at the Atlanta airport, I saw this couple waving goodbye to their family every two seconds. A man and woman, dressed in all black, standing in front of me in the security line, turning their heads with the passing second, showered good-byes with the frenzied movement of their hands; first the man, then the woman, then together. Now, it’s acceptable to do it a couple of times, but not letting the crescendo of the hand-movement die was something I had never experienced before. I wore the most primordial look on my face, witnessing the goodbye-extravaganza, and captured the hilarious life-forms perform their dance of bidding adieu. There was present, however, with the astounding hand-movement, a dash of sadness in the eyes. I could see that their hand-movement was equivalent to a river of tears, overflowing the barricades set up by TSA. Then I reasoned that being considerate and cognizant of my inability to swim, the couple had decided to wave madly instead of crying their eyes out lest the airport floods.

As soon as I cleared all the security lines and the buses and the trains and all other forms of transportation that one requires to reach the place of boarding, I let out a warm sign, muttering, ‘well, that was easy,’ and set forth on my journey of waiting at the terminal.. I needed some weird person to walk across my scope of vision. I wanted some drum-beating, gel-haired, horse-riding, bling-bling, jodhpur-wearing nutcase. I needed that son-of-a-bitch that you don’t find anywhere but at airports to transport his big ass in the time-space continuum stretched in front of me. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any weirdoes stomping in the hallway. I didn’t find anyone whom I could label wacky, or aberrant at the least. Rather I found dressed up people holding coffee cups with whatever they could hold them with: hands, legs, heads, mouth, hair, knees, anything. I was disappointed.

The disappointment was short-lived, as, soon, I found this girl walking down the aisle, wearing something even she didn’t understand fully. I was sure, and it’s my belief that she agrees with me, that she scavenged those clothes from the sale rack of Gymboree. ‘Look at the size of those clothes; they indeed look disproportionate; especially in the thick regions.’ I guessed her to be not more than twenty-five. She looked young, more like a rebellious kid who had decided not only to not talk but also to not look at anyone in the eye. She kept her gaze as straight as her sideways tilting head allowed and walked into oblivion as soon as she had arrived.

Behind the girl was an African-American man who somehow forgot to park his truck, or his body, not much difference, in the parking lot. He came thundering down the terminal and thudded down to the right of me, taking up two seats. As he sat down, I felt a thrust capable of sending me on my first inter-galactic travel run up my spine.

“How are you?” I said.

"ya’ll know how hot da thang iz todey? Oh mah god, meh cannot believe that meh waz havin’ ta walk fo’ so long. But, anyway, meh iz finally in da hizzle. meh iz fine, thank ya’ll. How iz yourself?”

“ Would you like to drink something? I’ve a coke,” I asked.

“I be fine. Thank ya.”

“Where are you traveling today?” I asked.

“Should I tell ya somethin. Today, befoe comin I met dis lil' bitch. She was cute and all. But I wasn't too excited about her, cus she wasn't smart and all. So I told her dat I be goin ta meet muh homie tonight, so I cannot see her. She asked me which homie, and I be such an ass, I told her 'Jennie.' I didn't know Jennie wasn't in Atlanta. And she knew about Jennie, so she called Jennie and told her if I were visitin her. I had no clue wheea Jennie was. And it turned out I had ta visit Jennie or I couldn't see da lil' bitch again. She was cute, but ya know, she wasn't smart. So, now, I be on muh way ta see Jennie. She in Miami.”

“Nice,” I said.

“So what do you do?” I asked.

“I go ta Georgia Tech. I be Majorin in Mechanical Engineerin.”

“That’s lovely,” I said.

“It wouldn't be if ya were doin it.”

The conversation kept its normal course and we talked about almost everything. From girls to books, from cars to alcohol; there wasn’t anything that we didn’t talk about. Throughout the conversation I kept thinking about what he had said about mechanical engineering.

Mechanical Engineering: now this is something with a sense of humor. Try to understand the title—Mechanical Engineering. First the word ‘engineering’ has the darkest connotation of mechanical steps and procedures: draw a 10 mm line and dissect it into 5 unequal parts, or take this silicon chip and polish its surface with this solvent and dry it for five minutes then install it into this circuit, or think about a chemical which would lower the boiling point of this mixture by one-fifth of a degree. Then over the monotonous, life-threatening persona of engineering, the adjective ‘Mechanical’ is slapped. It’s tautology. It’s a black-hole. It’s not mechanical engineering that you do. It’s mechanical engineering that does you.

Anyhow, I showed pity for the choice of his education and blamed it for his being gigantic. Henceforth, we enjoyed the spectacle of spectacular surprises summoned before us, together!

After a few minutes of lull, we spotted a kid trailing his mum, carrying a backpack big enough to hold him. The kid looked disillusioned. He didn’t want to carry that bag, we argued.

“Look at dat lil rat. He doesn't want ta ridery rocks on his back,” said Jerry.

“Should we help him?”

“I be not helpin anyone. His mother will sue us fo solicitation. You don't know what she will do ta us, when she makin her son ridery dat big bag.”

He had to carry it, we had had to carry it when we were kids, we argued again. He feared being discarded into the tall trash can if he didn’t carry his bag. His mum tried motivating him, but came off as someone shallow, someone who could carry all that unnecessary make-up, but not the tiny kid’s bag. What a shame, we agued once more. But we couldn’t help the kid, because we feared being sued for solicitation. Or perhaps we were too damn lazy. Who knows? We saw the kid walk past us with painful expressions taking form on his face with similar disappointment as we would have seen someone weird or disabled.

Next came this old lady. Older than the oldest medicine I had at home; the old medicine might have expired but the old lady moved about showing no signs of expiry. She was smiling.

“She walkin faster than I can run,” said Jerry.

She was looking at different shops on her way. Curiosity of what to buy was written all over her face. A face creased by lines of experience, pain, and the possibility of not resisting the demands of her heart. I was put to shame just by her crinkled face. I saw an expression of freedom slowly taking shape on her face. She liked it. She liked to travel. She was talking to someone, but we didn’t see anyone close to her. She might have been older than what we had thought she was, but she wasn’t old enough to not travel. She was of the ripe old age, we argued, that she could become brand ambassador for the likes of Deltas and Gammas. We saw her walk closer to us. I looked at my newfound friend, he looked at me. We uttered ‘hello, sexy;’ she looked at us, took stock of our baby faces, and slid her cell-phone a little lower from her ear to hear us; showing no concern for the spoken words, she blabbered away into her terminal, ignoring us all together. We looked at each other and smiled.

Soon after, I got up from my seat, stretched my arms and legs, yawned, and walked toward the coffee shop. The line at the coffee shop was long, but not long enough to deter me from my plans of staying awake. I planted my feet in the line and inched forward with every dispensing of lattes, mochas, chais, and cup-cakes. When my turn came, I smiled at the girl behind the counter, sizing her up, and asked for a plain dark coffee. I asked her name. She asked mine. We talked about names before she extended her arm, giving out my hot beverage. I grabbed it and smiled at her, again, leaving her behind the counter and myself in the sea of colorful personalities.

Fiction: The Comedy of Selling the Dictionaries

Unknown — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 01:10:28 EST

It was a soggy Sunday morning in the monsoon season when the only day I got off school was ruined by the nimbus clouds. ‘Nimbus’ was the first and last word I looked up in the dictionary my dad gave me on my last birthday. I never felt the need to look anything up. The dictionary was the lamest and the most uncool thing around; unless I was looking up words like brassiere and panties; especially with pictures. There were no pictures in the dictionary, so I always stole away mum’s bedside magazines. Or occasionally the magazines dad kept above the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Those magazines had better and clearer pictures; pictures that you cannot expect to see on TV. I sometimes even tore a few pages and showed them to my school-buddies for ten rupees a glance.

The only new words that we used in class were learned from TV. All those flashy music videos and girls - that was what I looked for on TV. But not anymore. Dad had blocked all the channels worth any interest. So there was no more M-TV or F-TV. There were no topless models and no ass-grabbing. I had no understanding of what problems elders had with anything kids wanted to do. They always made rules which made my life miserable, and the misery was exacerbated with my elder sister. Sisters are the presence of Satan on Earth. They are jealous of their brothers—plain and simple. I hated my jealous sister so much. So it was a damp Sunday morning when I was locked up inside without any cricket when Sameer called.

“I don’t know what I am doing inside the house watching these soap-operas?” Sameer said.

“What do you think I am doing? I am not partying with no topless models here. My sister is home. Oh my god, she makes so much noise. One day, I am going to ask her to come with me to the mountain by our school and push her off the top as soon as she looks the other way” I said.

“Oh please, shut your pie hole before I come and cork it with a ball. I mean a cricket ball, you freak. I know what you were thinking. The only thing you can think of is topless models and balls and dicks. Hey, did you get any more pages of your dad magazine? My yearly subscription to your dad’s magazines is still not over, just to remind you.” said Sameer.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I haven’t got any new ones yet. I will let you know when I get any. And you have to pay me the remaining hundred rupees.” I said.

I didn’t tell Sameer that I had actually torn some more pages yesterday. But I wanted to keep them with me. They were my precious possessions and I wanted to spend all my time with them in the bathroom before sharing them with anyone; especially Sameer who was never satisfied by merely looking at them. He always wanted to check them out like I was running a damn library of torn magazine pages.

“Do you remember it’s my birthday in a week? I heard mum talk to dad about the gift they want to give me. I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard them speak. Mum asked dad to present me a set of fifteen visual dictionaries. Not one, but fifteen lame ass dictionaries. I don’t need no dictionaries. And you know my dad. Once my mum asks him to do something, he knows if he doesn’t do it accordingly my mum is going to whop his ass like no other, and he will have to sleep in the living room for a month. I heard him talk to his friend on the phone the other day, he almost cried, telling him that he has not slept with mum in a month. I am telling you, those fifteen stupid shit dictionaries are on their way to some garbage can,” Sameer said.

I couldn’t stop myself as I fell off the chair chortling. It was hilarious how Sameer explained his life. This was his life. He was always in trouble; whether it was school, cricket, or birthday gifts. He always had something that he didn’t like. He usually found a way around solving his problems, though, but there usually was a cost he had to pay, and whenever I helped him I bore part of that cost. But, anyway, he was a friend. And a friend is a friend, a stronger friend as he paid a yearly subscription fee. I had known Sameer since the first grade. We stood outside of class together for not doing the homework. We played on the same side in cricket. We hated the same teachers. We liked the same foods, same pictures, same girls, and same music. We wore similar clothes. But he fashioned a crew-cut and I a pony-tail, because his mum had a crew-cut and my dad a pony-tail.

“So what are you going to do? I say burn them so that we can use the ash for making black color,” I suggested.

“Sure. Anymore of your brilliant ideas, moron? You know how much they cost?—ten thousand rupees,” shouted Sameer as if he had just seen a naked girl.

“Whoa. That’s a lot of money, dude. We got to find someone who will buy them from you,” I whooped as if I had just pushed my sister off a cliff.

“There you go, you son of a cab-driver. I am so proud of you. Now, our job is to find out a sucker who will buy them from us. Just keep in mind, they are worth ten thousand rupees,” whispered Sameer to put a stamp of secrecy on our conversation.

For the next several weeks we worked hard to devise a strategy for ensnaring the most unassuming chump to sell off our recent treasure. There was a script for our evening rehearsals. Every Friday after school, we got together at Sameer’s house and practiced the words in front of each other with a stuffed bear as our “big-fish.” It was fun. Sameer’s house was huge, with twelve foot high ceilings and lush brownish-red carpet almost everywhere. He had the biggest TV I had ever seen in my life and his parents didn’t bother to block any channels. On every table, there was a mound of magazines, more like Business Woman, Independent Woman, and Interior Designing. Sameer’s room had the biggest collection of Spiderman and Superman’s comics in the world. He even had the one in which Superman killed Doomsday before dying himself. Spiderman comics were great, too, and we filtered the ones in which Spiderman kisses Mary Jane.

With time we dug trenches, garrisoned resources, rolled off tanks and guns, camouflaged even our underwear, laid traps, and set up baits for catching that “big-fish.” We worked with painful monotony to entrap anything that we thought might fall in, but the nature and reputation of our school, represented spot-on by pupils like us, didn’t prove inviting. Days passed; Sameer’s birthday and our hopes fizzled out to nothingness as we didn’t even reach the second act of the script. Right after we planned on organizing a bonfire-party and using the dictionaries for fire, I came up with a better plan. I knew a guy, my cousin actually, who worked at the airport. It was clear that the neighbor’s kids, the nerds, and the random hits in the mall, were not showing any positive prospect. What they all wanted was the pages I tore out of my dad’s magazine. They were all addicted to it. And when you are addicted to something as amazing as the curves of the female-body, even the names of something as emotionally draining as the dictionaries weigh on their minds. So they all looked at us in deep amazement upon our propositioning and walked out on us as if were trying to steal away their pants.

The plan was to find someone who had dollars to pay for our rupees; simply, someone who was deserving of appearing on those lame-ass spelling-bee competitions. We wanted the whereabouts of the kids who were traveling internationally with their bags filled with books more than music CDs. We wanted the kid who knew what ‘the speed of light’ meant and, actually, knew how many zeros it had.

The job was simple. My cousin Rohan had to closely look at the faces of the kids; perhaps, ask a question or two; like “what do you think about the war in Iraq?” “Do you think Iran has nuclear weapons?” “What do you think about the oil prices?” or any other hormones sucking question which would send anyone with a decent chance of seeing a girl naked before high-school reeling on the ground. And if the kid said anything more than “eeeeeeeeeeee” and didn’t vanish as I and Sameer would disappear when caught looking at the bottles of Vodka and Rum in our parents’ bedroom, then he was a prospect.

“Star Wars,” Rohan whispered on the phone.

“Okay,” I repied.

“The guy likes Star Wars. He even knows how many Star Wars movies were made. He not only answered all the questions you asked me to ask him but also invented a few questions from his side and answered them. This guy is gold. His passport had twenty visas. I am sure he can buy all your dictionaries without his parent’s knowing about it,” Rohan conspired.

“Where can we find him?” I asked.

“Pacific mall. Tomorrow. The name is Phil for Phoolendra. He’s going to spend five hours at ‘Crossroad.’ He is averagely tall for a ten-year-old, wears Harry-Potter glasses, has hair like Jonathan Lipnicki, sports cargo shorts, usually brown and green, and looks pissed off. In short, he looks like one of those Google and Yahoo guys; another one of those guys who want to look and talk like Americans for no reason. Just say ‘Phil’ from behind the racks so that he can’t see you and if someone paces the bookstore several times, you got your man,” Rohan explained.

*

When I told Sameer about the guy, he punched the air in an upward motion. One night, that was all the time we had to prepare for tomorrow’s salesmanship. We ransacked every movie-store and bookstore to read and watch as much we could, but could only get through the second movie.

Next day:

“Here, you stay,” said Sameer.

“No, Yoda, I need to go and save Han and princess Leia. I can feel them. They are crying for my help. I have to go,” I said.

“Trap, it is. They want you not. And if they want you even, you can help not. Stay, you should, and complete your training,” said Sameer.

“I cannot. I have to go. The R-2 unit is broken. I need someone to help me. I need help. Ben Kenobi told me to find a guy named ‘Phil’ to help me perform my duties. He said, ‘Luke, this guy ‘Phil’ is just like you—he’s a jedi.’ He told me that I would find him here in this bookstore, but I don’t know what he looks like. I just know he’s a ten-year-old kid with spiky hair who wears cargo-shorts and has been to twenty countries. Ben even gave me books for him to read. Oh Ben, why don’t you help me? Why did you give his books to me? I need two hundred and fifty dollars to find a new human-detector,” I said.

“Run Yoda, run. I think Lord Vader knows where we are. R un,” I shouted

So we started running away from Phil like George Lucas running from us for making such depressing movies, afraid. Sameer looked back, I looked back, and that was it. We had started to unwind the fishing thread. The bait had worked. Phil had our hook in his mouth like a whiff of the sensuous perfume of our English teacher in our nose. It was intoxicating. It was, indeed.

We closed the deal in ten minutes after Phil ran after us for two hours. We went up, down and all around the mall for two hours without looking back. He yelled, “I am Phil. Give me my books,” at least one hundred times, but we just plainly ignored him as if he were Lord Vader and not Phil. But when Sameer collapsed acting as per Yoda’s character, I took him in my arms as if he were dying and faked some tears.

*

On the next day, as planned, we put the books in a duffle-bag and left for the mall. Right at the moment we were leaving the house, something drastic happened that set forth things on a different route.

“I am leaving for the mall,” shouted my sister leaving the house just ahead of us.

Thinking later about those words, I wished I could travel into the hyperspace and go back in time to slap my sister, of course after killing Sameer with a Lightsaber borrowed from Phil.

As we were waiting for Phil to show up in the mall, my sister got hold of Sameer. Sameer told her how I had been influencing him to sell off books and other expensive articles to strangers. He even told her that I had sold off my reference books last week for money to buy X-rated magazines; He also told her that I sold the dictionary dad gave me last year, even though I had actually burned it in front of Sameer to prove my manliness. I saw him speak the words of a traitor right in front of me. He even cried those fake tears using TheraTears that we had bought. And what happened after that cannot be described. My sister told my dad everything Sameer had said. My dad was furious to know about my burning the dictionary, which he thought was obligatory for a kid to stay in his house. Sameer offered my sister a deal, and she gleefully accepted it.

A few days later:

“Here. Dad told me to give this money to you,” I said.

Sameer opened the envelope and pulled out a hundred-rupee bill from a bundle of ten-thousand saying, “This is the remaining part of my yearly subscription fee. And, ha, how do you like your new dictionaries?” Sameer asked and winked.