An untold story

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 32; the thirty-second edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton. The theme for the month is 'An Untold Story'

“There is an untold story that I want to share with you”, I said eagerly.

My friend’s eyes glazed over.

“If it has remained untold for this long, it can remain untold for a shade longer. What is the hurry?” he said and hurried away.

If you had a story that wants to burst out of you and you find that there is no one to tell it to, you can understand how I felt. I don’t know why it is this way but the very times I have the urgent need to tell something are the times when all my friends are too busy to listen. Has that happened with you, too?

“Listen! There is this untold story…”

“Ever heard of the man who said ‘I always lie’?” said my friend. That, also, happens to me. When I want to say something, my friends feel the pressing need to say something else. “That is logic that bites its own tail. If he always lied, he lied this time too. That means he always tells the truth. Which means that he was telling the truth when he said he always lied! Which means that he always lies! Which means…”

My patience was at an end. He seemed prepared to go on like this till the cows came home. “So? What do you want to say?”

“Once you start telling me the untold story, it ceases to be an untold story. So it can be an untold story only when you keep it untold”, he said and disappeared.

After he left, it struck me that his logic was fallacious. After all, if “I always lie” is false, the truth need not necessarily be “I always tell the truth”. It could well be “I sometimes lie”. That is another thing that keeps happening to me. I find the killer argument only after the time for arguing is long gone. Ever had that happen to you?

Having lost out with my friends, I had only my family to help me unburden myself.

“Hey Sis! I have this untold story that I want to tell you”

“It is always what you want with you. When have you ever bothered to understand what I want or what anyone else wants?”

Well! I assure you that this untold story that I have not told you is the greatest untold story that has not been told! Take my word for it!

The fellow Blog-a-Tonics who took part in this Blog-a-Ton and links to their respective posts can be checked here. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton. Introduced By: The Fool, Participation Count: 6

Idling excellence

Every man ought to excel in something. That was a lesson that was dinned into my head since childhood. Now, rack my brains as I would and put my entire lot of talents under the microscope (actually, I needed the microscope to locate them in the first place), I could not really find one single thing that could prove to be my area of excellence. How then was I to answer that eternal question, “Why was I born?”

Mothers are a boon to mankind. There I was, happily lolling in bed at 11 AM on a Sunday - teeth unbrushed, bowels fully loaded, eyes bleary and postponing the evil hour when I would have to get up to do all sorts of things. My mother walks in, shakes her head in exasperation and says, “God! You would win the first prize for laziness in any competition!” Eureka! I had found my area of excellence!

Can you believe that I read Bertrand Russell merely because he had written an essay “In praise of Idleness”? That essay did not have quite the sort of ideas that I was looking for but I got captivated by his turn of phrase on occasion. For example he, apparently, asked nuns about why they preferred bathing in bathrobes when there was no-one to see them there to which they piously replied, “Ah! You forget the Almighty God!” Russell says, “They obviously think of God as an Omnipotent Peeping Tom who can see through walls but is foiled by bathrobes”. Nifty, isn’t it? Though what sort of person would go to a nunnery on purpose to have a detailed discussion about the nuns’ bathing habits beats me! (Not germane to the topic under discussion? I know – just thought I would mention it!)

The problem with trying to excel in anything is that people just will not let you do so. You cannot even depend on your own family to support you in your aspirations. Try achieving the pinnacle of laziness by turning in a blank answer sheet for a test and your father takes the belt to you. (Ah! Norway! Where were you when I needed you the most?) Why will parents always want their children to succeed in achieving their (the parents’) dreams and not allow the child to pursue its own dreams?

Now you may say that if I had truly wanted to excel, I should have done so despite all obstacles. But then it was not your backside that was getting tanned, was it? Actually there is a grain of truth in what you say – there were people around me who did keep up the standard despite similar encounters with leathern articles. It is just that I found it more strenuous to duck the belt a zillion times every day than to write a few tests once a month!

Growing into adulthood I thought that I would now be able to exercise my talents without restraint. Not really! I mean when even your body does not support you what can you do? When the belly clamors for three meals a day (if that is all you can manage) and the restaurants insist unreasonably on getting paid if they fed me, I had to join a job. Employers also had this quaint notion that giving me a job meant that I was also expected to work at it. As though the grace of my presence had not sufficiently justified my salary! Ah! No-one understands me!

I had never actually given up on my quest till the day I heard this story about one of my distant uncles. (Ah! Before Oprah asks, let me clarify that we Indians keep track of third and fourth cousins of our parents and grandparents – at least up to my generation!) Apparently, if a mosquito sat on his arm and started operations he would call out for his son to come and squash it! Now that is dedication to the ideal of laziness when even your reflexive reactions are under the iron control of your dedication to idling. What chance do I have of overtaking a Karma Yogi (or should it be Nishkarma yogi) like this.

I must start on a quest to find another area to excel in – though my dedication to my earlier quest has rendered me sufficiently lazy to be unable to put much effort into this new quest.

Narrating a story

I do start pontificating at times but, by and large, it has been safely in the area of philosophy where anyone may speak anything and cannot be proved outright wrong. This once I have stuck my neck out into an area where I cannot claim any expertise and can be ridiculed for how wrong I have got my ideas!

The Fool and I stared this workshop for Indian Fiction writers. Please do not get me wrong – it is not like we thought we had something to teach people about writing fiction. It is just that we thought we would learn from each other in a structured attempt.

The exercise was to write your own narrative of a plot line given to all - this time by The Fool. We were lucky to get sixteen entries for this exercise – including a few from some of the best fiction bloggers - and had a glimpse into various ways in which a plot could be handled. The plot given can be read here and all the entries are also hosted on the same blog.

To round off the writing part of the exercise, I put up my own ideas on what we expected by seeking people to narrate the same plot in their own voices. Those ideas are there in this piece – Narrating a Story – at http://www.indifictionworkshop.blogspot.in/2012/10/narrating-story.html.

Fun with books

I love books of almost all sorts but humor has a special place in my heart. My mind, however, is Teflon-coated and almost anything that I read just skids off it without making any lasting impression. I have always envied the felicity that some people have of remembering and quoting the books that they read but, try as I might, I could never be one of them.

Some quotes, however, have found precarious handholds in the Teflon. Oscar Wilde’s classic “The importance of being Ernest” offered one of them. The girl’s mother is interviewing the girl’s beau.

Boyfriend : Unfortunately, I have lost both my parents

Girl’s Mother: To lose one may be termed a misfortune. To lose both seems to me like sheer carelessness!

Or, take this description of P.G. Wodehouse about one of Emsworth’s sisters.

Her first husband was a big game hunter. He died in a misunderstanding with a tiger. He thought the tiger was dead. The tiger didn’t. Her second husband met a lorry coming at him. Instead of going around it, he tried to go through it.

The irrepressible Richard Armour has been a great rib-tickler for me. His description of the teetotal Queen Victoria goes thus

Although she reigned, she never poured.

It is not necessary for you to seek in the humor authors for a laugh. Sometimes, you find unexpected gems in other genres. Take this one from a western when a stranger comes into town with a dead body on another horse.

Stranger: He was bushwhacked five miles out yonder. Toted the body in.

Bully : You pointing that at me?

Stranger: Throw a stone into a pack of dogs. The one that yelps is the one that got hit.

Sometimes it is your own fancies that give you a fun time. Upon reading the zillionth Perry Mason mystery, I had this idea of a whimsical interview of the police lieutenant Tragg.

Reporter: So, Lieutenant, could you let your viewers in on the investigative methods that made you successful?

Tragg: You see, the moment we encounter a homicide we look around to see if there is a remote possibility of arresting one of Perry Mason’s clients for it. After that, all we have to do is lie back and relax. Perry will solve the case for us.

Reporter: And if you do not?

Tragg: That is why we have that ‘Unsolved Homicides’ file!

Books can either be fun or you can have fun with them! They are man’s best friends – which friend will allow you to talk any way to him and will not talk back?