The four brothers
© 2007 Shashi Krishna., all rights reserved.



He fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair. Most of the others had already left. He had been on time but there was no way in finding out if it had been worth it. He did not want to go through this again for the life of him. His previous attempts had been miserable failures but this time he had made all the right moves. The deductions and analysis had been perfect. There was no plausible way that he could go wrong, he thought.

He looked up at the clock. He looked back at his watch. The time matched. All his waiting around had eventually bubbled down to this. His mind traveled back to all those moments of inexplicable fatigue that had prepared him for this one. There was no turning back now. In the next few minutes his future would have been decided. Either he could walk out a winner or scream in agony at yet another exhausting failure.

‘God! Why is this so damn difficult!’ he yelled at himself.

He closed his eyes and his mind fluttered back to those white and black images where he remembered seeing what he wanted.

‘What was it….what was it…’ he kept saying to himself.

He knew he was at the right spot. Just one more to go and he would be done. Forever. Never again would he have to visit this place again. One more landmark etched in the map of his memory.

He looked back at what was in front of him and went through his options once more - the four brothers.

‘It has to be….else it doesn’t make sense!’ he said to himself.

‘Pick me! Pick me!’ cried the brothers back to him in chorus.

The first one was the most confident one. ‘You have to be kidding me, right? You can’t seriously be considering these fellows. You know I am the one.’

The second one was quite competent as well. ‘You are actually going to listen to him? Come on! Do you want to go with any of the rest and make your life miserable? Pick me dude!’

The third one was clearly not his favorite.

‘Do what you want. But make these guys shut up!’ was all he heard from that one.

He sighed as he looked hopefully towards the last one.

‘You are pathetic. You know that?’

‘Yeah…I know…’ he responded.

‘All you had to do was make a clear choice. But no! You had to push your luck, laze around and now be pinned up against the wall. How on earth are you going to get out of this one? You moron!’

‘Shut up!’ he yelled back in silence.

He looked around if he had any other sibling pack to choose from. He was beginning to hate this one. No. This was it. This group of four would be it.

‘Just one more…’ he said to himself.

He let out a gasp of exasperation and quickly chose one of them with an air of uncertainty. He got up, handed in his stuff and walked out.

He hurriedly ran to the end of corridor and opened his book. Black and white memories started resurfacing.

‘Hmm….where are you…where are you…’ he kept repeating as his finger explored around.

‘Yes! I was right!’ he yelled out loud surprising a couple of passers by. ‘God…I hate multiple choice exams,’ he said to himself as he walked down the stairs with his book bag slung on his shoulder.



..ShaKri..

The Hangover
© 2007 Shashi Krishna., all rights reserved.


IT HAD BEEN LIKE GETTING UP FROM a never ending choke. His immediate reaction to the jolt his body took was cough out loud. The noise that followed was enough to make him realize he could see. A shrill buzzing enveloped his otherwise silent brain within the next few seconds. He closed his eyes once more and tried to shake it off, but as it turned out, the noise only increased every time he shook his head. Helpless, he screamed at the top of his voice to try and overtake the frustrating pitch at which the buzz had surrounded his thoughts. And when he did so, just like that, it went away. Like a hungry predator vanishing into the distance scowling and snarling yet with the tail between the legs.

Gone.

In the next few heart beats he could hear his own breathing. Smooth, uninterrupted and laced heavily with images of the previous night. He lay where he was, unconscious to the reality that seemed unreal, and enjoyed these few minutes of silent breathing. A faint smile grew and fell on his lips as he slowly attempted to open his eyes again.

A blurred image of a painting hung on a wall looked back at his gaze. He tried to remember where he had seen it before. He couldn’t. But he was certain he had something to do with that square shaped window that seemed to allow the viewer look at another universe through it.

‘Russell…bazaar,’ he murmured as he strung a few more incoherent words with it. Yes, now he knew. He remembered being in a narrow street that looked like a rainbow explosion and smelt like a hundred different oils. He also recalled having a look at the million different things that place seemed to have in its bosom. His attention span had had trouble staying on one article for more than two seconds when he would be yelled at by another vendor.

‘…hated it…’ he murmured once again before lazily shifting his gaze towards what looked like an open door.

He blinked continuously like a new born mammal to regain a clearer image of his target. Yes, he thought to himself, that was the door to his bedroom. No…he paused, to their bedroom.

‘…who else is…’ he vocalized his thoughts trying to recall who else was with him. As he tried to push himself up, the buzz hound returned with a vengeance.

‘AAAAAAAAH!’ he screamed once again as he felt the scream penetrating into his ears and darting its way into his brain. He had internal visuals of his bloodied brain trying its best to push the shrieking jolt of electricity away from it.

After a few successful pushes, it was gone. Again.

He pushed himself up and sat on the bed. All he could smell was alcohol. He identified several flavors as he smacked his lips a few times – whiskey, cocktail, gin, beer. Another smile of satisfaction grew and died on his lips.

But then there was something else. Another hint of a beverage he had never tasted before. He stuck out his tongue and reached closer to his left cheek and picked it up again. As he swallowed it he suddenly had the urge to vomit. It was something absolutely unpleasant. But as he tried to cover his mouth and find a wash basin, he noticed something else.

For a moment he thought his friends had managed to serve him tomato sauce as a prank. He was almost convinced of it had it not dawned on him that he was tasting blood –most likely human blood.

Just the thought of it made him gasp in horror and examine his surroundings with more detail. He passed his hands all over his cheeks, mouth and chin to find more traces of blood on them. He was horrified at this discovery and sprang out of his bed and looked down at himself. There were a few spots of blood on his cream shirt but otherwise there was no hint of him being injured. He patted himself all over to ensure he felt some sort of pain but no – there was nothing.

His eyes now caught a trail of tiny specks of red that disappeared outside the bedroom. He followed it with a stagger that almost made him lose balance. He held himself together by clutching the walls and walked out into the living room.

And there it was.

The source of the blood that had found its way into his body. The root of what had made him almost throw up in repulsion. The reason he had wanted to remember so badly who it was he was living with.

Lying in a pool of her own blood was his life partner who had always begged him not to drink. Having smashed her head against the sharp edge of the coffee table in the living room lay the one woman who had always complained about his alcoholism. The woman he had so mercilessly pushed out of his way the previous night when he had returned. The one soul who had cared for him. The final result of his biggest hangover that would hang over him for the rest of his life. The one spirit who had yelled out ‘Why don’t you just kill me instead!’ in desperation on many moonless nights.

For once, he had obeyed her.




..ShaKri..

It wasn’t until a few months after I had seen this movie, did I completely comprehend the message. Now, by message, I do not mean the one the makers of this hugely successful Kannada movie were trying to make – if there really was one. But the more subtle and quite possibly the stronger one, that the audience had sent back to the movie making industry in Karnataka.

There had been a bizarre lull of mediocrity and cliché that had surrounded the Karnataka movie world for several years before ‘Mungaru Male’ came along. Remakes galore had reigned supreme – and they still do – in a land where the nectar of home grown screenplays had ruled the box office merely a couple of decades ago. How can one forget Dr. Rajkumar’s pristine performance in the ‘back to roots’ saga ‘Bangarada Manushya’? When can we ever look past the scintillating images of Karnataka’s real picture portrayed in Shankar Nag’s features? How did we manage to go beyond the brilliance that made movies like ‘Sharapanjara’ and ‘Nagarahavu’ Puttanna Kanagal’s signature?

They say movies should be a mirror to the society they represent. While not all movies need to be a ‘learning experience’, they still need to have the ability to connect with the audience it is targeting. Given the multi-ethnic and cross cultural diversity Karnataka now boasts of, the movies being churned out are rarely anything beyond a badly made love story at best.

How many more times would the audience sit through the well organized and prim looking locales of a foreign land as the leading pair danced around it to a borrowed song? How long would it take for the dialogues being written to become more natural and articulate to the common man? Where should they have looked to find authentic family based humor rather than the crass and vulgar menu dished out in the name of comedy? When would the stories finally start moving out of make believe colleges attended by men and women in their 30s?

The success of ‘Mungaru Male’ was not just the success of the movie. It was a successful attempt by the audience in telling all the movie makers of the literature-rich state to kindly put more trust in them. It was a plea sent out to the big wigs of the industry to please try and capture the spectacle Karnataka’s beauty lies in. It was a kind request to dish out different and less predictable screenplays with fresh faces and new voices.

The real meaning of ‘Mungaru Male’ lay in the audience who has always been ready to accept a refreshing offering. Even if it was at the cost of non-Kannada leading ladies and playback singers.

..ShaKri..

Dear reader,

I am not the one to pen love-sick poems on a regular basis. But then...there are days when some faces from a significant past come back to haunt.

This is a tribute to one such Herculean loss.

ShaKri