Anand Prakash

I can’t seem to get you out of my head. Even though I didn’t know when you entered my head, that’s so ridiculous to even think. You owned me with a sentence, heck, even with a fragment of sentence. Do you even know, my heart beats erratically when I think about you. I often get startled, seek acceptance and search for you. I don’t know whether I’ll like you or not but right now, I think you seem an important part of my life, even though we haven’t met in true sense. I hope I get a reply from you. Because if I don’t, I think my ego will automatically block you for the fear of loss of self-confidence. I don’t want to be unloved and unreciprocated at the same time.

Breakfast with splitting headache often result in vomiting and she hated the smell of her own vomit. It was like the smell of death. One of her relative had died during last summer and when she went there with sad face and fake tears, as the custom suggests, she smelled the dead body as she went near to pay her last respect. The dead body smelled of rotting grain or semi-digested grain in a vomit. Next moment, she sprinted out and threw up in their backyard. Ever since, she often dream of a vomit monster sitting atop her bookcase, asking her, “What are you doing here alone?”

“If you are free this weekend, let me take you to my world. I own the vomitland. No one dares to enter my territory.”

“What are your thoughts?”

I vomited in the dream.

“Yuck! If I love you, you mistreat me like this. I have offered you my whole world. Yet you spit over me. You could have simply said no. It would take me long time to get rid of your smell. Till then, I will be lonely. And I don’t want to live alone.”

I laughed. He disappeared. I got up. Smile eluded me all morning.

Apps

*Note for the reader: brinjals and eggplants are the same vegetables. They just have different name in different countries.  

One person said to other to download the brinjal selling and buying app and to delete eggplant selling and buying app. The government now, out of nowhere, wanted to promote selling and buying brinjals, because these are local. The government didn’t want the public to buy the foreign grown eggplants. When the prime minister was interviewed, he said that “It’s time to improve our economy. We should buy brinjals.”  The home ministers and chief minister had no idea how a brinjal taste like for they had long forgotten the taste of the poverty, as the brinjals are often bought by poor and middle-class people.  The high class and politicians always bought eggplants. Because the brinjals looked shabby. No, no one talked about the nutritive value of the eggplants: it’s possible that brinjals and eggplants might be nutritively same but no one asked this. Nor did they asked how flavorful the eggplant might taste or how organically it is grown. They simply said let’s delete the eggplant selling app, just because it is grown abroad. The poor man and middle class of the country followed the guidelines.

A week later, early morning, a local MLA had called the superintendent of the police.

“Find a kg of eggplants. It’s urgent.”

“How it is possible sir? We have already cracked down everyone selling the eggplants.”

“I know. But if you put your mind and heart to it, you will definitely find someone selling the eggplants.”

“It’s highly unlikely, sir.”

“Don’t you understand it, my daughter craves eggplant patties. And I want her to have it.”

“Sir, I could send someone who could cook similar patties with brinjals, for that’s our national vegetable.”

“It’s order.”

                The SP called the inspector in-charge of the area which have the food market, the inspector in turn send his constable and police personals to hunt down an illegal eggplant seller.

                At last, they found some eggplants, pinned the blamed on a poor rickshaw owner, who happened to cross the location, and put him in jail for illegal procurement and selling of the eggplants.