Fantasy Dilemma

"And then the big bad wolf dressed up as the old granny," I heard a little voice say. "Red Riding Hood came to her granny's house and knocked on the door and the wolf said come in. When Red Riding Hood came in, the wolf jumped up from the bed and ran to eat her."
 
"Red Riding Hood shouted Papa Papa and her father came running in and chopped off the head of the wolf with an axe. And then Red Riding Hood and her granny and her father sat on the floor and shared the basket of goodies Red Riding Hood's mother had sent for the granny."
 
"They ate jam and bread and cake and apple and biscuits and chips. Do you know what the wolf was doing? It was lying on the floor, dead. Blood was everywhere, red blood. But no one looked at the wolf, they sat next to it and ate their food..." 
 
I listened, horrified, just outside the door. This was my four-year-old cousin telling a very graphic version of Red Riding Hood. Listening intently, with her head slightly to one side, her eyes and mouth wide open, was her two-year-old sister. She'd oohed and aahed at exactly the right places, so I knew she'd heard the story many times before.
 
My first instinct was to rush in, deny all blood and killing, and try to tell a story about the wolf running away into the forest. But I stopped myself. They had heard the outline of the story from me, so I couldn't suddenly start saying something else. But I hadn't provided all the horrifying details. I certainly hadn't said anything about a bloody feast. My young cousin had added herself, helped largely by the picture of a dead, bleeding wolf in her storybook.
 
That's when I started thinking about fairy tales...
 
Fairy tales, we tend to believe, are all sweetness and light. About Cinderella finding her prince and the ugly duckling turning into a swan. But there's a darker, almost sinister side, to fairy tales as well. Think of Hansel and Gretel.
 
The father agrees with the wicked stepmother to abandon the children in the forest... The witch puts Hansel in a cage... Gretel pushes the witch into the hot oven (or boiling pot, depending on which version you know) and leaves her cooking, while she frees her brother and they both go up to the attic and fill their arms with gold coins and jewels. Then these two "angelic" children run off home, where their father greets them with open arms, the stepmother having thoughtfully gone away.
 
What are you telling your youngsters? That the father is weak and ineffectual and that bringing the riches home is important for winning his love. That it's perfectly natural for an old woman to want to eat a young child and equally natural for another child to kill that woman. The witch must have screamed and screamed, but there's no mention of that.
 
Think of Snow White. Her stepmother is determined to kill her and tries all kinds of things - poisoned ribbon, poisoned comb and poisoned apple. I didn't think too much about this story, until my young cousin asked a question.
 
Is Snow White very foolish, Didi, she asked. No, I said. Yes, yes, she is, she insisted. After one stranger has given her a poisoned ribbon, why is she talking to another stranger and taking things?
 
I had no answer.
 
We talk about violence on television and films. Isn't it time we had a good, hard look at fairy tales?

Household Services

I am extremely helpless when it comes to maintaining my house. I depend on "service people" to come over and do two vital things in my house.
 
1. Fix something
2. Make me feel like a complete loser.
 
House hold service people use even more confusing language than people who works in big companies. At least the jargon in big companies is a language that can be understood by a few people in the department. Service people, on the other hand, seem to develop their unique language while driving around in their trucks all alone. As far as I can tell, the language is some combination of traffic noises, bodily emanations, and snippets from talk radio all rolled into one. I had a service person install some telephone wiring in my house recently, and a conversation with him went like this:

Wire Guy: The line loops to the outside patch then goes live from the cable to the scormet.
 
Me: What's a scormet? And which line are you talking about?
 
Wire Guy: That's what patches into the live cable wire from the blue wires, unless you want it to be the orange ones. It's up to you.
 
Me: Geez. Why should I care what color the wire is? And what the hell is a scormet?
 
Wire Guy: Okay, we'll go with the blue. But don't complain later when you wish you'd said orange.
 
Me: Why? Why orange? What's the difference? And what's a scormet?
 
Wire Guy: The scormet is connected to the orange directly. That's my point.
 
Me: YOUR POINT? I DON'T UNDERSTAND A WORD YOU ARE SAYING. WHAT POINT??
 
Wire Guy: So, we'll go with the blue wire. I'm sure you know best.
 
So now my scormet is wired to something or other and all I know is that everytime the phone rings my shower comes on. I'd call the wire guy back to have it fixed, but I can't go through that experience again.

Sticky Manners

I was in New York City on a vacation and meeting a friend for dinner at a favorite Thai restaurant. It sits just below sidewalk level and we chose a window table in an alcove where we could watch the passing shoes go by. I hadn’t been to dinner with this friend before, and it occurred to me that since he grew up in a city and I in a small town I had better watch my manners. Its not that I have bad manners, sometimes I even get compliments. I just wanted to make a good impression.

There was just one small problem: I had a gum in my mouth.

I don’t know why I hadn’t spit it out earlier, but it was still there. I searched the white linen surface of the table for something to put it in – there was nothing. Mentally I started listing all the things that might have been there that could be used: a paper napkin, sugar packets, a comment card. There was nothing even remotely close. I briefly considered sticking it under the table or plopping it in the glass flower vase but decided that if I was caught doing either, I could pretty well guess my friend’s thoughts on my manners. He sat across from me talking, unaware of the turmoil that I was facing. I made sure to smile and nod and listen, all the while plotting how to get rid of the gum.

The waiter brought shrimp chips to the table. I love shrimp chips. My friend dug right in. How could I eat shrimp chips with gum in my mouth? I had to act as though I did not want them.

Next, the waiter brought our drinks. My heart leapt. Dangling on top of my straw was a tiny piece of paper wrapper. I can use this, I thought. I removed the wrapper, put it beneath the table cloth, and waited for my chance. My friend glanced towards the window and I quickly reached into my mouth, removed the gum, and pushed it into the paper under the table. There was just one small problem: the paper wasn’t big enough. As I twisted it around, it stuck to the fingers of one hand.

It was a mess. I’d never felt such sticky gum. Two fingers felt coated. It was like a quicksand where the more you struggle, the deeper you get. I was struggling furiously with it and acting as if I am having a lovely time and I rolled it back into a ball.

The waiter returned with soup. It was Tom Kha Gai, a sour tasting soup with chicken, mushroom and green chilies, in a rich coconut milk. The bowl sat on a saucer on a paper doily. Salvation, I thought. Again my friend glanced away and I put as much as the gum I could, on the saucer, behind the cup, outside his view. I was free! :D I began eating my soup, grabbing shrimp chips, laughing, talking and smiling.

It was then, when I noticed something strange in my soup: a small pink shrimp. I didn’t remember shrimps in this dish. I caught it with my spoon, put it in my mouth and chewed. Slowly it dawned on me: the peppermint gum was back in my mouth!

My mind raced. How did that happen? I then realized I had set my spoon down on the saucer while eating a shrimp chip and the gum had stuck to the back of the spoon. When I put the spoon in the bowl, the heat had knocked it off. In fact it seemed slightly cooked from swimming in the broth.

With my friend looking my way, I abandoned the hope of making a favorable impression. I took out the gum and placed it on the other edge of the saucer. I had enough and was ready to eat my meal in peace – manners or no manners.

After a year, I met that friend again, and decided to tell him the whole story. To my surprise, he said he hadn’t noticed a thing. I was amazed because I really had been suffering on the other side of that table. Maybe my manners aren’t that bad after all.

The Hero Dream

If Bill Clinton had managed to win a $10 million publishing deal for his memoirs, surely mine will be worth a meagre $ 1 million. I’m trying hard not to be greedy. Just pragmatic.

So I sit back and try to organise my thoughts and memories. Going back to my childhood which made me what I am. As I go down memory lane, I’m unable to think of traumatic experiences, which have scarred me for life. No evil step mother or abusive father. So, where do I begin?

The best bet would be to make up as I go along. So I sit down at my computer and wait for inspiration to strike. Ten minutes of gazing at the screen makes me nothing, but cross-eyed. It’s always difficult to make a start. Especially when one considers how important the beginning is. You have to rivet your reader with that first line. Make them stay for more. Hunger to read on.

Okay, I tell myself, just get on with it. As I sift through my memory, my mind digresses. A certain incident comes to mind. Of a sibling who made life miserable for me. Wonder how can I use this to my benefit. Shall I paint this person in colors so dark that the reader will be compelled to go on, wanting to know how this villain ruined my life and how I overcame adversity?

Even as the thought start free flow and my fingers dance across the keyboard, an inner voice starts its monologue. It says, come on, you know that never really happened. Don’t exaggerate, don’t be melodramatic. That’s the fastest way to lose an audience.

I continue hammering on the keyboard trying to shut out this voice. Who cares about fidelity to life’s experiences when you know the imagination can do so much better.

Soon you are on page 50 and stop for a breath. That voice has been successfully stifled. You never thought it would be so easy. Making up isn’t hard to do. As the words trip from your fingers you marvel at your inventiveness.

Imagining people reading your work and marveling at your creativity, the simple yet effective style, the pain underlying the suffering, the poetry of prose. You can see yourself picking up the phone to be told this to New Books Publishing House. We heard you have been writing this amazing novel about your life and times. We want first option. Will you promise not to approach any other publisher? We are willing to give you an advance ….. the figure mentioned enough to make you gasp.

Then there are newspaper reviews. The critics just love it. Reams of praises showered on your first literary effort. There’s talk of it being made into a movie. You wonder if you can get your favourite actors and actresses to take the leading roles. Publicity blitz and the glare of fame become blinding.

The harsh ring of the telephone jolts you back to reality. You look around in a daze, the transition from dream to dreary present so hard to bear.

You pick up the phone, grunt a distinctly unwelcome hello. Only to be greeted by the voice of your sibling. The very one who is to figure prominently in your Booker Prize-winning novel. Asked, what are you up to, you come out with the truth. The ominous pause is an answer enough.

With the words if you dare write about me ringing in your ears, you come to the sad conclusion that some people just aren’t made of hero material.

Nipping it

I finally realize I have a phobia. A genuine fear, one of going to the salon. Perhaps, there are counseling classes I can attend. It has taken a long time to realise or to admit to this fear. If you don’t know me, I’m the one with broken nails and whose hair is always in need of a cut.

I can find a hundred excuses not to go to a place called the salon – its expensive, its time consuming, I have work, visitors are coming next month … reasons that I think are highly justifiable.

Its really time consuming. It can take almost half a day and there’re so many other things I could be doing during that time. Forty minutes is a long time if you do not enjoy the experience, and I do not enjoy been strapped to a chair in a straightjacket while the hair dresser towers over me with a pair of scissors at my neck.

Neither do I like other people listening to my conversation. Now I don’t mind a bit of eavesdropping, especially if I am the one doing it. But I find it difficult to make small talk, so the thought that other people might be listening is mortifying and makes it that much more difficult. It seems all the other customers are happily chatting away while their hairdresser laughs like a school kid. Little confidence and knowing looks are exchanged. I desperately try to think of something amusing, witty or evenly remotely interesting to say and my mind goes blank and finally repeats for the umpteenth time how hot the weather is becoming.

Well now that I realise I have this phobia I can come to terms with it and face it head on. In fact I have already made the first step, and feeling quite pleased about it. When I left the salon this morning and she said, " See you again in six weeks," I made a mental note and said, "you mean in six months, my dear."

Machine Fear

My laptop has been refusing to boot up for a couple of days, even since, in fact, it read about spinach – yes, spinach – being used as its source of energy. The newspaper story (which first appeared on the laptop) said that scientists at the Massachussets Institute of Technology fed the machine the vegetable to get it going. My laptop, a shy retiring sort of a chap can’t stand vegetables. Hence the tantrum. I tried feeding it some potato chips once, and on another occasion dropped a can of diet drink on it, but these are nothing compared to what it thinks I have in store. "I am not Popeye," it typed out recently – earlier in this sentence in fact.

My sympathies are entirely with the laptop. I remember, as a child when I was in my mother’s lap top and she tried to feed me spinach, I threw up all over her shoes. I just did a "foo foo" as she put the spinach in my mouth and hence this disaster. If my laptop thinks that human beings are getting ready to take over its world, who can blame it? In the comfortable world of laptops and computers, the machines have just enough intelligence to believe that they are the lords and masters of the universe. Their one and only fear is that the human beings will take over. Spinach today, Brussels sprouts tomorrow and black-eyed beans by the end of the week?

Let us be fair. After all, they don’t insist that we have chips for breakfast (computer chips, that is) or the CPU during a really heavy party. They are not feeding us any of their horrible stuff, why should we feed them any of ours? You know how well laptops communicate. Already my microwave oven has begun to look at me suspiciously since it heard I am planning to take it off its life-support system and feed it mango leaves. I can’t walk past my refrigerator without that faithful servant throwing at me rotten apples and putrefying cheese (how it can tell the difference I don’t know) to express solidarity with the other gadgets. Last night I dreamt the washing machine was trying to jam a pillow on my face and sit on it. This can’t go on for much longer. Such insecurity!

Let us pull the plug on the spinach project, and explore whether we can’t get our laptops their energy from pizzas with all the toppings or multi-layered ice-creams and nuts. If we expect them to slog like humans, we must feed them like humans. None of this spinach stuff (I can see the word "smile" forming on my laptop)

Future clothing

My clothes don’t do enough for me. All they do is cover my occlusive parts and keep me warm. And they don’t even do that right, because in the summer I am too warm. My clothes are dimwits. I want smarter clothes.

I have great expectations for clothes of the future. I want my clothes to keep me at the perfect temperature all day. I want my clothes to tickle me when I am sad. My clothes should sense danger and electrically stimulate my leg muscles so I run away before I even know what the problem is.

I want a cellular phone built into the head cover, so I have a way to insult gullible morons to their face without fear of retribution.

Me: You’re the most gullible imbecile I have ever met.
Moron: Huh? What did you call me?
Me: Shhh! I am on the phone
Moron: Oh, sorry.

What sadistic pleasure!

I want my clothes to have a stealth technology so I can avoid all the people who ask for my help. I want stealth technology that is so good, I can walk into a car dealer’s lot carrying a tub full of cash and not draw any attention. I want to absorb radar, so that I can speed without getting caught. I want to sneeze on the buffet and blame the guy behind me.

I want clothes that have a nonstick surface so food stains slide off. I want clothes than can be cleaned by taking them outside and shaking them vigorously.

The clothes of the future will create some new risks. They will be so valuable that muggers will steal your clothes and leave your wallet. Crooks will be frolicking around town in your jump suit making long distance longs with the built-in-phone while you are hiding naked in an alley. And you won’t be able to find help, because the other pedestrians will have the stealth feature of their own clothes turned on so people like you cant locate them.

It won’t be necessarily be a good thing to be the first person in your town to have the clothes of the future. For example, if someone wants to use your phone, you’ll have to say no, because your only phone will be built into your clothes. If they insist, you will have to let them wear your jump suit. When you try to get your clothes back, they’ll turn on the stealth feature and disappear for days. Your friends will be taking joyrides in your jump suit, while you are sitting around the house, naked.

Thinking of the future, do you think we should make friends?