Team Blog-O-Holics--Week 2--16th post--#GameofBlogs by BlogAdda

A Time to Die

Read the last part over at shiuli.com.

Jen wound the dupatta twice around her neck as she sat in the rickshaw. She pulled out a pair of black-rimmed spectacles from her nondescript black leather bag, and put them on. She loved flirting with danger, oh she did! Which is why she had decided to walk straight into the lion's den: yes, she would go to to the police cormmissioner's office and snoop around. She would pose as a reporter and no one would suspect a thing! She even had a fake ID!. 'Everything was in place,' she thought. 'The thing about courting danger is to know your risks and to play them carefully.' She smiled to herself.
She stopped the rickshaw a little way away from the police commissioner's office, pretending to go into one of the apartment complexes nearby. Once she was sure the rickshaw-wallah had gone, she quickly strode over to the commissioner's office, the Press badge around her neck giving her an air of authority.
'Oh, how he would hate this,' she thought, as an image of her 'boss' flashed in her mind. The grapevine had it that the ATS and RAW were collaborating on ousting their game. But they had no idea, did they? They just had no clue how many seemingly ordinary people with ordinary lives were actually sleeper cells waiting for the 'go' order. But he had told her to play it safe. There could be informers among us, too, he had said. And he had looked at her too with suspicion. Damn his patient and perseverant attitude! It just got to her at times. But she had to curb her impulsiveness or the Big Man wouldn't like it, she thought. Wait till she got her hands on the info about Mishra! She would bypass him and take it directly to the Big Man! That should show him!
She moved confidently in the building, trying to recall the pictures that their informer had got them. She stopped in front of a glass door, with no identification on it. This was it, she thought, her heart beating so loud she was sure anyone coming near her could hear it. She pushed the door open and walked in. She had entered another long passage, at the end of which was another glass door, this time manned by two policemen, who were now looking at her curiously. She put on a nonchalant face as she walked slowly towards them, letting them take in her reporter's outfit.
"Sa'ab-ji hai andar?" she asked when she reached them.
"Samar saab nahi hai. Lekin Inspector John D'Cruz hai," said one of the policemen. And then, as if he quickly, remembered his duty. "Aap ka ID, madam?"
"Meera," she said, brusquely, handing over her ID and looking at him expectantly as if he should have known her at sight!
The two policemen fidgeted a little, and looked at each other. Jen kept mum, knowing that her silence would only intimidate them. Finally the other policeman stepped up and took the ID, saying, "Sorry, Madamji. John sir ne kaha hai ki kisi ko andar bhejne ka nahi."
Jen raised her voice. "And now the public has to wait for news kyunki aapke boss ke paas time nahi hai? Nonsense! Maybe I should just go and meet Commissioner Rathod and ask him why his constables are making life so difficult for me. Is there a gag order here or what? The public has a right to know!"
She paused to take a breath. She could see that the mention of Commissioner Rathod had shaken them up. Before she could set off on another tirade, the policemen pushed the door open wide and let her through. Jen adjusted her dupatta and glasses as she walked in, secretly smiling to herself.

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Read the rest at shiuli.com: http://shiuli.com/2014/09/26/week2-post17-gameofblogs-by-blogadda/

Me and my team are participating in ‘Game Of Blogs’ at BlogAdda.com. #CelebrateBlogging with us.

Illusion

Let them be,
Do not dwell on those brightly coloured dreams
Or open the closed door
To that treasure trove of memories
That lie dark, heavy and deep in the mind.

Precious, yet so painful,
Now that the illusion no longer exists.
So fragile were the moments we shared,
But so real they seemed,
And so full of meaning.

Now I know there was no love,
No longing. Just some wishful thinking.
But the heart holds the fantasy close,
Refusing to let go,
Still laughing at your words of long ago.

But I still hope, against all reason,
That some of those lost pockets of time
Meant as much to you, as to me.
No matter how tight you hold yourself,
Misery will be your secret companion, as it is mine.

What's with a puddle and productivity?

My friend sent me a video today in a Whatsapp group. Since the current trend is to share gory videos of the boy who got mauled by the tiger, I decided not to check it out. However, my friend then confirmed that it wasn't the dreaded tiger video, but one that even the kids would enjoy watching. As such fun videos go, it had all the elements of slapstick to it. There was a young fella merrily walking down a puddle-filled path, jumping enthusiastically into every puddle until he falls into one big pothole. The water comes right up to his neck! The poor fellow hauls himself out, does a quick U-turn and heads back the way he came.
As promised, the video was definitely entertaining. But it also reminded me of a similar kind of puddle that I face almost daily, often fall into, and struggle to get out of. Distractions: those are the puddles I am talking about. You know, like you plug in your phone to charge in the morning and decide you will just check if your friend texted you back last night. It will just take a minute, you think, and there you will be 15 minutes later, with half a tweet composed, numerous Facebook photos and statuses liked and downloading a few articles to Pocket to read later! Not to mention catching up on the 133 messages in various Whatsapp groups! Oops... was that a pothole or what?
Now these pothole-sized distractions turn up everywhere, from the short video your friend shares at work, which has numerous other interesting video links to click at the end; to the 'urgent' email from a client, which you go to attend to, leaving the major project you were busily working on! And bam! That's probably a nice time-black hole that you stepped into. Perhaps, it could be because I am a lot less disciplined than I like to be. But I am also a note-taker and list-maker. And I've been running a small experiment to see if I can put my distractions to good use and up my productivity at the same time.

Pic courtesy: http://cdn0.stocksy.com/

See, these distractions are not necessarily all bad. You know, sometimes, they inspire me to tweet something nice or give me a thread for a story or lead me to an interesting site that I now love to read. But on the whole, these little lost pockets of time were turning into a gross loss of productivity, and consequently, some self-image bashing. So here's what I did: I decided to give the distractions their own slot. For instance, if I am at work, I close my big pothole tabs, mainly mail, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest (ah, this could have been a whole post in itself) and concentrate on the project of the moment for anything from 30 minutes to an hour, depending on its nature and complexity. Admittedly, I sometimes use my phone's timer to help with this. After the self-allotted time is done, I reward myself with five minutes of puddle time!

At home, this sometimes means turning off data/Wifi (on particularly unruly days) and tending to my plants, my kids, my book, my husband, my curry or whatever really deserves my attention at that point. (Mostly, I just keep the phone away in a corner so that I don't look at it often. If someone needs me really urgently, I'm sure they will use that least-used function in a smartphone and just call!) I save up my puddle time at home in nice, big hourly chunks that I use once early in the morning--after the elder one goes off to school, the hubby on his walk, and the toddler is (hopefully) still asleep in bed--and then later at night, after everyone is tucked in and I have had my Masterchef Australia fix. All in all, the experiment is turning out to be quite a success. I have 'gained' so much time and I also get my fun, which means I can still jump into puddles without fearing the pothole.

Team Blog-O-Holics-Week 2-9th post-#GameofBlogs by BlogAdda

Recap: Tara is in hospital, after she escaped from her kidnapper. Shekar has been behaving strangely, and Roohi is inconsolable for her mother. Meanwhile, the body of a top-notch secret agent washes up ashore. Who is he? Find out in Part 8 by clicking here.
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It's her third day in the hospital, realises Tara, and Shekar has yet to bring Roohi to see her. He keeps making noncommittal grunts every time she asks about Roohi, and tells her not to stress herself unnecessarily. "She is absolutely fine, Tara," said Shekar, the last time he had been in to see her. "I don't want her to see you like this, nor do I want you to fret and affect your recovery. Please listen to your doctor and learn to relax." Tara did not like being told what to do, but she could see a grain of logic in Shekar's words.
However, her fiery Aries nature would not allow her to sit still. Though she still had a couple of deep muscle injuries to recover from, besides extensive blood loss, she was itching to get back to work. Her only ally in the present situation was the eager Cyrus, who was keen to make an impression on his boss by serving her in this time of dire need. Shekar would not hear of her getting back to work; trying to tell him that she actually wanted to trace her kidnapper seemed a big no-no to her. He would just tell her it was the job of the police!
The police had of course been in to see her. Shekar had watched her chat with the inspector closely, his face tense, almost as if he hated to hear her relive her trauma. She felt a new surge of love for him when she remembered his worried frown. She had given away precious little to the police, though. This was one loose end she wanted to tie by herself. She had put Cyrus on the job of finding out Shekar's attarwallah; he would be the first link in the chain, she thought to herself.
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Cyrus hurried to Tara's room in the hospital, clutching the little slip of paper tightly. 'Was Tara sending him on a fool's errand?' he thought to himself, not for the first time. But she insisted it was important, and his eagerness to prove himself got the better of him. She had definitely given him a tough job, one that would have landed him in a completely humiliating position if he had been caught out! Thank God things went smoothly, he thought.

He had waited patiently outside Tara's apartment complex until he saw Shekar starting off to school with Roohi. Tara had told him he would have exactly half an hour before the maid arrived, followed by Shekar a while later. He had let himself in using the spare key hidden under the potted palm by the door, thinking in his head that this seemed to be almost a universal hiding place of spare keys in every household! Tara's instructions were extremely accurate, he realised once he entered the house. Everything was exactly as she had described. Her heightened power of observation was probably one of the reasons why she was such a great editor, thought Cyrus as he made his way into the master bedroom and opened the wardrobe door on the far right.

He found the little drawer and the wooden box in it--the wooden box in which, Tara had said, Shekar stored all his bills and invoices. And he had found the one she wanted: a ragged handwritten bill from the attarwallah. Thankfully, it had an address and phone number printed on it! Cyrus clutched the paper harder, remembering the trouble he had been to in order to get it. He reached the door to Tara's room in the hospital, and pushed it open.

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Click here to read Part 10 by Rubina.

Me and my team are participating in ‘Game Of Blogs’ at BlogAdda.com. #CelebrateBlogging with us.

Team Blog-o-holics - Week 1 - 6th post - #GameofBlogs by BlogAdda

Do read part 5 here: https://theindianidiot.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/week-1-5th-post-team-blog-o-holics-gameofblogs-by-blogadda/

Part 6

Tara summoned up all her strength and ran into the welcoming, wide road at the end of the alley. She felt scared, angry and strangely, even dirty... as if she had been sullied by this terrible encounter with the hoodie guy. She was shocked at how seemingly innocent that epithet sounded: the hoodie guy. He could have been anyone; could it have been someone she knew? Did she know that grey hoodie from somewhere? No, she tried to rationalise, such hoodies are a dime a dozen in the market. Yet there was something about the hoodie-wearing stranger that had left a mark in her ravaged mind.
She walked quickly and tried to blend into the crowds on the pavement. She wanted to get away from this strange place as soon as possible; all she wanted was to get to her clean, organised, safe home and hug her family. Over and over again. And then maybe call the police. Her anger came surging back: she was a top-notch editor and she wasn't going to let anyone bully her into anything. If someone was trying to teach her a lesson with this kidnapping, she would teach them something! She would get to the bottom of this, she resolved.
However, her willpower wasn't enough to take her bruised body forward. She felt her knees sag, and she simply crumpled into the pavement. She could barely brace herself before her body hit the ground with a thud. 'More bruises,' thought Tara wryly, even as she felt her head spinning. Everything around her seemed to be a blur. She could only sense the feelings of the people around her: the initial shock and irritation, the hesitant curiosity, the indifferent crowding around to see a spectacle. She wished someone would just help her stand up and put her in a rickshaw. She wanted to go home so desperately; tears began streaming down her cheeks.
Suddenly she felt strong arms around her. "Tara ma'am! What happened to you?"
She willed her eyes open and caught a glimpse of a familiar face: Cyrus! She opened her mouth to talk but couldn't. Her world went black, and she slipped into the comfort of the welcoming darkness.
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When Tara awoke, she looked up at the harsh, unblinking light above her and fought the urgency to run. Another strange place! Slowly she took in her surroundings: the neat room, various monitors by the bedside, the IV line hooked up to a colourless liquid, her crisp white sheets, the TV in the corner with a Bollywood starlet soundlessly doing a round of crude gymnastics, and there, facing the TV, slumped in a sofa, was Cyrus. He was dozing and she noted the tired look on his face. 'God knows how long he has been here taking care of me,' thought Tara. 'Has it been hours or days?'
'And where's Shekar?' she thought. He should have been here by now. 'Oh how I miss him, and Roohi!' Just thinking of them made her want to cry. But she had decided that she would not waste any more of her precious tears on this cruel monster of a kidnapper. He may have scared her, but he definitely could not break her. She tried to build up a profile of him in her head; she would need to give the best description she could to the police.
There wasn't much she recognised about him physically, except for that hoodie. But there was something intangible... something she felt she knew but couldn't grasp. Her head ached from thinking so hard.
And then it hit her! That smell! His smell! The kidnapper used a perfume startlingly similar to the attar that Shekar got concocted at his favourite attar-wallah's. Perhaps this guy bought his attar too at the same place; perhaps he knew Shekar! Was this someone with a vendetta against Shekar? No, that wasn't possible... Shekar was too mild-mannered. He didn't have a problem with anybody! Nevertheless, Shekar would be able to help her find this guy. First she must ask him about this perfume shop of his. She might find some answers there! With all these thoughts swirling in her head, she tried to sit up in bed.
The door to her room opened abruptly, and Shekar stood in the doorway. He looked strangely dishevelled. He had a concerned expression on his face as he walked slowly into the room.

Keep reading. Go here for part 7: http://imcapturingsunshine.blogspot.in/2014/09/week-1-part-7-game-of-blogs.html

Me and my team are participating in ‘Game Of Blogs’ at BlogAdda.com. #CelebrateBlogging with us.