AtoZ #0 - Theme Reveal - Just six words

So, this April I am participating in the AtoZ Blogging Event. Each day this month except on Sundays, I will release one post on an title starting with the alphabet of the day. I am going to follow an exciting theme for this challenge. Here I reveal the theme to you!

The event suggests me to write short posts to make it more reader-friendly. I intend to use this opportunity to test out a long-held dream of a writing experimentation. I won't bother you with more than 6 words each day. Just six! The idea of 6-word stories owes its roots to Ernest Hemingway and you might be curious to read the very first six word story that the great man wrote himself:

For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.

- Ernest Hemingway

Several gems have come out in this format and I am going to experiment in this flash fiction format this April. These enticing six words do not reveal much direct. The beauty of these stories lie in the unsaid words. Forget reading between lines. Experience reading between the words here.

This format also fits perfectly to the ultra-short attention span that exists today. With so much of information around us, it is a much bigger challenge now than even Hemingway faced. To say it in it's own way.

Six word stories? Come again please. 

Image Courtesy : robotson

Hence the idea. With Hemingway's blessings and your support, I hope we have an exciting ride ahead. 

Cheers,
GS

Kumara Parvatha - how Jack and Jill went up the hill

Signs of triumph

((To read a Tamil version of this post, please click here))

Pushpagiri aka Kumara Parvatha. A breath-taking challenge of 5617-ft. height in the Western ghats of Karnataka. One of the toughest treks of South India. A total distance of 22 km by foot up and down the peak. Two days and a night at the top. Thirteen men. What a start it was to 2014!

The most-debated topic in our terrace conversations over the last few months was where to celebrate the coming new year. Several options from Besant Nagar to Andaman were contemplated and pushed aside in cycles for want of better ideas. We looked for something fresh and challenging. That is when a friend first floated the idea of Kumara Parvatha. He had tried in vain earlier in December 2012 with another social circle to ascend this peak. Unfortunately, their cool adventure turned soggy in incessant rains and irritating leech-bites, forcing them to return midway. The idea tickled our taste and then we actively marketed the trek among the extended circle of friends. You convince A by saying that B comes to the trek and convince B by saying the vice-versa and in a matter of days, the trip was scheduled and all arrangements were finalized. Not all of us are trek enthusiasts or hunks-by-physique. It was to be a story of amateur Jack and Jill trekkers going up the hill, risking a few falls, rolls and trolls. Nevertheless, we were ready!

The internet blessed us with more than adequate information for prompt planning. People approach the hill from two directions. Somwarpete and Kukke are two towns at either end of the peak. The distance by road going around the hill to connect the towns is about 60 km. If you take a casual stroll on the peak and get down at the other side, it is just 22 km! Kukke is a reasonably livelier town that Somwarpete. It has a famous Subramanya temple to add to its portfolio too. Trekkers can choose to start from Somwarpete and get down at the Kukke side or to do a to-and-fro from Kukke. We chose the former. For later, it should never bother us that we did not experience the other side of the mountain.

The missing dot

Image courtesy : fauxto_digit

There lived an optimistic little blue bird.
Some call it ambitious.
A few brand it pompous, even.
It was just optimistic
and incorrigible at that!
All it ever dreamed of was
to fly.
High.

"Me too"

Have you ever played with a rain drop at the window seat of a train? Moisture will embrace the window bars as a thin coat. A pristine tiny drop takes the initiative and starts to move a horizontal path along the bar. On its way it accumulates more wetness and grows in weight till it reaches a tipping point. And you observe all this drama unfolding with an outstretched palm waiting for the drop to gently bless you with a touch. The trick is in judging where the drop decides to fall and being there just at the right time and the right spot to receive it. Just like love! The iron bar of the window is time. Love, like the rain drop, gathers momentum as it travels along time and at some tipping point it decides to burst and reach out. If there is an outstretched palm waiting for the fall just at the right time, magic happens!

It's been a while and it is about time this happens. They simply did not know who should play the role of the drop and who should wait at the window seat. Somehow they both preferred the window seat. Enough signs were exchanged often that the palm is outstretched and waiting. May be they were just waiting for the rain. 

Under the stars with the homeless and the pseudo-homeless

Photo courtesy: Fountain_Head

I stayed at the Chennai Light house MRTS railway station last night with a bunch of about 50 volunteers who chose to participate in the India - Under the stars event and about the same number of truly homeless people, for whom it is the regular bunking place. I chose to join this event, majorly driven by a curiosity to understand what it feels like to be homeless and to witness in person a few interesting stories. The experience gave me several interesting insights. Hence, I share.

Being single

Have you ever felt that you want to change your relationship status from ‘single’ to another type of ‘single’? Have you ever felt that ‘single’ is too ambiguous for a relationship status? Have you wished for more clarity in being ‘single’? This article will tell you about the seven different categories of being single. Identify which type you are!

Strange Love

It had been a particularly long and mundane day that called for some unwinding in style. As dusk fell, I went to the terrace of my home to meet them. Darkness had blanketed the street and the neighbours were too busy to notice. The home is not a luxurious high-rise apartment. It is a normal second floor residence that gets rented out to a normal bachelor living a normal life. But the terrace is just the right height for this. Tall enough to escape the street light’s glare but just low enough to see them in the eye. In fact, this was one of the prime attractions for me to rent this house. I come here often to see them up close and talk to them.

It was humid even in the night. I waved them a warm greeting. They stood in silence. They were all around me but none moved an inch. I knew. It had been a fair interval since our last lengthy conversation. They would take their time to come into the groove and connect with me. But I waited. I threw random questions at them all, one by one, in all directions, hoping that someone would break the ice. Then the tallest of them all waved in response. A gentle waft of breeze caressed my face. The conversation had begun. How I love these conversations with the trees neighbouring my terrace!

Help ! - An appeal

Image courtesy: L.C. Nottaasen

I am going to ask you for help in this post. Quite specifically, money. Even more specifically, for a dear friend whose mother is now under intensive medical care at CMC, Vellore, awaiting surgery for treating a condition called Aortoiliac thrombus. 

The condition, as I understand is an internal blood clot in the artery of her left leg which hinders the supply of blood to the limb and thereby gradually making it a dead organ. She was at a prominent hospital in Chennai till yesterday and has been moved to CMC, Vellore recently. Several efforts to negate a surgery involving attempts to dilute the clot have been tried in vain so far. As indicated by the doctors, a surgery seems imminent and to quote the doctor, "During this hospitalisation the risk of losing the limb is 30 to 40% as there are two level occlusions, and life risk of upto 10% ". 

As we are hoping and praying for her recovery, let me tell you a little bit more about her. This is not the first time she is facing this problem. A similar condition affected her around a year back and she had to let go of her left hand, amputated for exactly the same reason. 

She was a teacher by profession and she taught in the same school where we all studied. She taught the kinder-garten sections. I studied in that school for 2 years but that short phase gave me some good friends whom I still hold close to heart. Warren Gerard Jude Michael is one among them. He is the first Anglo-Indian I have met in my life from close quarters. He had an interesting manner of talking an English mixed Tamil heavily tilted with the slang of Madurai. Everybody in our school know him irrespective of the class or age group. He was a dancer, he was an athlete, he played football, he was mischievous and got many punishments often (sometimes officially from his mother) and he was always a very good friend. His mother, Ms. Olivia is the reason why I am writing this now. 

Warren had no siblings. FYI he had lost his father too at a young age. His mother is one of the most steely women I have met in my life. She has done enough to feel proud about raising her only son now. But the path would not have been smooth for her ever. 

The estimated expense for the surgery and post-op recovery is INR 12 lac. Warren works at an IT company and has already managed to scrape together more than INR 8 lac through insurance, company support and a few friends and family. He is now exploring other avenues to raise funds to support his mother. We friends are trying to collect at least INR 1 lac as a small but vital contribution to the cause. 

Another close friend, Saravanamurthy, is spearheading this effort and I humbly request you to contribute to help our friend by donating whatever sum you can. The transfer of money can be made online to the account of Saravanamurthy and the bank account details are as follows. 

Acc. name. : Saravanamurthy
Acc. no. : 105010100191678
Bank: Axis Bank
Branch: Tuticorin
IFSC Code: UTIB0000105

Immediately as you make the transfer, please fill this form - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1bhGUFX_62fl1jL1Dmcp_a6DdKwbAov3HMxQu5amg4UM/viewform - so that we will know who you are. It is vital for us to have this information to inform you about the progress later. A few kind friends ping me to tell that they have made a transfer but they feel hesitant to fill this form. Though their intentions are noble about helping anonymously, it is my sincere request to all donors to fill this form. Transparency is of utmost importance in this cause. We are involved in this as a group of friends. The information you fill will be shared with all of them by default. Please do not be shy about being generous. We will not disclose your names to anybody in the public forum. But my friend Warren and his mother will be really glad to write a thank you note to all of you once she recovers back to normalcy.

Having said all this, I can't help but recall a bad experience another friend of mine had recently with a fake NGO. Different people call him from different numbers often and describe the story of an ailing child in a prominent hospital in Chennai and ask for money to help the child. On a little background check made by my friend, we found that it is a fake racket and I can only feel great disgust and anger towards rogues who take advantage of the soft emotions of people. 

I sincerely recommend you to do a background check on this case before making a donation to this cause. You can check with the hospital or with me - my mobile number is 98940 14412. Gomathi Shankar is my name. I live in Chennai. 

With hopes on humanity, 
GS

PS 1 - I am adding this footnote after about 15 hours from posting this blog. We have raised INR 39,100/- so far. What to say? I am touched! Gives me goosebumps just to think of this act of kindness. Indebted to all of you who are standing by our friend. We are confidently moving towards the INR 1 lac mark with all your support.

PS 2 - Citing high blood sugar and BP, the doctors have advised to postpone the surgery by a week. But a surgery has become mandatory now. As Warren said, the cost of treatment is also more economical as compared to the Chennai hospital.

The third eye that hears - about Neil Harbisson

I live with a few friends in a bachelor bunk and we had a small screen TV at our home. One fine thunderous night, it lost its ability to show colour and typically impeded by the bachelor negligence, none of us cared to get it repaired or replaced. Every time when India plays a cricket match, we assemble in front of the TV and make a resolution to do something about the TV within a week. And thus we spent almost a year! We were so used to watching TV in black and white that when we finally replaced the TV with another one, we were collectively amazed by the phenomenon of color. It almost brought tears of wonder to my eyes to see a familiar movie song in TV but in colour for the first time. That one year taught me what magic colour can do to your senses.

My grandfather witnessed the magic when black and white movies were replaced by colour movies. My father witnessed the magic when black and white television sets were replaced by colour TVs. It was a magical experience for me to see colour display in a mobile phone after being used to the black and white displays of the early phones. What I witnessed in Neil Harbisson's speech recently took the magical experience of color to the next level.  This is stuff taken straight from the sci-fi stories! But in reality!

Neil Harbisson delivered this speech at the TEDxGateway Mumbai in 2012 and Franklin Templeton Investments partnered the event. 

Neil is a colour-blind person who had a tough time adapting to life in this colourful world before becoming a cyborg. Colour-blindness is never considered to be a very serious physical handicap by us but an affected person like Neil would know what it means to live off-stream. The world speaks in colour. We have colour codes in traffic signals, national identities, food labelling and several other areas in everyday life. Colour-blindness is like touring a foreign country without knowing its language. You are very much there but never there! The painful fact is that the colour-blind ones have to spend all their life as a mere tourist in this colour-speaking world. Neil has made the Cyborg technology his permanent visa to stay in the world and be part of the mainstream with a greatly unique identity to himself.

The 6-word challenge

This post has been published as a part of Chennai Bloggers Club's (CBC) 6-word memoir tag initiative. It is an interesting challenge to sum up one's life in 6 words. It also adds up as a superb relay of introductions to more interesting and exciting people around us.

I thank Somu - the erstwhile poet - for introducing me through his memoir yesterday and passing the baton to me. His blog is a collection of random thoughts and poems in a chronicle mode. Of late, he has shifted his interest from carving words to carving wood and he writes about it in his blog.

Now, to my challenge. As I think of six words to sum up myself, I can come up with this. Two of these six words are positions that I have spent a considerable part of my productive life to achieve. The rest of the four words define my character that made me achieve the first two words.

Entrepreneur. Author. An eternal incorrigible optimist.

I co-founded a creativity hotspot - Spark n' Beyond - with a bunch of equally crazy and passionate creators in 2010 and since then I am living the life of an entrepreneur. It is a life filled with its own ups and downs, joys and pressures, pride and frustrations, a sense of freedom and a standing risk of nobody willing to offer me a bride. It has been a great journey in my life so far and I have invested a lot of my life for this one word. 

The other major half of my life is invested for the second word perhaps. I am a 1-book old author now. I have released a collection of short stories in Tamil- named முதல் போணி. Books fascinate me big-time and I also developed an aspiration to become a writer. Thanks to a few lab-rats who read and reviewed my earliest writings, I can claim confidently that I am no mug with words now. 

The other four words in the memoir define me. I firmly believe that this trait has enabled to me continue in the miles-to-go-before-I-sleep journey with energy and enthusiasm. 

Thanks for expressing interest in knowing me. As is my duty, I pass on the baton to Santhosh Kumar, who is most likely scratching his head for his 6-words now!

Cheers,

GS

Image courtesy: mariachily