CAUGHT - Flash 55, #2

She saw them waiting eagerly at the end of the road. She couldn't reverse her scooter as the road was one-way. Her eyes desperately searched for an escape en-route. Saw a narrow alley and swiftly turned right, adrenaline pumping her heart. Alas, their wing-man waited even there. She was caught for not wearing a helmet!

Okay, this has happened to me several times. Well not exactly. Every time I get caught by the traffic police, I pretty much ride right into their trap. There is no adrenaline rush that would make me take swift decisions to escape from the wrath of paying 100 bucks for preferring to let my head and hair enjoy the "breeze" while riding!! Lemme count. Over the last 2 years, I guess I have been caught about 5 times (equals 500 bucks!!) for riding helmet-less. Thankfully, all my other vehicle documents were intact, else I might have ended up paying way more than a 100 bucks!!

When I first got my license to ride a two-wheeler, pretty soon I got into my first helmet-less incident. When the police uncle tried to stop me, I being a scardy cat, slowed down in terror. When he saw how scared I was, he turned his attention to other law-less riders as he was sure that I would park my vehicle and dish out money. But that day, the other riders who were caught, egged me with hisses "Hey, don't stop, GO, GO, GO!!" , and so I neatly obliged them (though shaking from head to foot) and gave the accelerator of my Dio to its full extent and despite the shrill sounds of blaring whistles that followed me with an authority that I should stop, I managed not to dare and look at the angry police uncle's face through my rear view mirror and ESCAPED. My very first adrenaline rush at breaking a rule and getting away with it!! 

I know, my moral compass is twisted but who cares. These police men, they catch people for not wearing helmets even near their homes and make them pay fine and use that money for their own personal use (which probably involves getting drunk at the end of the day!!). But not every policemen are like this. But most of them are (even policemen are humans and its a human tendency to go against set rules now and then!). 

I wish I was this lucky the other 5 times I was caught at different places in Mysore (I could have bought a nice dress with 500 bucks!! :-/ ). Now-a-days riding without helmet would probably make you pay 500Rs as fine. Yep, they have increased the fine. So, better be careful. Helmet is itchy and heavy and irritating and makes my forehead sweat, but still I can't deny that it did once protect my head when I fell off my vehicle by accident!! I still hate wearing it, but the thought of losing 500 bucks makes me stick it ruefully on my head, every time I head out of my house!!

P.S: This was intended to be just a Flash 55 but I got a lot of stories up my sleeve where ever my vehicle and helmet are involved!! :P

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

Mirror, Mirror on the wall;

Who’s the fairest of them all?

Alas, you are no talking mirror,

To hear you speak as I come near.

Yet, I seek for you, for my reflection.

With hopes for reduced affliction.

Who is that woman staring back?

With eyes as dark as the colour black?

Does she really look like me?

Please say something and set me free

Mirror, Mirror on the wall;

For once spare me the bitter truth

And lie to me with your falsifying words.  

Carve the best lie for me to believe.

Tell me that the woman in the mirror,

Looks nothing like me.

Tell me I’m taller than her.

Tell me I’m fairer than her.

And my eyes, a sparkly emerald green.

Make me believe with your lie so clean.

Mirror, Mirror on the fine, fine wall;

Am I really that woman on the wall?

No you are not my dear lady;

I show only the physical reflection.

If only I could show you your inner-self,

As that’s where your real beauty lies within.

You are fairer than the woman on the wall.

Your eye, sparks with a knowledge so sheen,

It would put any man down on his knee.

But yet, you come to me asking for a lie;

I can lie a lie that will set you free.

But the truth is stronger than a lie can ever be.

So would you stop craving for more

 And start believing yourself from here-fore?

Written for The Mag 110

P.S: A mirror is something everyone loves to stand in front of. What we see is what we believe. Or sometimes we just want to believe something more. Something that resembles a lie. Something that gives us temporary satisfaction. Isn't that one of the reason all the cosmetics companies are bleaching our bank accounts with their costly products??Outer beauty is an addiction. Something that will vanish slyly with time. What matters is our inner beauty.  Cherish it with good-deeds. Good-deed... that's the only product you need to use to gain real beauty and you can get it for free!!

Flash-55 Fiction #1

"Life is good"

Blazed his constant chat-box status from past 3 years.

“Is your life always that good?” Irritably pinged him for first time since he was added to my contacts.

“No, the owner died 3-months back, I’m his friend, here to delete his account”, pinged back owner’s name and left me in utter shock.

P.S: After reading many flash 55 fictions (a form of writing that requires a complete story in exactly 55 words) I finally decided to give it a try. And guess where I started writing this? In my class, pretending to take notes :P

Suspicious friends (coz I'm too lazy to take lecturer's notes in class!!) wanted to know what I was upto. Showed them this and received blank reactions! They had never heard about flash-55 and didn't understand the importance when I said "seeee, only 55 words!!" :-( 

P.P.S: So I do need  real feedbacks.. If anyone's reading this please do help me out in ways I can better this form of writing :) :)

There she was: A victim of Bullying and Eve-teasing.

girl getting bullied in school

There she was… the little girl with her new pink lunch box that her dad had just bought her. It was the first day at a new school. 3^rd grade, she was growing so fast. Newly moved to the city with her parents, she had to mingle with not only the new surroundings but also with the new kids at her new school. She hated to enter this new territory. But her dad promised her that she will be treated like a princess here. This school loves new-comers and she will make many friends in no time. He promised. The little girl wiped her tears hearing her daddy’s words and waved him good-bye. No sooner had her dad left her, than she was surrounded by four kids, bigger and older than her. “Hello new-comer, what’s that you holding?” enquired one kid, while the other kid pulled the little girl’s plaits with glee. The little girl back-tracked with fear in her eyes. “Where do you think you are going?” the third kid pulled her roughly. She tried to call for help but the kids surrounding her were so tall that she could barely see over their shoulders. “If you scream or cry loudly, we will tear your new dress in half” threatened one of the bullies. The girl was too petrified to stand up for herself. She let them grab her new pink lunch box. She let them push her to the ground as they gleefully ran with their new stolen treasure. First day of her school, she had barely entered the school premises and what a bullying welcome she got!

source

 Her dad had obviously made a mistake. This was not a good place to make friends. She decided to tell her dad about this and braced herself to face the rest of the day. After the last school bell, she was more than glad to go wait for her dad outside. As she made her way out of her class, someone gave her the leg, making her to trip and fall face down with a thud. Her hands got badly bruised as she tried to avoid the fall. The four bullies were back and were having a good laugh at the girl’s misery. “You know, we hate tattle-tales … you are not planning to go running to your daddy with stories are you?” asked one kid. “If you do, you will receive an even better welcome tomorrow”, warned another kid throwing the empty lunch box back at her as the four bullies walked away.  She was 8 years old and a new found terror circled around her. Never had she experienced something like this. Bullying… She was being bullied right now but she barely knew what bullying meant. When her dad asked how the first day of school had went, the little girl silently replied a positive lie. She was scared and bruised both physically and mentally to even bring up the actual events that she happened to face that day. She hoped that keeping her mouth shut would make those older kids leave her alone. Poor little girl, how naively wrong she was. The next few weeks went by and the new school was a place of suffering for this little girl. Her bruises got worse, she frequently happened to lose her belongings. Her parents thought she was being merely clumsy and scolded her to be more careful. She got more reprimands for losing all her new things. Her own mother failed to notice the actual truth being hidden by her 8 year old daughter. Every time the little girl lied to her parents, her eyes were silently pleading them to notice the hidden truth. Two months later, on a day just like any other, her dad noticed that his daughter was nowhere to be seen when he came to pick her up. On a closer inspection with the school faculty, he found out that she was lying, unconscious on the toilet floor, with bruises so severe that she had to be hospitalized for a month to recover completely. Finally the truth was out, but at what expense? At the expense of the little girl’s inner spirit. She was mentally depressed after this ordeal and it was a challenging task to get her back to her cheerful self again.

eve-teasers in the night

Mean while, in a different city and under a totally different situation and circumstance, there she was… a young lady in her mid-teens. A high school student by day and a volley ball player by evening. She was born and brought up in a severely conservative family and they restricted her to go anywhere else but school.  But she had fought with her parents a lot to let them give her permission to pursue her skills in her favourite sport. She was forbidden to wear shorts like the other girls. But she didn’t mind as long as she got to play the game in the evening. The sports field was 2 kms away from her home.  One late evening, her bicycle happened to have a puncture. She was pushing her cycle through the dark street and suddenly she heard a fast moving motor-bike behind her. Before she could turn and look, the bike was right next to her and in the next two seconds, a rough hand grabbed and slapped her behind and before the girl could assess what was happening, the bike was gone. She didn’t even get the chance to shout at the monster riding the bike. With anger and shock blazing through her, she quickly made her way back to her home. She dared not tell her parents about this. They were already scolding her for reaching home so late. If they came to know about this incident, they would surely ban her from leaving the house in evenings. A few weeks passed and the girl almost put the incident behind her. But little did she knew that she was now being stalked by the same monster who had eve-teased her a few weeks back. One such evening, the monster grabbed the opportunity to confront her while she was riding home alone. The manner less brute came close to her and asked her to go with him. This time the girl wasn’t dumb-founded. She knew it was the same guy and that made her even angrier to think that he had the nerve to behave so heinously. She did what she thought was the right and justifiable thing- she slapped the brute once and without further words, she quickly rode back home. Yet again, she didn’t dare tell her mother and father about this incident. Her mother sensed she was upset about something but when she tried to ask, the girl refused to talk and went to her room. The very next day, tragedy took place in the girl’s life. No sooner did she leave the house to go to school, than the brute; along with his friend chased upon her and the brute threw a bottle of acid on the girl’s face. The girl, although survived the acid attack was disfigured for the rest of her life. She became the victim of her own fate.

You see, the above are two independent incidents, the likes of which commonly takes place in every nook and corner of our nation. Bullying and Eve-teasing…. The two major crimes that takes place under the radar of our nation’s law. Bullying is a form of an aggressive behaviour that is forced upon victims who are usually weak to stand up to themselves and fight the oncoming harassments. The harassments can be of any form- verbal or physical; an act often replenished on the same victims through various methods of emotional blackmails and other forms of intimidation. Bullying is often seen at schools and colleges where the senior students usually choose the juniors as victims for their experiments. No kid is born with a cruel intention. They often pick such behaviours off the television or may be due to the surroundings in which they are born and brought up. In most cases, if the father figure is abusive on the child then the child tends to show the same aggression on fellow kids at the school.  Even I was a victim of bullying in one of my school years. Not only I, but many kids in my class became the victims on one such occasion. A group of boys from the higher class self-assessed themselves as the class monitors and said they were assigned by their teachers to our class during lunch breaks and we blindly believed those boys. Every lunch break, they used to come to our class, pick a few helpless kids as victims and they used to beat them black and blue with wooden scales. I’m shocked to remember that even I have undergone the rule of such bullies in my life. I was too scared to speak two words back then and alas, I got my share of unjustified beatings from those boys. Had I had enough courage to voice my own opinion back then, I’m sure things would have been different. But I endured the pain silently along with most of the kids in my class. Thankfully one of the teachers found out about this sooner and those boys got their share of deserved punishment.

By spreading proper awareness among students and parents, bulling can be controlled to some extent. It’s a duty of every parent to make sure their child is not being harassed in his/her school. It’s a very sensitive age to undergo such physical and mental torture. I wish I could ask every kid to stand up to themselves and never let the shadow of bullying upon them. But all kids are not born with bold and outright nature. It should be every teacher’s and parent’s duty to ensure that the kids are not having any problems at school.

source:google

Coming to eve-teasing. Well, it’s another form of bullying but alas it’s not something a child inflicts on another child. It’s in fact an outrageous crime that comes face to face with every woman across India and the rest of the world. Some low lives think there is no harm in simple jeering and cat-calling and groping random women in public as it would give them the satisfaction of god-know-what. But any form of eve-teasing is a tone-down term for sexual harassment on women. No educated man with a little bit of common sense would ever mistreat a woman in public like that. Unfortunately, in many situations even an educated man becomes ruthlessly indisposed in the face of some so called “sexual thrill”. According to Section 298 (A) and (B) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), if a man found guilty of making a girl or woman the target of obscene gestures, remarks, songs or recitation will be sentenced to a maximum jail sentence of three months.  But how much of this rule is our government really following? We hear rape cases, acid victims and eve- teasing on regular basis that has almost made this whole thing to be viewed as casually as a common- crime in a “wattcha-gonna-do-abut-it??” manner. But one cannot blame this entirely on the justice of the Indian system. Every woman undergoes eve-teasing more than once in her life. Some are bold enough to stand up to themselves. They take up the bold initiative and lodge complaint to the nearest authority. But how much can you expect from a helpless teenager? They are just opening their eyes to woman-hood and already they are fast becoming victims to this atrocious crime called eve-teasing. The least they can do is confine such incidents to their parents. Here comes the parent factor! It is very important for the parents to give an open support for their daughters. As I described in my second part of the story, it’s not only the girls who dress boldly undergo eve-teasing. Even a simple conservative girl would be targeted by these monsters. Had her parents given her more support rather than restricting everything she did, she would probably have told them when she experienced the groping attack the first time itself. This would have prevented the latter events that took place. But not only parent’s support but a lot many other factors come into picture when it comes to eve teasing. Poverty plays a main role. In rural areas, this act is probably more common and yet completely hidden from the public eye since the victims themselves seldom wears the courage to speak out loud. I wish I could tell all these ladies to stand up to themselves and fight. Just fight. I’m glad states like Delhi and Bhopal have taken up initiatives and protests against eve-teasing. I would gladly join their ranks and render my support.

source:google

So if I could bring upon a change in this society, then I would support for a positive change that would put an end for both Bullism and Eve-teasing. No child deserves to be picked upon and no women deserve to be sexually harassed. One must stand up to themselves and fight. Just fight. We are not born in this world to live; we are born to live and to fight our way where there is injustice.

And as an old saying goes;

Knowing others is intelligence.

Knowing yourself is true wisdom.

Mastering others is strength.

Mastering yourself is true power.

If you realize that you have enough, 

you are truly rich.

If you stay in the center

and embrace death with your whole heart, 

you will endure forever.

I thank Indiblogger and Stayfree for endorsing this wonderful contest “Time to Change”.

Red Bus mattu (and) Rash Driving

Bangalore is filled with compressed-air powered red buses. I love these buses. Unlike the old blue buses, these red buses look a lot like Volvo and yet they are “common-man“ friendly and hold a lot of space inside the bus for travelers to stand comfortably during rush hour. But not all of these buses get good bus drivers. I've had near fall out experiences once or twice while I was travelling in one of these huge buses.

Compressed air-power buses have a lot of power in terms of speed as well as brakes. Sudden braking makes the bus going at any speed to come to a halt within seconds. But the full impact of it is shown inside the bus. Passengers sitting don’t have to endure much problem. But the one’s standing gets its full impact.

I was lucky the other day. I was standing near the pole. Both my hands were busy holding my wallet and in the process of taking out money to pay the bus conductor. Suddenly the driver hit the brake and the bus moving at 80, came to a sudden halt. My whole body was thrown forward but my sudden instincts directed my hands to hold fast the pole and with a backward twist, I got the required support and saved myself from falling down head first on the floor. I was so angry at the driver, but since I hadn’t fallen I didn’t feel the need to go and start a boring quarrel with him. Minutes later I got the seat and I happily settled down with ear phones and music. My friend, who was sitting behind my seat tapped my shoulder and said loudly with a snigger, “Neha, when did you learn to pole dance? You are pretty good!!” I turned back to retaliate and saw that her words had carried to the men’s section and many guys were nodding in mock approval. “I’ll get you for this girl!!” I growled at her laughing face and turned back to see the driver, who was happily singing and hitting the brakes roughly at unnecessary junctions.

The bus was getting more and more crowded at every stop. All the ladies were standing precariously. Poor women, they had no idea that they had just mounted a bus that was being driven by a moronic driver. And then it happened. Another one of bus driver’s signature “sudden brakes”. Two ladies standing beside my seat toppled onto one another, causing the third lady to fall down on the bus floor. This was followed by loud shrieks and a high pitched quarrel could be heard loud and clear even through the loud music from my ear phones. The ladies were blaming each other for falling. They should scold the driver who is the root cause for causing this catastrophe.  I thought angrily. But I caught the driver, happily waving to a fellow bus driver and totally oblivious to what was happening on the bus behind him. Was he really oblivious or was he showcasing “jaana kividu” (a Kannada phrase which means, “smart deafness”) to the din that was taking place behind him?? I had half a mind to get up and hit him in the head and then smugly apologize  by telling the “brakes” had caused me to “accidently” hit him!!

Thankfully my stop arrived and I was the first to literally jump out of the bus with relief. As I saw the red bus making its way through the narrow crowded road showcasing its power speed and power brakes, I almost felt like I had just gotten off the knight bus from the Harry Potter movie. It happens only in India!!