Destiny and Luck went up the hill

Destiny went up the Happy Hill

Found Luck.

Together they made a fantastic pair

They’d play hide-n-seek in the lush green gardens

If Luck hid behind the bushes, Destiny would find it

Wherever they went, they went together

They’d never lose their way

One was the other’s better half

Things were all hunky dory

There were no disappointments, no failures

Not a sign of sadness

Then one day, they saw hard work climbing up the Happy Hill

Destiny and Luck sensed danger as they saw an invader entering their world

Hard work appeared fatigued and drained out after years of climbing

Nobody noticed it in ages

Nobody appreciated it for its presence

Nobody helped it find its way

It had been through dark tunnels

Heavy downpours

Fell into puddles

Had thorns sticking to its feet

And hadn’t seen a sight of happiness in years

Now, it was on its way to the Happy Hill

Hard work only had a bottle accompanying it

A bottle called Hope

Every time it had a sip of Hope, it would get a great amount of energy

In a way, Hope was the only thing that kept hard work going

Destiny and Luck started making plans to stop hard work from entering their domain

They planted all the possible obstacles

They made Hard Work meet a beautiful girl and made it fall in love with her

The girl broke its heart and hard work suffered terrible pain

Hard work didn’t use Hope this time because there wasn’t any in this case

Destiny and Luck thought they succeeded and started making merry

But they were in for a shock a few months later

Because they saw Hard Work once again climbing up the hill

Luck planted a plot and cast a bad spell

Whereby, Hard Work lost all its money and belongings

It had no resources and no help to get there

It bore the brunt of the chilling weather with no clothes

Destiny blocked all the shelters on its way

So Hard Work slept, ate and sat on the footpath begging people to help it

It had a sip of Hope again and felt alive and started walking up again

It plucked the leaves from trees to cover itself

Chopped woods to get fire

Ate fruits and grass to stay alive

Step by step, it slowly managed to enter the doorstep of Happy hill

Destiny and Luck built a huge, strong wall around the Hill

Hard Work only had two drops of Hope left, so it saved it for the future

By now, Destiny & Luck had become confident that there is no chance Hard Work would make its way here

So they continued living their lavish, happy life and laughed at hard work’s plight

Hard Work was disappointed.

It had come so far only to face this!

But it didn’t want to return back empty handed.

There was no chance of giving up now.

So hard work built a sharp spear with wood and stones

It slowly started hitting the speak against the wall

Determined to break it one day

Even if it takes another decade

It continued living on minimum food resources

Go down the lake to drink water if it felt thirsty

And come back to start working on the wall

Months passed by.

Years passed by.

And only half of the wall was broken.

Not enough for hard work to still get in.

A few more years passed by.

Destiny and Luck kept plotting against it.

One day, Hard Work finally broke the damn wall

And it saw a Huge Green Luxurious Heaven standing in front of it

The Happy Hill.

Finally.

Tears came down its eyes and never stopped.

He met Destiny and Luck there, who appeared disappointed

Hard Work said to the two of them, “If only you both had spent so many years supporting me, we would have made this a better place to live. In the end, all you ended up doing is plotting obstacles against each other”.

The two drops of Hope that Hard Work had once saved

Were given to Destiny and Luck.

And since then, Destiny and Luck became its loyal soldiers.

And Hard Work became the king of Happy Hill.

RGB mood

It’s one of those days when I feel like making paper boats out of marketing briefs, sail them on the sea and watch them drown.

One of those days when I want to sit alone in a shack with my legs up, let the sand settle on my legs, jam with Old Monk and Bob Marley, watch the mirage appearing on the horizon of the sea and sunbathe.

I’m bringing Goa to Mumbai.

Where you write for yourself, feel good and smile. And if you don’t feel like it, you can just doze off. The deadlines won’t wake you up.  And the good old servicing fella’ looks like a bar tender who serves a shot of kamikaze instead of the brief (no offence meant).  Every mandate sounds like a drink and the creative routes sound like trippy psychedelic tracks.

Not get drunk, yet feel like the tides that are always happy high.

Give Microsoft Word a break today and not sell fake stuff. Instead, write simple thoughts on tissue papers that smell of rum and let them blow away with the wind.

Don’t want to see the office lights come on at 6 pm, but watch darkness set in on the beach. Whistle away, do a small tap dance on Buffalo Soldiers and cuddle up under the sand. Feel like the ‘real Coke’ that makes its way smoothly into my rum glass after pushing all the fizz out.

Coz when I wake up, I want to carry home the sand in my hair strands, feel dirty, light and loose. Stretch myself, yawn and say, “Damn, that was a good trip”.

Are you a condom or a sperm?

Now I know how that sperm feels. The one that races past millions of them to reach the egg first.  Off late my headlines feel the same. The layout is the egg. In the race to win, each line kills the other to reach my boss’ inbox. If round 1 doesn’t get approved, the second lot of lines does the same. Strangulate, suffocate each other, and try to be better than the one behind it. The only difference is that nothing really makes its way to his inbox. They are all a bunch of dead sperms by the time they enter that space. Or they humbly settle on the underwear, the portfolio. 

And suddenly, the boss' line emerges like a condom. A huge, long condom that stops my lines from making it to the layout. And if that is not enough, sometimes there is a strawberry flavored condom. It’s called the client’s line. The one who always says, “It’s nice but could be like this…” Sugar coated way of pushing their line. Then there is a netted condom, called the “management”. Every big line has to go through the big bosses. In the process, obviously the line loses its value again.  Then there is an RGB colored condom called the art director who doesn’t want the line to affect his colors. 

However, not every condom is safe. Most of these condoms have an unnoticed slit that fucks up the layout. What comes out eventually is a physically challenged or deformed ad that becomes a laughing stock. The good lines die a silent death within these condoms. Once in a blue moon, one of these semi-dead lines crawl out of the slit and manage to appear on the layout. But by then, it’s not the same anymore. Where is my line in all this mess? That good old sperm which was produced out of sheer love between the writer and his thoughts? A condom only stops the natural process.It stops what can turn out to be something beautiful. No wonder why sex is most pleasurable without the condom. 

The doctor's prescription

The board outside the doctor’s cabin read ‘A chocolate a day keeps pain away but brings the weighing machine closer’.  She smiled and entered in.  “How do you manage to do this all the time?” the doctor asked her. She said, “You’re a brat. You just want to do your thing. Remember what my friend said once? You did hear it. Your job is to just pump blood. Let the head do the rest.” “Then why do you give in to me?” the doctor asker her again. She fell silent. There was no answer. There was never an answer to that question. “Now that you’ve given in to me my dear, do as I say to get through this pain”, said the doctor commandingly. “Here’s my prescription for you, follow them for your good”, said the foolish but smart ‘heart-cum-doctor’. Smart because it knows to cover its arse well (ventricles and chambers in this case) for the foolish mistake it had committed. “2 doses of Old Monk minimum every evening for at least 2 months” it dictated. “Step two”, it said- “Listen to hard rock or metal or psychedelic trance or go another extreme; listen to hardcore melancholic Bollywood songs. Cry as much as possible. Now that you’ve cried enough, step three is to splurge on shopping for things that you would never need in future, but will give you temporary happiness. Step four: Party hard. Now come back and cry again. Step five is simple: You have to sleep. Kumbhkaran in our mythology books didn’t sleep eternally just like that. He was heartbroken. This is an inside story. So sleep like nobody is watching.” “Now, repeat these steps over a long period of time”. She stood up and banged the desk in distress. “Oh shut up. First of all you need to see a shrink”, she retorted aggressively. “You prescribe the same thing all the time, it never works”, she said with disgust. “Ha!” laughed the heart sarcastically. “My job is to make your head go bonkers. Now you know shrinks exist for whom” it said. She packed up her things hastily and said, “You’re impossible. I’m leaving”. “Hey, wait up. Where do you think you are going? Who’s going to pay my consultation fees?” it asked. With a tear down her eye, she said wryly, “I’m already paying a hefty price for your mistake, ain’t I you jerk? She wiped her tears and walked out of the heart’s chamber only to come back again someday.