Luckey Shirt

The boy was called Vedant. His actual name was Vedanta Desika Upadhyay with Vedanta Desika being his given name and Upadhyay his family name as was the custom. He was named after a Vaishnav saint of the same name (the same name being Vedanta Desika) and the Upadhyay meant he was descended from a long line of upper-class Brahmin teacher-priests. He was currently looking for the right clothes to wear on the occasion of making a booty call.

Damn Vedant said. A booty call is a meeting that has been decided beforehand to be of a purely carnal nature. Technically Vedant wasn’t actually headed to make a booty call but he was going to meet a girl he’d befriended online in the flesh (ha ha) for the first time and he’d decided that that was close enough. He had told his parents he was going to some friend’s birthday party and they had been nice enough not to cross-question him.

He finally decided upon a passable combination of jeans and shirt that passably traversed the thin line between casual chic and desperation. He whistled the tune to Lovely Head by Goldfrapp as he made his way from his room to the front door and onward to the gates of the apartment complex where he lived. Then he hummed the chorus of Suck it and See by Arctic Monkeys as he made his way from the gates of the apartment complex to the bus stop.

He had almost climbed into the first bus he saw when he realized there was a large stain underneath his front pocket.

The shirt did not have a name but Vedant called it his Luckey Shirt (the extra e being a reference to an obscure Stephen King short story). There was nothing particularly lucky (or even luckey) about that shirt: it was simply a shirt. It was white and had red and ochre stripes alternating over it. The overall effect was vaguely like looking at a sheet of wrapping paper with buttonholes and a collar creased into the appropriate place.

Vedant called it his luckey shirt because it was associated with some of the best times he’d ever had. He had only worn it on three previous occasions – 

a long-awaited date with a pretty girl the day he went halfway across the city so they’d give him a trophy and clap at him and finally the wedding of his favourite cousin who currently had a baby on the way and a happy marriage to top it off 

– but those three probably counted amongst his greatest moments of jubilation. Even the slightest amount of rumination would have revealed an unfortunate exchange between cause and effect but analysis had never been Vedant’s strong point and the shirt had been there through thick and thin and so his luckey shirt it was.

The stain on said shirt had come from a rusted zipper on the trousers hanging adjacent to it in his closet and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Vedant spared a lingering glance for the easy ride he was abandoning and began the long trudge back home. 

He did not whistle or hum this time.

The bus would probably have sympathized with his plight and stayed there for a while longer but it wasn’t sentient and its actions dictated by the driver so there was a rough clank of gears and off it went.

The bus was called Lilawati after the mother of the driver although on paper its name was I2BN-A34V. The I2BN indicated the specifications of the engine shipped from company headquarters in Sweden. The A was a marker for which factory the bus was assembled in. The 34V stood for the lot number of this particular specimen. The Lilawati represented a strong nostalgic yearning for a better place far away from the fungible reality of here and now.

The man at the wheel gunned the throttle and the bus rumbled onwards. They passed a couple of intersections but the number plastered across its forehead was GL-23 so there were no turns required. 

Under the next metro overpass another bus marked GL-23 suddenly appeared in the rearview.

Lilawati bore the other bus no animosity but the man at the wheel did not enjoy the sensation of being overtaken. He squeezed down on the accelerator again and did not ease up until they’d crossed the 60km/h mark. 

(Sample Problem:
The accepted speed limit for public transport vehicles in the National Capital Region is 40km/h. The bus trailing Lilawati is running at 55km/h. How does she maintain her lead? 

Answer:

The only way Lilawati can maintain her lead is by keeping her speed over the incline and ignoring the crowds milling forth at whatever stop has the misfortune of being next)

As they passed Karkardooma Crossing the other driver finally conceded the point and withdrew from both the race and the narrative. The driver of Lilawati watched him fall back in the rearview mirror and felt a large kernel of triumph settle in his innards like a mango pit.

Then he saw the man on the bike racing towards him and instinctively spun the wheel hard right.

The biker’s name was Tejwardhan Parashar and he did not have a nickname because he did not have that sort of friends. Tejwardhan’s friends were the sort of people you went to if the light in the hall wasn’t working or if you needed somebody to watch your kids while you went downstairs to go through the neighbours’ mail. Tejwardhan had chosen them precisely because they were like that – and by extension like him. He had been called a crashing bore by some acquaintances but he had never been late to work so it all balanced out (or so he reasoned).

Tejwardhan did not like driving his bike even remotely close to the speed limit. He always kept it hovering near the 40km/h mark although the law said he could go all the way up to 50.

That day however Tejwardhan had been thrown by an emergency roundup at the office in order to discuss the latest round of downsizing. He winced slightly as he cut into the opposite lane at the next intersection but he reckoned in a few more minutes he’d be pulling into the community center sprinting up the stairs to his office oblivious to the world once more.

The world had other plans. 

Too late he saw the parrot green behemoth bearing down on him he jerked the handle to the right but everything had slowed down now. The bike skidded to horizontal and then pinballed between the barriers on either side of the road.

What happened next was too horrific to describe but the prime-time news would try its best.

The first responder however was a representative of the local news called Shitikanth Parasher (no relation to the biker). Shitikanth had precisely the sort of friends who were good with nicknames but in his case they hadn't needed much effort. He had gone through school acquiring an ever-expanding knowledge of vernacular slang for fecal matter and a near-homicidal rage at the smart alecks who substituted simulations of flatulence for actual humour.

Even so his fondest wish at the moment was to give a brief and unobtrusive account and get off the scene before somebody from the old days saw him on live television and decided to congratulate him with a phonecall consisting exclusively of fart jokes.

T-this is Shitikanth Parasher of Delhi Now he began and was instantly aware of the misstep. Then he began to move towards the bus as he spoke and there was a literal misstep as he stumbled over something belonging to Tejwardhan Parashar (no relation to the reporter).

Don't panic Shitikanth told himself. Then he saw his cameraman's eyes widen and realized he'd said it out loud and into the microphone. 

This day couldn't get any worse he thought through clenched teeth. He glanced back at the object he'd stumbled over.

There followed a decisive moment of the sort that can transform an entire news career - the iconic sort of moment that surpasses context and rises to the level of self-sufficient tableau.

Is that some guy's foot? Shitikanth Parasher said with an expression that you have probably seen already if you are on familiar terms with the internet. 

Then he went down in local news history as the first reporter to regurgitate his lunch on live television. 

Vedant saw the video on his smartphone near the end of what was otherwise a wasted day.

The girl he'd gone to meet had not turned up at all and tried to lecture him about the real life applications of sarcasm when he called her. He'd hung up confused and disappointed.

The video on the other hand was promising. In fact Vedant was still chuckling when he finally got home. 

No dinner he said to his mom by way of greeting. No dinner he repeated to his father who was watching a different report of the same incident on television

Then he shut the door and turned on the light and came face-to-face with the man in his room.

The man in the room was sitting in Vedant's chair although he must've been roughly a hundred miles tall. He had white hair. He wore black clothes. His hands were the colour of moldy bread.

Finally said the man in the room. I thought you'd never come back.

Who? Vedant asked the man in the room who wasn't really a man and wasn't really in the room. What?

There's been a bit of a problem the man in the room said. And I have been sitting here all afternoon and all evening trying to figure it out. Care to help me out a little?

I don't understand Vedant explained. Part of his mind was telling him he should scream but he seemed to have forgotten how.

You were supposed to be on that bus the man in the room said. That's pretty easy to grasp isn't it? You were supposed to get on that bus. And you were supposed to go down with that bus.

I had to change my shirt.

Ah yes. The man in the room held up Vedant's shirt. Your luckey shirt. He stressed the 'e' rather sharply.

Vedant said nothing.

This isn't a game the man said. And you certainly don't get to cheat.

He brought the shirt near his face and sniffed. For a second or two that's all he really did - sniff - but then something changed. The man's nostrils flared wide. The shirt lost first the red stripes then the ochre ones and finally the crisp white backdrop.

When the man dropped it back on the bed the shirt was a diseased and tattered yellow. There was a slight hiss from the spot where it made contact.

I've got your scent the man grinned. We will settle this soon.

Vedant didn't say anything.

The man in the room got off the chair walked right up to the boy stood in front of him.

Soon he repeated 

breathing the word out into the boy's face 

turning his complexion the same yellow as the shirt 

his hair grey and then snowy white. 

The man's grin never faltered.

Don't try any funnier business he said in parting. We know where you live.

Then he opened the nearest drawer stepped into it and was gone.

Vedant continued to stand next to the light switch continued to stare at the exact same spot continued to say nothing.

And that is exactly how his mother found him five minutes later.

Baby Steps

Sharmajee wakes up with a dull pit of foreboding in the base of his stomach. Something is not right with the world, Sharmajee thinks. But what?

Maybe the newspaper will help.

The newspaper tells Sharmajee that another girl was raped in Noida last night. That's not it, Sharmajee thinks. This went down in Sector - 106. I live in 44. Besides, it was probably the girl's fault anyway.

He turns the page.
Charred body of woman found in Zafrabad, reads the next headline.
Don't these women have anything better to do? And where the fuck is Zafrabad anyway? Sharmajee is getting impatient. He flips through the rest of the paper, finds yet more of the same, puts it aside.

Maybe the television will be of more help.

Sure enough, there's a rerun of last night's debate on Times Now. Sharmajee sat through the whole thing live but he sits through the salient points once again. Chetan Bhagat cracks one at Asaram's expense. Arnab laughs. Sharmajee laughs. Everybody laughs.

A harried-looking activist with frazzled hair tries to talk about the AFSPA but is shouted down once again. Good call, Sharmajee thinks. If the armed forces aren't sacrosanct, well, what is?

The pit of foreboding doesn't go away, however.

Sharmajee wanders outside and runs into his next door neighbour, Vermajee.
Vermajee is in the midst of an animated conversation with his tenants.

Sharmajee tries to slink by without catching Vermajee's eye - the latter took in a couple of young men last year, ideal lodgers until they turned out to be-
Sharmajee shudders and cannot complete the thought.

Then he catches sight of all the luggage the young men seem to be hefting out and decides to stay for a bit, after all.

"What's the matter?"
"They brought back 377," Vermajee offers by way of explanation. "Don't want any more trouble."
"That ought to show those busybody NGOwallahs," Sharmajee concurs. Then, turning to the young men, "Why don't you settle down with some nice girls like everyone else? You need psychiatric help!"

The young men are wise enough not to react. A small phalanx of upstanding citizens is starting to gather downstairs, and they will have to cut straight through the crowd to reach the gate.
There is no one willing to side with them this time.

Sharmajee makes sure the luggage is all gone before he turns back to Vermajee.
"Glad that's over and done with," Sharmajee says. "I mean, if our morality is not sacrosanct, well, what is?"

Vermajee says nothing. That's another wholly acceptable way of being an upstanding citizen.

Sharmajee goes home with the pit of foreboding in his stomach considerably smaller.
All is not right with the world yet, but

Baby steps, Sharmajee thinks. Baby steps.

Date a Girl Who Steals

Date a girl who steals.

Run into her in some shady alleyway on Sunday morning in Daryaganj, weighed down by a dishearteningly light wallet and a lowered faith in your bargaining; watch her smile disarmingly and return said wallet.

Saw you checkin' out Vintage earlier today, she will declaim.

Sure, sure. Bastard runs a tight ship. Pardon my French, you will add as an afterthought.

Your best friend (Donnie for the purpose of this discussion) will shrug and discard the roach he was trying to re-light. The girl will nod her greeting to him, return to you.

Why you got the blues, boy? She will inquire, the birds racing between cables overhead like a feathered flurry of electricity.

Ain't got the means for my trip, girl. And it lies around me in crates and bundles that smell like pinewood.

Ask and ye shall receive, she will say, and toss you the three overpriced books from the Vintage stall you'd been especially reluctant to leave behind. You'll stare at her in wonderment.

You actually went and bought these?

Um. Not exactly, she will glance at something behind your left shoulder.

You will turn and see two beat constables striding towards you, followed closely by the hardass who runs the aforementioned Vintage stall.

Shit, Donnie will remark. Shitshitshitshit.

He will toss his matchbox and take off in the opposite direction.

The girl, meanwhile, will have somehow managed to flag down an auto. 

She will conclude negotiations and turn to you.

You coming or what?

And you should say Yes.

For the sake of that little voice in your head that's always telling you to take chances, skip work, vault out of a back window halfway through some lecture. 

The voice that grows a little more tired everyday.

Say Yes.

And leave your valuables at home.

*

Date a girl who steals.

Let her walk you through the sordid part of town, the underbelly that festers in its own stultifying monotony. Skip over cracks. Don't pass under that ladder. 

Don't panic if she takes shortcuts, comes to narrower and narrower alleyways, to little rows of shanties in some blank expanse that doesn't have its own name. 

Don't panic if there seems to be trouble looming.

Because at the end there will always be a spectacle, some well-oiled hustle from a practiced confidence trickster, and you know that's not the sort of music you hear too often.

Afterwards she will allow you to go Dutch on a meal at the Ashok. She will pay with cash from the wallet of some middle-aged gentleman who should've known better.

She will let you take her hand on the way out, but then she'll look at the heavy lump that falls from your sleeve and groan quite audibly.

What's the matter, you will say, watching her walk and heft the thing around.

It's another pepper pot, she will say. I've got five already. Whatever becomes of all the salt shakers?

Other worlds, other times, you will say.

She will smile and return your wallet again.

*

Date a girl who steals.

Take her home and show her a cloudy moonrise from atop the reservoir. 

Your friend (Donnie for ease of remembrance) will lose his Bic lighter, but that's okay. Smoking is injurious to his health, anyway. 

Watch a 3D movie with her the next morning. Try to keep a straight face as other patrons begin to get up and make for the EXIT gates, gobsmacked at having lost their stereoscopic goggles halfway through the first half.

Be alone with her when there's roughly half an hour of film to go. Let her sidle up to you as a man rips off his shirt and becomes green and then takes off to fight what looks like an extremely irate city block.

Don't slow down on me, boy, she will say as she finds the key to your flat you'd left in your inner jeans pocket for her.

Quite an interesting movie, you will express.

I've already seen it, she will opine. They save the world at the end.

So I gathered.

Normal conversation will cease for the moment.

You have a spare key, don't you? She will ask later. 

I think so.

Stashed somewhere safe? She will hope as she hails an auto outside the theater.

Well, yeah.

Are you absolutely sure? She will not make space for you in the auto.

You will notice with trepidation that her smile is back.

Um, miss?

Be there in thirty, or I ain't opening the door, she will offer in parting.

You will grin at the late afternoon sun, the cracks in the sky like claw marks from this angle (which, you will admit to yourself, is sorta cool).

This is going to be the best day ever, you will predict.

And your prediction will ring true, provided you hadn't decided to wear your grandfather's watch.

*

Date a girl who steals.

Take her to your room, the next time she's over. Push aside the cardboard carton filled with electronic junk.

Show her the cabinet with all your notebooks - the wondrous ideas you are saving away for when you are a little older and wiser and better equipped to write them out, in full.

Ain't never shown anybody that before, you will say without looking at her.

In reply she will hold out a No.12 Camel paintbrush.

That's all I'm taking today, she will offer solemnly. And she'll be true to her word.

If you don't count the sudden disappearance of your favourite bedsheet later that night. 

*

Date a girl who steals.

Hold her close even as things spiral out of control. Not out of love - what do you understand of it, anyway? - but because you want to see how it turns out.

Take her to an open-air concert, and let her lead you to three hundred movies you wouldn't have seen on your own because it isn't half as interesting.

Play dumb when Sharmajee's dog vanishes.

Go to art exhibitions. Attend plays and recitals. Hold her tight on a cool evening in the vicinity of some monument, silence blessed and wondrous around you even as your friend (Donnie in the uncertain light) circles the grassy lawns looking for his Metro card.

Drink a cup of freshly-ground with her even as Sharmajee's son wanders around looking for his imported coffeemaker.

Let her take you to her place. The home could fit any of a half-dozen archetypes (joint family, nuclear unit, single parent, caring adoptive family, resentful adoptive family, raised by wolves) but that's not important, it's just a facade that we'll admire from a distance and leave be. She's the girl who steals, remember? She does not want to be held down anywhere. She is a creature of impulse. And you've fled down enough alleyways with her to know that her overriding impulse is to grab and run. 

Wander through the museum display of coveted trophies and innocuous odds and ends that is her room. Let her lead your palm over the nearest universal remote, the buttons faint and whispery on your skin, her hand uncharacteristically clammy.

We're almost at the end, she will tell you.

Is that so?

Won't be long, now.

Well, then, let's make it a long goodbye, shall we?

Remember to shut the door.

Come home the following morning to find Sharmajee in shambles. He has just returned from reporting his son missing to find his entire house gone. Reports pour in of similar incidents up and down the block.

Some wiseass at Times Now will look at the pockmarked aerial pictures and dub it a Smallpox Outbreak. Ignore him.

Call up your girl.

*

Date a girl who steals.

Take her to dinner, one last time, because she deserves that.

You both do.

It's been real, she will say, not really looking at you, not really looking anywhere.

So it has, you will agree.

It's been damn fine, at times, worth holding onto, but-

Always a but in there somewhere.

-well, you know it's also been pretty fucked up. Pardon my French, she will smile momentarily.

So will you.

No grudges, you will say. You will hold out one hand to her.

Glad to hear that, she will reply, and place a fancy salt shaker from the Ashok squarely on your palm.

She will let you catch up with her near the pier, the green sludge of the Yamuna pulsating to some unheard music, the cracks in the sky barely visible in the feeble moonlight.

Don't go, you will say.

She will acknowledge that with a nod. And then she will get on some old wooden boat anyway.

Other worlds, she will say. Other times.

And you will watch her disappear down the pier, making for the other edge of the pulsating green heartbeat, to the fetid depths of Jamna-paar that you haven't plumbed in ages.

Your best friend (Donnie for convenience of recollection) will stride back to the scene, proudly pumping the first joint he has ever rolled.

Your heart will eventually grow back, he will counsel. Hell of a last haul, though.

Donnie, you dumb motherfucker. She took my notebooks.

And that is how it turns out.

Bharat's Corollary

So there's this really amusing trick my friend Bharat pulls sometimes, an ice-breaker worth trying if you ever get invited to stuck at a party where there's no intoxicants to partake in nothing better to do.

Here's how it works.

1.) Go up to a random person.
2.) Wait for a lull in the conversation.
3.) Lean in slightly and whisper: Is duniya mein do bade chutiye. Pehla X (with X preferably being a person in absentia). Doosra kaun?
4.) The target should get slightly shifty-eyed and bluster out the name of person Y (also in absentia, in all probability).

At this point it will suffice to shake your head slowly and change the topic; but if you lack faith in your audience's intelligence (like my friend Bharat sometimes does) you can get the desired result by saying Nahi. Tu! with the exclamation mark emphasized by a poke in the chest.

Then you change the topic.

*

The Delhi Metro. Crowded basement level of Rajiv Chowk.
Half of the city's population gathered to catch a Sunday evening shuttle to Jahangirpuri ("What's so friggin' special about Jahangirpuri at 5:45 on a Sunday evening?").
The other half hell-bent on going towards Huda City Centre with you ("What's so friggin' special about" etc).

You're accompanying a friend who happens to be female and kinda skeptical about riding twelve stations in close proximity to a few dozen of Delhi's finest sons, but that's not the kicker.
You have a heavy bag to attend to, but that's not it, either.

The thing is, your friend happens to be mad at you.
And as anyone who's ever accompanied an irate female onto the Delhi metro will tell you - there's only one direction a story like that can take, and it's not up.

Farthest thing from it, to be honest.

*

The train rolls in, your standard 6-coach Bombardier.

Your friend enters the first coach unscathed - the first car in the moving direction is comparatively free of the ladies it is reserved for, and you're thankful for small mercies as you simultaneously tread on two guys' toes while a third tries his best to get to fifth base with you.

"Wrong team, buddy," you mutter to him as you cut through the other people between you and the first compartment. He probably doesn't get it.
What he does get, however, is the heavy bag you were attending to (remember?) - right across the testicular region. The bag refuses to travel next to you, and every swing manages to club somebody in either the gut or the shin.

Then you're at the rubber accordion between the first and second compartments.
And the look on your friend's face suggests playtime is over.

*

The next fifteen minutes are excruciating, to say the least.

Like all the best arguments, the original bone of contention has been buried somewhere in the folds of history, roughly between Nirman Vihar and Lakshmi Nagar by your estimate - it will lie there, humming to itself and getting fossilized until some offhand remark in some other argument brings it back to the fore.

ding
Next station.. is. Central Secretariat.

"What exactly are you mad about?" you ask, giving your equivalent of a disarming smile.
"I'm not mad," your friend insists, and the look on her face wipes out any hope of a speedy resolution like brown rings on a glass table.
"Say, I brought you chocolate!" you exclaim, clutching at straws. You don't think she could look at you any more hatefully.
Like all the best friends, she is full of surprises.
"I don't want your chocolate.. And I'm not mad," she repeats. "I just think you should stop needlessly exerting yourself on my account."

ding
Udyog Bhawan. Station.

"Isn't it weird how they pause randomly in the middle of the announcements?"
"It is. You know what else is weird?"
"What?"
"That you're still talking to me. Didn't I tell you to shut up?"
"Heh."

The guy standing next to you on the divider turns to his respective female counterpart.
"Well," he declaims loudly. "At least I'm not a stalker."
She finds that funny, for some reason. You label the guy Mismatched Polo Shirt in your head and dismiss the girl as too easily appeased.
Where's the challenge in that?

ding
Race Course. Station. Mind the gap.

"You know what I think?"
"Didn't I tell you to stop-"
"Yeah, yeah. Listen. Remember Bharat?"
"What about him?"
"He pulls this trick, sometimes."
"On whom?"
"Well. Me, for the most part."
"Does it get you to shut up?"
"Um. Yeah, but that's not the point."
"No, seriously. What's the trick?"
"Would you listen?! Okay, I didn't mean to raise my voice, but- excuse me?"

She turns away.
"Friendly spat," you tell Polo amicably, but he leans away and is suddenly absorbed by his female companion, who gives you a dirty glare.

The guy standing opposite you keeps his mouth shut, sharing an earphone with his respective female companion.
Is the whole world whipped? You wonder, suddenly missing the guy who almost got to fifth with you.

Nothing like a little ol' fashioned chemistry.

ding
Jor Bagh. Station.

Polo attempting to convince the girl to help with his laundry. Laundry almost certainly a euphemism, given the sort of glances they keep passing each other and everyone else present.

Earphone leaning comfortably on the divider, hand brushing against that of the woman next to him. Smiles on both faces.
Song playing on his phone possibly some old favourite.

Bharat's Rule n. an old adage which states that in any random congregation of three people with sufficiently similar backgrounds, two will probably be chutiyas.

An inexpertly-wrapped piece of dark chocolate melting slowly in your pocket.

ding
INA. Station.

"Did you hear that? Emphasis on random letters," you say to your friend.
"Still not talking to you," your friend says to you.
"But it wasn't all that bad!" Polo says to his friend.
"You're this close to doing your laundry alone. By hand," Polo's friend says to him.
"All right, son, let's go," a policeman with a unibrow says to you.

Well, they did it. They've finally outlawed beards, you think dazedly, but then you see two other policemen putting Polo and Earphone through the same motions.
Both of them clean-shaven and looking considerably more wholesome than you.

You follow the policeman, still in a daze, and then you're off the train.
This particular phase of your journey is over.

*

"Why exactly were we hauled off?" Polo asks hotly.
"Is it a crime to share music?" Earphone demands to know.
"We're getting kinda late," you mumble, but nobody cares to listen.

"Baat ye hai, sir, ki camera mein aapki tasveer aa gayi hai. Aap bolo toh control room chal ke dikha dein," Unibrow says all of this in a drab monotone.
"Photo of what?"
"It was just an earphone!"
"Aap connector pe travel kar rahe they," Unibrow gives a triumphant smile, as if he's just managed to eff the ineffable once and for all.

"What's happening here?"
"I'm not sure," you say to your friend. "Didn't I tell you to stay on the train?"
"And miss all the fun? Dude! I'm kidding!"

But you stride on after the phalanx marching towards the escalator. You jab a brutal elbow at the next train, the expression on your face suggesting you might never see each other again, but your friend merely rolls her eyes and follows you.

*

The control room contains a thin policeman with a squint, a man sitting before a bank of monitors in the trademark yellow shirt and red tie of Metro officials, and your new best friend Unibrow.

They play a round of Good Cop-Bad Cop-Clueless Desk Jockey for your benefit.

-Rules are rules, son.
-Aapko pehle se dhyaan rakhna chahiye tha.
-There's footage proving conclusively that
-You wouldn't be here unless the situation was
-Camera jhooth toh bolega nahi
-I can bring it up on the monitors if you
-it's highly disappointing
-Roz hazaron log wahi galtiyan karte hain
-very sophisticated technology
-look like decent kids
-Phir ek jaise bahaane banatey hain
-easy to keep track of such things
-Regrettable, but there you go
-Ham bewakoof hain kya yahaan par?
-Two fifty rupees fine

"Per head," they finish in unison.

You wouldn't believe a friend telling you a story like this. But it's actually happening. Right now.
Your hand creeps gingerly towards the pocket where you keep your cash.

*

Earphone takes his chance.
"It's my first day in the City," he announces proudly. "I wasn't aware that we're not supposed to travel at the front. It's an honest mistake, but I'm sure you'll understand. I'm a guest to your City."
He stands there, waiting for the Delhi Tourism jingle to strike up somewhere in the background.

In the meantime, you wince.

Your entire argument revolved around a refusal to admit that travelling on the connectors was an offense - there have never been any announcements to the effect, no noticeboards warning against such a heinous crime - and now your friend has gone and pleaded guilty for something that is not against any known rules. Your argument sinks without a trace.
It was a flimsy argument, but it was also the only one you had.

Polo steps up to bat. You know his track record is poor - fifteen minutes of travelling with him have all but proven his propensity to spout utter garbage ("Allo, pot? Ees kettle calling- you black!") - but you hope against hope that he'll see sense and not say something that will screw things up even more.

"We were travelling on the connector, yes," Polo begins confidently. Earphone nods his approval - you tell 'em, buddy - "But it's not like we were in the women's compartment! I mean, I'm not a stalker! I didn't molest a woman! Neither did I try to grope anyone in the crowd-although, let me tell you, it would've been easy, the way we were packed at Rajiv Chowk."

You take a step back, away from the guy, your body language literally yelling that you have nothing to do with him - but the damage is done.

"Kya bola bhai tuney abhi?" Unibrow is talking to Polo but it's your beard he is eyeing up.
"Kuch galat thode bola, sir! I'm from a respectable family!"
"But how could you even think such a thing?" Squint appears shocked to the core of his existence.
The Controller merely shrugs, lets out a regretful tsk, and passes the challan booklet to Squint.

You stand at the back, hand in pocket, watching both Polo and Earphone pass thousand-rupee notes and exclaim that someone will hear about this.

*

"Next," Squint says, and you walk miserably up to him.
"There are no notices anywhere about this," you begin. "How can you-"
"Yeah, yeah, I know." he doesn't really look you in the eye. "This money isn't going in our pockets, you know. It will be passed forward to the PMO. You can lodge a PLI, wait an year or two, and maybe get it back later. As of now it is a national resource. Pass it forward!"

You consider your national resources.

"I have just a hundred and fifty on me," you say. "What now?"
"Now? Now? Now you call home and ask someone to come pay for you."
"That's not feasible," you say. Unibrow chuckles appreciatively.
"Kahaan se ho?"
"Karkardooma," you say. "Blue line."
"Ho kahaan se?"
"Faizabad." you shift uncomfortably. "Look. I am not calling anyone from either place to cover for me."
Squint laughs at that.
"What about your lady friend?"
"My cousin," you say it sharply enough, but they've seen enough roadside Romeos to not believe you.
"Yeah. Her. Call her here."

"Wait!" the hand cowering in the pocket finds something usable. "I have my metro card!"
"Return it, then," Both Squint and the Controller look disappointed. Unibrow continues to leer. "Let's hope you get a hundred for it."

You walk from the Control Room to the Customer Service Center, your new best friend coming halfway with you and watching the rest of your progress closely.

The card yields 115 bucks and a receipt.

Your female friend catches your gaze from the other side of the security check, raising her eyebrows, wanting to know if she should come out.

You do the brutal elbow jab again.
She rolls her eyes, yes, but there's also a hint of a smile at one corner of her mouth.

You don't smile back - not just yet - but you're grateful nonetheless.

Your friend in the Unibrow treats your return to a smile as well. But it doesn't have the same impact anymore.
Not even slightly.

*

ding
Green Park. Station.

Your friend begins to laugh.
You stare at her but say nothing.

You've gotten on the third compartment.
The second one was emptier but neither of you felt up to it.

"What?" You ask after her chuckles subside.
"Nothing," she smiles. "It was funny, is all."
"Of course it was, you sadist."
"Oh, it was harsh on you. I'm not denying that." She gives you a brief hug. "But-you know-it was also ridiculous. Don't you feel a bit like laughing, too? Just a little bit?"
"Not yet," you say. Her face falls slightly. But then you hug her back, equally briefly. "But I probably will. You know, on the way back."
"I think I would like that chocolate now."

*

Later, on the long ride back towards Rajiv Chowk, you realize how ridiculous it all was. And you laugh.

A cursory patting-down reveals the fifteen bucks left from your brief encounter with the Law.
The tenner you'll need for the bus fare back home. But the five rupee coin you hold up, over your head.
The year 2002 glints in the light.

"I think I'll keep you," you tell the coin, "as a reminder. You know? Maybe interesting things can happen to me, after all."

Then you think of Polo and Earphone again, and the two cops and the controller, and the chuckles don't subside fully until after you're home.

*

Bharat's Corollary n. an update on an old adage. It states that in a group of three people, if a person previously established as a chutiya attempts to sort out his act, the others shall be more than happy to compensate.

The Gingerbread Boy

I'm going to tell you a story, now. It's a nice story, filled with juicy twists and even one or two lines that you can play back in your head later and chuckle. It's a bildungsroman, I suppose. Or - if big words aren't your thing - an adventure. What this story really is is a tale with a moral. And if you sit tight and listen well we might even get to it, in the end.

Are you listening? Good.

It begins like this:


There was once a gingerbread boy. He was a normal child, very much like you or me, made of the same rosy skin and jet-black hair and razor blue eyes. The same slightly-pudgy arms and legs and the same sparkling teeth, the same self-conscious expression. A flesh and blood boy.

A normal child. Except deep at his heart - in some lonesome dank corner that lay at the end of too curved a path for even him to see - he was also a gingerbread boy.

Now the boy lived and worked and grew like normal children do. He went to classes, tried his hands at debating, worked like a heathen charm upon the ladies (for he excelled at athletics and had the broad shoulders to answer for it). He was respected by all, feared by none, admired by quite-a-few. People nudged each other to watch him pass in the corridors.

And then one day the dank thing lying at the end of the curve reared its head - and it was a head made of molasses and cinnamon and ginger and flour.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

It must be the diluter, thought the gingerbread boy. All those fumes.
He was standing in class, trying to make sense out of the words in a file. The file was lying on the desk in front of him. It was filled with a brief assortment of rumpled papers. The words were on the papers.
They were in his own handwriting.

Not the diluter. It is the walls, thought the gingerbread boy. The walls are sneaking about when my back is turned.
He whipped his neck so fast there was a dry crack. The kid dozing behind him started.

"Are you ok?" the teacher's glasses had slipped a quarter inch. The fan periodically made a sound like somebody's face being slapped against sand.
Someone in the back sniggered.
They're in on it, thought the gingerbread boy. They're all in on it.

There was a dull clicking from the front of the class. People were beginning to turn away from the whiteboard, where a projector was shining the closing slides of a presentation on the mitotic cell division observed in carbide batteries. The kid conducting the slides (and now the verbal cues as well) was tapping  the screen with a Westwood School Wooden Chalkboard Pointer with Plastic Tip (36") in his desperate bid to regain the attention of the class (which was focused on his teammate) and the attention of his teammate (which had long since wandered away).

His teammate was the gingerbread boy.

"In conclusion, when a pseudonymous receptor and a shot of pure energy in the jugular love each other and wish to procreate-"
"They give birth to a gingerbread boy," said the gingerbread boy. Every eye in the room turned back to grab at his face. "I'm a gingerbread boy."

"This is highly irregular," said the teacher. "I demand an explanation, Mr-"
The walls are closing in, thought the gingerbread boy.

I better get out of here.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

And so the gingerbread boy ran. He ran to the window, first, out through the glass like it was a brittle sheet of water, and then he was off.

He ran and he ran until his cheeks puffed blue. He ran as the shadows darkened and grew.
That's the stuff, thought the gingerbread boy. I was born for this.

On the way he ran past a stalled DTC bus, a busted transformer. He ran past a couple fighting playfully in their car, a balloon seller trying to weed out a stray green balloon out of a host of red ones.
 This is a good high, thought the gingerbread boy. Better than eau de acetone, at least.

He wanted to keep running but there was a sharp smell from an alleyway. An overripe smell but an inviting smell, an enticing smell.
Maybe I'll stop a while, thought the gingerbread boy. Rest my legs a bit. 

He stopped and made his way inside.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

Somebody had set up shop there.
It was temporary shop, at best. A tent nailed up inside a dead-end alleyway. Row upon row of wooden planks nailed up inside the tent. Green glass bottles sealed up with pieces of cork and blobs of wax.

"What is this place?" asked the gingerbread boy.
"The Watering Hole," said a voice in the distance.
"Destination Unknown," said another.

A carrion bird flew up, up, up till it was nothing but the fading blue silhouette from an oversized pair of wings. It flew too close to the sun and was roasted alive.

This is where the animals drink, thought the gingerbread boy. I shall drink with them. 
Across the sky, the moon licked its lips in anticipation of a fried vulture dinner.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

There were six of them at one headcount. At another point they were four.

A friend of his stayed throughout. It wasn't necessarily the same person, but his friends all had refreshingly similar views on practically everything; he sat and basked in their conformity, their lack of lateral thinking.

I am different from them, he thought as he took another sip and the seats around him emptied and filled, emptied and filled. I am the gingerbread boy. It is my lot to run.

There was an exciting exchange at one point.
"We're currently escaping from reality," declared a sloshed friend in brown muttonchops and a dhoti. "We're wasting ourselves. Into oblivion."
"Probably," replied the gingerbread boy and took another swig.
"I'm s-serious, man." The dhoti was dishcloth green. The muttonchops were three weeks untrimmed. The level of sobriety was Not Even Slightly. "We're n-neglecting our duties. Well, not anymore, I say."
"What do you suggest?" asked the gingerbread boy and took another swig.
"I'm  turning over a new leaf. Starting today."
"Is that right?" The world kept floating in and out of focus.
"Yeah, man. No more smoking. No more betting on horses. No more hanging down at the arcade all the time. No more gali cricket in the afternoon."
"What about drinking?" The gingerbread boy could feel his head travelling down in a soft, loose arc to settle upon his forearm. He felt the same thing over and over at least a dozen times before his friend responded.
"You serious? Nothing is ever the booze's fault, man. In fact, I'd strongly recommend using it as a vacation for when things get really bad."
"Whatever you say, pardner," the gingerbread boy slurred, and then the ground was coming up to meet him.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

When he left it was late afternoon. The pylons all threw heat in squiggly waves that collected under the tin blanket that served as the roof of the world. There was an infernal screeching from the cosmic kittens as they  hotfooted their way across the metal, leaving pawprint indentations from the other side.

The gingerbread boy felt on top of the world, too. The world tilted inexplicably to either side on random intervals, but that was okay.
I feel boy, thought he. I am the gingerbread fine.

There was a clatter from somewhere down the road. The gingerbread boy cocked his ears in a passable imitation of a dog. Steady as she goes, he thought to himself. Then the clatter repeated itself and he was off again. "Just one foot after another," he called out to nobody in particular.

On the way he ran past an upturned car. The doors were open and a brief trail of blood and snot led off to where the passengers had managed to crawl before being picked up by somebody (he hoped it was the paramedics). The windscreen wipers lay crumpled below the spiky glass shards of the windscreen. The cumulative effect was like staring at some giant mechanical bug in the few seconds between its swatting and the last exhale of its oily breath.

The clattering came closer.
I will see the source of the noise for myself, thought the gingerbread boy. I can outrun trouble, should trouble find me. I am, after all, the gingerbread boy.
He turned a corner and came upon the manhole cover.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

It was around thirty inches across at its widest, and then it tapered away to nothing in all directions. It was a round manhole cover, of the sort handed out quite freely by the Government on roadways.
The gingerbread boy had seen nothing like it in his life.

"Is there anybody out there?" he called out. The road pulsed in an intense burst of aquamarine light.
A merman poked his head out of the gap where the light was coming from.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

I will stop here, for a moment. You do know what a merman is, don't you?

Imagine a creature just over five feet tall, standing on hind legs that have webbed feet at the end. Imagine fins on the side of its knees, behind its elbows. Imagine spindly arms that would end in webbed hands, too, except the creature slit the membranes down the middle and wrapped each individual finger in a thin strip of cloth (the webs would grow back, given a chance). Now imagine a thin layer of scales on the whole thing.

Done? Good.
The key word here is imagine. There is no such thing as a merman, not really.

The merman who peeked out of the manhole that afternoon was called Fathead. He spoke on behalf of five other mermen, three merwomen (they'd stopped being maidens a long time ago) and a boy in a green shirt.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

It was a breathtaking moment, history in the making, the landmark first interaction between two completely alien species (nobody remembered the first thing they'd said to the green shirt, and he wasn't even a part of the narrative yet). The gingerbread boy even stopped jogging in place for a while, leaned in closer to listen.

"You wanna come join our party, bro?" declaimed Fathead.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

Of course the gingerbread boy acquiesced - you haven't been listening at all, have you? He followed the merman all the way down the rickety ladder, past a bunch of grimy-looking pipes through which the river Yamuna flowed sometimes, through a revolving door that looked rusted shut (but wasn't), and through a secret door in the back of what seemed like a padded cell.

The gingerbread boy continued to walk, spellbound. There was a gigantic cavern under the sewage system (if that's where they still were - he found it harder to tell directions without the sun standing in the background hemming and hawing) and they seemed to be near one of its walls. The dull grey stone rose up in front of him and faded into black somewhere high above. Peering closely at the darkness, the gingerbread boy realized it was made up of clouds.

Trees grew near the wall, at irregular intervals. The soil felt warm and crumbly in his palm - a little stale, but still more than potent enough to whelp trees that went up a good five-six storeys themselves.

They were all sitting with their backs to the wall, the mermen and the merwomen, a boy with a green shirt tucked away somewhere in the middle. They watched him with genuine curiosity as Fathead went up to one of them, took the gnarled and elongated wooden pipe they were smoking and handed it over to him.

"This is our peace pipe," said Fathead. "Would you like to share?"

The gingerbread boy looked carefully down the stem. He felt the roundness of the bowl against his thumb and forefinger. Then he dipped his finger into the bowl, scraped some of the powdery residue with his nail, and sniffed it.
He smiled.

"I am the gingerbread boy," he said to them all, as one. "Let's get baked."

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

They sat there for a long, long time.
The walls turned purple for a while but nobody really noticed. Jagged forks of foliage bored through the ground and shot up towards the sky (The roof, Vermivore said it was the roof). Lightning flashed occasionally and by its light they could make out the gigantic tree painted upon the ceiling. The air was heavy with branches falling back to the ground utterly spent and the sound of rain.

"Is it safe to be sitting here?" the gingerbread boy said. He wanted to stand up to lend his statement weight but his legs were jammed against the ground.
"Yes," said one of the merwomen. "You sit where you are and you pull with everything you got. That's all."
"Shut up, Saffron," said Fathead. "You're a woman. Go fix us some worms or something."

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

The gingerbread boy followed the motions of the guy in the green shirt. He seemed to flow from one state to another - sitting leaned back against a rock, then neck craned to see where the pipe had gotten, then jutted forward like a monkey going after a jar of cookies as he received the pipe, then cross-legged, shoulders hunched slightly, the bowl of the pipe a smoldering orange against the greenness of his shirt.

"He makes me slightly uneasy," whispered the nearest merwoman to the gingerbread boy.
"Shut up, Saffron," said Fathead. "Didn't I ask you for something to eat? Get off your fat arse now!"

Saffron stood up.
Everyone stopped talking. The green shirt forgot to hold out the pipe to Fathead.

Saffron left.
Everyone slowly started talking again. Fathead snatched the pipe from the green shirt.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

The green shirt waited for the pipe to go out before getting off his perch and going to sit with the gingerbread boy. "Got bored of crushin'," he said affably.
The gingerbread boy coughed a little and nodded. He had no opinion of the guy in the green shirt. He didn't need one. He could run whenever he felt like it.

The pipe was refilled.
"Good shit," said Fathead. A couple of mermen raised their index and little fingers at him.
In some cultures that is taken as a sign of respect.

This is perfect, thought the gingerbread boy. I have never felt more inclined to stay in one spot.
The rain came down harder now. It ran down his cheeks and his throat. It drenched his shirt in a matter of moments. Small bits of light snaked in through far corners of the cavern and the rain got at them, too. Great gobs of water smashed themselves up around them and depending on the light the pieces that fell were either a deep purple or a bright green.

The green shirt had to light the pipe again when it came his turn. The gingerbread boy leaned forward to hold the flame to the cup and saw that the other boy had an even set of clean, white teeth.

Halfway through the second round Saffron walked back into the circle, pulled a saucepan from somewhere in her dress, and smashed it upon the titular fat head of Fathead.

The green shirt watched the pipe sail over his head and smash against a tree. Then he turned to the gingerbread boy.
"Let's get out of here," he said.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

So this time the gingerbread boy didn't have to run alone. The guy in the green shirt did not offer any conversation beyond what was necessary. He just kept pace with the gingerbread boy as he made his way back to the rubber room and then out towards the surface.

They ran over the crest of a hill and then skirted down the smooth pavement on the other side.

The gingerbread boy squinted back in the direction he'd come from and saw the irresponsible fizzle of fireworks above a dead town. He thought he saw rainwater pulling on the sides of the road like some long-delayed shutter. Occasional forks of lightning framed them against the backdrop; the image of a green shirt squeezing between cars at an intersection burnt itself into the retinas of the gingerbread boy.

He's got some balls, thought the gingerbread boy, and Ow.

"Where do you live?" asked the green shirt.
"Nowhere," he replied. "I belong on the road. I am the gingerbread boy."
"Are you, now?" the green shirt grinned in the darkness. "What do you run towards, gingerbread boy?"

This was a new question. The gingerbread boy pondered and pondered.
"A place where things keep happening," said the gingerbread boy, finally. "A place that does not sleep."

"Great way of inviting yourself over," said the green shirt. "My house is not far from here. You can meet some of my friends. Sound all right?"
"Yes, it does."
"Unless you have somewhere to be getting to, I mean."
"Let's just shut up and sprint already."

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

The green shirt lived in a dilapidated old house halfway between the University and the Transit. The gingerbread boy had passed it often, back when he was a human child and had to go to distant corners of the city and make people listen to his speeches.

"Is it safe to live in there?"
"Better in there than the road, man," the green shirt grinned. Somebody finally opened the door on the third knock.
It was a girl.

"You should've told me there would be guests," she said to the green shirt, eyeing the gingerbread boy up and down. "Decent-looking ones at that."
"It's no use," said the green shirt to the girl as she followed them inside and surreptitiously sniffed the back of her guest's neck. "He's a runner."

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

Once again, there were anywhere between four to six people in that room. Nobody got up and left but they all looked so damn similar it was difficult to say whether there were three girls and two boys or two girls and three boys or two girls and two boys and one incredibly gifted master of disguises.

The gingerbread boy looked for his friend but it was difficult to tell which of the two boys play-wrestling on the couch was the one who'd come in with him - was it the one on top twisting the other's ankle or the bottom bitch yelling in pain and reaching slowly for the cricket bat lying a few feet away from them?

There were no more shirts. The guys and girls all wore blue shorts and white vests. The guys all had chiseled physiques. The girls were all incredibly easy on the eyes. The gingerbread boy had taken off his own tattered school blazer when he entered the room but he felt self-conscious in the presence of what were obviously underwear models who'd gotten bored of hanging on the billboards.

"Wanna try something mindblowing?" the familiar clap on the back meant it was his friend formerly of the green shirt.
"Always," said the gingerbread boy.
A thrill of anticipation went through the gathering.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

"Like that?"
"Yeah. You managed not spill any. That's good."
"Does it usually come in droppers?"
"No, it has to be extracted and put there. Delicate process. Sorta."
"And what does it do?"
"It's a really intense high, man. Puts you right in touch with the other side."
"The other side of what?"
"Everything, man."
"Oh. What is it called?"
"Got a weird-sounding name. Biological shit, man. I'd tell you but your eyelids are getting red. It's hitting."

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

It was a strange sensation.

The gingerbread boy found himself floating, floating, detaching from the body splayed awkwardly on the couch, from the circle of spectators (definitively proven to be three girls and two guys apart from the green shirt - one or the other person was always in another room, hence the confusion), from the green shirt (whose turn it was in the other room), from the room itself, from that giant depressing bitch of a tether everybody likes to call the ground. He was...

... Not just a gingerbread boy. He was the gingerbread boy. And running was for retards, especially when one could fly...

...Back to the days before his trip to the condemned building, to the days when the fumes from the peace pipe went straight up his nozzle and into the slot machine that was his head...

...Back to the days when he first met the peace pipe, in a gathering of familiar faces who only surfaced when there were green stalks and murk in the sky and a clean surface to crush on...

...Back to the days when his world was populated by locked rooms and empty faces and liquid fire that you drank straight from the bottle to burn the demons scrabbling in the recesses of your soul...

...Back to the day years and years ago when he first saw that there was something damaged irreparably in the workings of his mind, some blighted short circuit that would light up a neon arrow if ever he got within a mile of an open road...

...All the way back to the day he was born, a few moments after all the blood and slime and bits of his mother's womb had been washed away, the moments of utter quiet when every eye in the disinfected white room stared at him, the moments when he could be anybody, any random miracle of chromosomal interaction and evolutionary progress...

This is who I am thought the gingerbread boy and I better tell them my name.
So he did.
He finally cried out his name.
And it resonated across all the disparate strands of his story, unifying them under a common umbrella that would grant them form and context and meaning and purpose and cohesion.

This was the gingerbread boy's finest hour.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

And this is where the story ends. No, seriously. It's a positive note, right? Everything turned out okay. The hero gets his moment in the sun, and there's always the vague promise of sex in the distance to spice things up for the more mature audience (subtext, folks, all about the subtext!). All is right with the world. Except..

Except there's no moral yet. I mean, come on! We don't want empty words like closure, do we?
We want a teaching. And we want it drilled into somebody's head (foreshadowing alert).

The gingerbread boy's story could be over.

Except it wasn't.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

The green shirt walked to the other room, the one where somebody had to be present at all times. It wasn't a hard and fast rule, of course, but it would be decidedly impolite to leave the other occupant of the room alone - especially since he was sponsoring their trip, so to speak, and also happened to be tied to the bed.

"P-please let me go home now," sobbed the man in the bed. He was hardly a man, what with crying in front of somebody out of sheer helplessness.
He also didn't have the required number of limbs.

"We'll be done soon," the green shirt reassured him. He checked on the swathe of tubes and cables attached to the base of the other's neck. He checked on the clear receptacle - half an inch of fluid remained, enough to fill in at least five more droppers. He finally checked on the man's body. The right leg and left arm both ended in bloody stumps, wrapped in rags that had barely stemmed the bleeding when first applied a couple weeks back.

"Please. It really hurts..." the man wasn't crying anymore. He'd tried everything already.

"I'm telling you, man. We're almost done with you." The green shirt checked to see if the scalpel was still on the tray where he'd placed it on his last shift.
It was.

"We've found a new lamb, you see," he said, and then he walked out of the room.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

The gingerbread boy was still falling over the edge of the sofa.
He'd been falling for over twenty minutes.

"Human body. Beautiful thing, ain't it?" green shirt fondly stroked the boy's hair. "Creates hormones, regulates their presence, knows how to hold a party. Shall we get the last formality out of the way?"

The female on her way out mock-bowed. Green shirt grinned as he turned to their guest.

"It's getting really late," he said. "We're thinking of adjourning for dinner. You good?"
"Mmpff-fine," said the gingerbread boy. "S'really good stuff."
"I know. But," he asked casually, the third and final time, "don't you have to be getting home?"
"No home, nowhere to go. I am the gingerbread man," said the gingerbread boy.

"Good." green shirt stroked his hair again. "We've been having takeaway for ages so we decided to cook in. You're welcome to join us whenever you want."
The gingerbread boy lolled. Green shirt got up to leave.

"Just the one thing," he called back from the door. "I almost forgot. You don't have a problem with non-veg, do you?"
The gingerbread boy didn't hear, but that was OK.
Green shirt hadn't really waited for an answer.

       *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *                

...And that's the real ending. The gingerbread boy is safe and sound, the butt of a few jokes perhaps but in good care. The lost boys and girls living at the condemned building look out for their own. Drug abuse aside, look at how beautifully they tended to their invalid friend until he succumbed to his injuries.

It is things like these that give me hope for humanity.
Anyway. You have made it this far, haven't you? And I promised you a moral.
I didn't think anyone would make it this far.

I guess I'll have to freewheel, then. Here's me casting a look about my room for inspiration: a grimy, boarded-up window, a hole in the wall where I can press my ear and hear the rambling of the stretcher-bed's current occupant (he's been babbling nonstop for the past ten hours. This story was restructured out of the more coherent parts of his soliloquy) and, right next to the cot I currently share with one of the girls (there are no restrictions here. There are six of us and five different partners is more than enough for anyone), a slightly-faded but crisp green shirt that I wear when I am outside.

To return to the issue at hand. The moral of this story is, always try to be like the gingerbread boy. Take chances and allow life to surprise you, every once in a while.
You never know where the culmination of your travels shall find you.

Now if you'll excuse me, I believe I left something in the oven.