021. Missed Entry

01-April-2010

DISCLAIMER or NOTE : This post, meant as a light read is dedicated to the entire Katha Sagar Team, and to all those authors who are tensed, awaiting the judgment starting tomorrow morning, followed by the final results. Thank you, Indimag and the Katha Sagar Team for giving me an opportunity to participate. My debut competition story, viz. "A week end argument" is available at www.indimag.com/2010/03/29/a-week-end-argument.

I learnt a lot standing at the seaside – Sea of stories – Katha Sagar!   I also take this opportunity to wish all the contestants, a bright future in writing.

Congratulations to the winners, in advance!

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“Hello, Kumar? This is Renjith here. How are you? .... Alright, then I will call you a little later if you are in a meeting or something” – I called up Kumar, one of my close friends who is a seasoned reader, after parking the car at the open car park outside my apartment.

Without wasting even a minute more, I dialed up an international number and tried to reach another friend of mine having similar qualifications.

“Hello, Renjith here. How are you, dear? Tomorrow is April 1st. Did you vote for me?”

With a loud laugh, he answered – “Arey, Sirji.... do not try to fool me in advance! I know, tomororow is April 1st!”

“Yes, that’s why I asked you whether you could vote for me or not?”, I clarified.

“Oh! Are you contesting for any elections, for me to vote? Don’t try to fool me, yaar! Moreover, April Fool is valid only on the 1st April and not on 31st March !!!”

I was confused, but told him - “Raj, you did not see my email? Remember? I wrote to you about Indimag’s Katha Sagar Short Story completion where I partook. The voting will be over today. Can you do that, please? Please read and vote for me.”

“Sorry, Renjith. I was travelling and hence could not see the mail. I will try to check your mail and do something….”

In the middle of my conversation with Raj, I could hear the beep of another incoming call, disturbing our ongoing chat. Since I had conveyed my message to Raj, I disconnected my call after notifying him and connected the new call.

“Hello, Renjith.. this is Kumar. Sorry, I was in another call when you called me up. I was damn busy due to the financial year auditing in the company. Why, you called – anything urgent?” – Kumar asked.

“Well, urgent means – yes it is.”, I told.

“Anything serious? Everybody alright there, isn't it?” – Kumar was much concerned about me and my family. I was his room mate during the initial phase of my career and we had a wonderful chemistry in our friendship.

“No, no. Nothing to worry. I wanted to check whether you could vote for me” - I wanted to clarify further before he ask further funny questions, but he interrupted the discussion in another way. He is not a good listener, I knew that and I had experienced many times. .

“Oh! That one! Yes, I saw your email, but did not vote, as I am not an Indimag member. Honestly, I did not get time to dwell into it in detail as … you know, I am busy with our sales promotion, reporting and lots of stuff like that…”, Kumar, frankly, confessed.

“Fine, please do vote if you can and help me out as the deadline is tomorrow. OK then, bye”, I disconnected the line and got out of the car.

Before stepping into my apartment, I called many of my friends and relatives once more in order to remind them about the voting. Many responded, but many didn’t. Nevertheless, I could get a plethora of responses or excuses, like below :

 

- “I was out of office and moreover, there is no internet at home”

- “I was not keeping well, so could not log on”

- “Sekhar was on tour, and hence I was busy managing the house, with the naughty brats”

- “I will do that, can you give me a day?”

- “I did it already, thanks”

- “I tried, but did not work”

- “I have conjunctivitis and hence doctor advised not to strain by watching TV or using computer”

Honestly, these reactions, to a certain extent, did depress me and by the time, I climbed the stairs to reach my door step, I was off mood, dejected, dilapidated and what not!!

The front door was kept partially open. I guessed - that my son wouldn’t have bothered to lock the door properly after coming home from the playground. I could not see anybody in the hall room, but only the powered-on television which was showing a serial in Zee TV, immediately switching over to a commercial, as soon as I entered the room, as a coincidence.

On the action of hearing the bang of door, which was quite unusual, there were three reactions! One, Bindu, my wife came out running from the kitchen; two, Govind, my son came running out of the computer room and; three, Gayathri, my little daughter came crawling, following Govind.

“What happened? Any problems in office?”, knowing me and living with me for more than a decade, my wife could read out my state of mind, just looking at my face once.

I did not want to give an impression to her that I had been doing only those things relevant to my story and the story competition, the whole day.

“The day was very long for me today, with many meetings and some unwanted discussions. I am feeling severe headache”. – I told her, without looking at her face, as I was massaging my forehead with closed eyes.

But, with a smile, she was smart enough to play the trump card. “How many comments did you get today?

“What comments?”, I pretended.

“I know that you are tensed about the short story competition. This is a competition and you must not expect to be the best, considering the fact that you are a novice here”. What she told was absolutely right. In fact, I also thought that way. But I was worried due to the lack of anticipated support from my own reader friends.

“Yes, you are right”, without having any further discussions, I went in to my room to change and later came out to the hall room, after a quick shower.

The tea was re-heated and served. Lying down at the sofa, I took control of the television after a coup attack of the remote control, thereby irritating the then existed TV viewers – my wife and my son.

My uneasiness and total discomfort was more visible to my family, when it came to my swift browsing of TV channels – ranging from News, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, English, Entertainment, Sports to Movies..

“Er...Actually, what happened exactly? Why are you so irritated?”, my wife asked again.

I tried to keep mum, but could not.

“I want to write one more post, but am not sure what to write.  This is my first ever competition and I want to get more constructive comments and criticisms,  for myself to grow. Can you tell me a topic so that I can write?”, I began to unleash.

“Why, is it mandatory to write one more? I don’t think you would be able to write well in this mood”, my thoughtful wife threw her point, as a food for thought.

I wanted to quit and go to bed, skipping dinner.

I wanted to try writing one more story.

I didn’t know what to do as the deadline was just round the corner.

“Do you remember some good events where we all laughed a lot? I don’t want to write and post something serious ”, I asked my wife.

“No, I don’t remember. Moreover, I don’t think I am good at it.”, she took a safe position.

“Govind, do you remember something like that?", I asked my son, without expecting much from him. But, thankfully, he was resourceful, much to my surprise.

“Papa, what about writing about a dog?”, an innocent idea was put across by my son.

“Dog?? Tell me something else, dear”, I asked him to think again.

“What about the train journey you told and something about the suitcase?”, that was a good suggestion, but I had to discourage him, for,  the same was published in my blog a month back and the competition entries are not supposed to have been published anywhere else prior.  I asked him for more.

“What about Ian who went missing and was later found out?”, that was a good hint.

“That one?…. No, I am not confident in doing it. Hint me something else.”, the discussion became more interesting as I got more confidence in him and his source of sincere ideas. I asked my wife also to join.

“Something about  your first day to office?”, that was a prompt from Bindu, but I was sure that I could fail drastically while developing the story.

Similarly, many prompts and ideas were put across, but I had to unfortunately, discourage or reject them for my own reasons. This activity ended up in some friction amongst us, as I was, to the best of my family’s knowledge, belief or whatsoever - disturbing their peaceful evening, disrupting their TV serials or cartoons and, ultimately not coming out with any fruitful or worthwhile topics to write for the Competition.

‘Surrendering’ the remote control, I walked out to the balcony with an optimism of returning victoriously with a good prompt or thread to write. I looked at the passing by traffic, looked at the people returning from their business or office - driving their cars, looked at the people returning from their work - riding bicycles, looked at the people who were walking on the road talking aloud, looked at the home-delivery boys riding their bikes for a livelihood – but I failed to get any prompt to write.

After having a light dinner, I retired to bed early, with my laptop. I wanted to be left alone with a hope that I could write something when am all by myself. I closed my eyes and I could visualize many things – some family gatherings, weddings, train journeys, friends, relatives, partying, dancing, jokes ….

I was happy.

I was very happy.

I wrote in detail about all those I visualized. I coined them together, framed them and wrote a picturesque story, in simple English. I verified the grammar, made corrections wherever necessary and checked it again. To my satisfaction, various changes were done before and after formatting it.

I had a final look, did some finishing touches, made it further beautiful and submitted to Indimag for Review.

My post was immediately approved by the Katha Sagar Team and the URL was sent to me by email. But, the subject of the email was different, because it was displayed as “Missed Entry”.

* * * * * *

I could not figure out where I was ! There was eerie silence. After a few seconds, with the help of the faint night-lamp, I could see my wife, son and the little daughter all sleeping on the same bed, where I sat and started to chase a prompt, some hours ago. My laptop, which was safe on my chest, had gone on hibernation mode by then. I resumed by switching the laptop on, and the Microsoft Word document which I was working on earlier, was found active.

The Word document was still a blank one with the status line showing

“Page: 1 of 1 |   Words: 0   | English (United States)”

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(C)2010. Renjith P Sarada. All Rights Reserved.