THe AppMan

The tag of Senior Citizen entitles one for very many benefits as diverse as they come. You get to be called “Pa” by even married couples and “Grandpa” by toddlers to college students. The unexpected bonanza could be sometimes getting a seat in a crowded bus. The flop side too reveals it once in a while – a speeding motorist calling out, hey “Pa” can you not see where you are going? ; A school kid racing by on his bicycle yelling, “grandpa” can’t you move and give way? . These calls apart, as App man there are plenty of requests and users to keep the old spirit going.

KidApp:
The imaginative child, yet-to-master verbal articulation, goes on inventing gestures and grunts making the parents and grandparents to scramble and decode the contents. Exasperation and splitting of hairs are not allowed by this child and at the very hint of such thoughts occurring in the minds, a fresh avalanche, of gestures & grunts, is triggered to smother the grownups ear-deep. The bond between a toddler and a grandparent defies all known laws of chemistry and physics. The motive force that is driving this dynamo of affection is trust and it needs only the willingness of an adult. Then on, the adult’s free will is indeed held captive by the kid’s magnetic field of smile and affection and undergoes bending at the kid’s will.

 
SittingApp:
Baby sitting involves a lot other than sparing time – patience, perseverance and attention. The patience required is best understood by watching a large tub getting filled, from a tap letting out a thin stream of water. It is rather slow. The need for the water makes one to persist with this slow process. The interminable wait is usually spent by indulging in reminiscence and reveries. At the right moment, if the wandering mind is not brought back to the almost filled tub, the excess water overflows. The adult will have to learn to show patience, perseverance and attention. The child reciprocates by enjoying the attention, appreciating the perseverance and admiring the patience shown. The work done on the emotional plane leads to the state where nothing but selfless affection finds expression. 

MindApp:
The mind is a repository as well as a generator of emotions. The other parts of the body are merely the end effectors. They simply obey it - like puppets on strings.  When the mind picks up speed, these parts get confused, unable to cope up with the rapid reactions that are to be exhibited; then they go crazy. Relationship is like a viscous fluid; resists flowing out easily. The reluctance vanishes once the hearts warm up to each other. 

OzApp:
On the mental plane, feeling of hope or despair, happy or sad, hate or love, achievement or debacle, miracle or disaster plays upon the nervous system as feeling or emotion. Emotion has a physical dimension. The secondary effect felt by the limbs of the body is the physical dimension of feeling. The moment an emotion grows in volume or intensity, it acquires mass and is subjected to the pull of gravity. In the end, the weight of emotion dictates rest or inactivity to the body in order to lessen the burden of emotion.

This weight is particularly heavy in the case of negative emotions. A created happiness fades with time whereas an imparted sadness grows with time in the mind of the receptor.  The growing feeling of guilt makes the initiator too to suffer. Both feel the weight of their respective emotions. 

HangApp:
Sometimes a family conversation becomes ‘shared’ when the phone is on the speaker mode, making it an inclusive and interactive affair. At times, the speaker is not on this mode rendering the one to one deliberation privy - by design or oversight. The passive persons, left out of the briefing, have to make up the whole exchange from bits and pieces picked up from the one sided talk. Some days even this jugglery might be daunting as grunts, hmmms, ha-has, true.. trues etc  from this end does not tell the story of the other end. The towers do not listen to all we talk and pass it on. Remembering this might help. Yet, nothing will be lost and the full picture will emerge – directly in ‘passive voice’ or indirectly when the same is repeated to relatives and friends. 

ShutApp:
Call it the 6th or 7th sense or simply a non-sense, but the fact is some can manage things pretty well while others get vexed. The actions of such managers defy logic at that time but after a while prove to be rewarding. Those who could not understand the techniques are the pleading smart phone category: “unable to back up” and “updates are pending”. 

Tailpiece:
These Sr. Citizen’s Apps are not written in mystic codes. Even the powerful computers cannot handle delicate emotions whereas a sensible person can do it with a personal touch. No human system breaks down because of these Apps being used or not. It is UNIQUE like UNIX or Linux open source software. Installation is free and no virus exists to corrupt. Some more..? just demand, it will be delivered!

Tommy

 Tommy could sense that something was not all right with him, at the moment. For the last three days, the appetite had deserted him and the mere sight of food tray fired revulsion in his stomach. He liked to ponder over mundane things affecting the dog’s world in general and his own in particular. His familiar thinking posture – face resting on the folded front paws, tail tucked under the belly and lying on his left side or right side depending on the seriousness of the issue requiring contemplation.

Today, he was not even comfortable with any of these postures. Suddenly his sharp ears picked up a commotion down the street and on an impulse – he rarely breaks his reveries, ran out of the resting place to find out ‘what the noise was all about?”

A common sight greeted his eyes – milling crowd gesticulating and taking the role of on the spot judges, on something that had happened. He heard them dividing in to camps to argue for and against the victims and the culprit. Inching closer he saw a pool of blood, a broken spectacles, a dismembered man holding the leash attached to a pet dog, which had also suffered the same fate under the wheels of a speeding vehicle. Tommy could not understand why these people are still arguing even after the vehicle and the errant driver had run away from the scene.

Having come on to the scene, he wanted to focus his attention to find out “why the man did not let the leash go?” and “who made the fatal error of misjudging the traffic flow while crossing the road?” he paused and lifted his face heavenwards as if the answers were displayed there. After sometime, losing hope of getting any answer, he started to scrutinise the scene in detail. This exercise increased the Adrenalin flow and he became excited. He came to the conclusion that the flow pattern of traffic must have confused the dog- on- leash and the human wearing thick lenses. Caught in two minds, they might have decided to go through the crossing anyway.

Emotionally moved, he understood that both of them are not alive to tell the true story, except the broken spectacle if it could talk. The crowd of on the spot judges started to disperse after the arrival of policemen. He felt hungry all of a sudden and went around foraging for food. He decided to contemplate, in his favourite posture, after finishing a hearty meal and think about “Why he felt unhappy when the inhabitants of the house did not treat him well?”, “What was preventing him to enjoy the freedom without a leash?” and “Why people think only of a dog’s obedience and not accept that it can also think – in a dog’s own sense? Tom ambled towards his residence, in fact a dilapidated house in the neighbourhood.

Tommy understood the inhabitants thinking – we had let a street dog live near the house and his presence acting as a deterrent to trespassers is incidental. He decided to take the neglect as it is and carry on.

To be leashed or not had him thinking for a while. The incident at the accident site was still fresh in the mind. Attachment had not done anything to that deceased friend. Now he strolls like a ‘master’ of the walks and enjoying the freedom. He closed this debate and felt happy.

A dog like him thinking about people might be an attempt to climb a step in the ladder of reasoning. People, who think only about the obedience part of the dogs find it difficult to climb down a step or two on that ladder - may be because dogs do not exhibit ego. Tommy closed his eyes and realised that all was well in his world till he gets involved in events.

Events evoke emotions. The best remedy is to prevent the events from occurring. If at all not possible the next better option should be not to allow it to evoke emotions. In the worst case scenario, is not to spend time on pondering over it. May be many better things are waiting to occupy the thinking space.

This house is in order

 Imaginch became pensive after the chance visit to an old age home. The deep emotional impact it left on him was unbearable and indescribable, forcing out his thoughts on engaging his friends-in-park in any light-hearted discussion. Even the news item on commissioning the world’s largest radio telescope failed to enthuse. Instead he was sore at science & technology for searching out signals from deep space ignoring meek pleas of an aging population left in old age homes.

A tall and shriveled Sr. Citizen sat by and gazed at him for a long time. To give company to this person a stocky bespectacled man joined the group. To Imaginch this person appeared a little withdrawn but willing to take part in any discussion that might take place. Yet, the attention grabber was a lithe, fair complexioned person who did not try to hide his presence – with or without the clutch of Newspapers & magazines he held.

Imaginch started to feel the heaviness of uneasiness that hung in the air and the lone ceiling fan could not do much about it, though it added its own verbal encouragement. Imaginch wondered whether the creaking noise was in support of the atmosphere or to the persons! The timely arrival of a snacks tray helped everyone to relax.

Sensing Imaginch’s curiosity and hesitation to ask them about the circumstances that brought them together at that old age home, the tall man started saying, “ Not everyone in a family will be in sync with everything at all times. This is true for a reason: We are all genetically engineered products and naturally have to conform to different kind of fits and tolerances. The only handle the human beings have is the ‘power of thinking’ which sometimes likes to enjoy a back seat driving. I decided at an appropriate point to be at peace with myself and be happy about it”. Imaginch tried to detect that happiness in that face and found not even a trace of it. He silently saluted that hardened, living heart.

It was now the turn of the stout man and he spoke out highlighting, “The differentiation between an individual and a family is this: discrete thinking and global thinking. Beliefs and reactions among the members give birth to an emotional state and in this state actions, reactions and attitudes that are questioned disturb harmony. This was the last straw as far as my capacity could endure and opted out of the vicious circle to stay in an old age home where these problems do not arise”.

Weighing each word and thought, the erudite personality held attention of the group and went on to hang many pictures on the wall of life around a Sr. Citizen – “In a dynamic family sanity and reason should find a place, along with a strong will to desist from brewing a storm for narrow emotional gains. In a stressed emotional state, there will be no time to think about larger than our ‘personal’ issues. A bit of understanding and tolerance with a cool off interval will be a perfect Ying and Yang balance. For every spirited defence there would certainly be a ghost.

Probably this will make it easier to understand why we should not do what we continue to do! If the members of a family manage to keep personal things strictly personal and larger interests separate, disharmony will not find the voice to disrupt”.

“It may not always be possible to be broadminded, in these days of stressful living. But the benefit of it is it allows one to put up with any temporary transgression. When the rising annoyance is felt, accepted and relegated or when repeated transgressions are left un-minded then a sense of moderated tolerance is maintained. If annoyance is allowed to grow out of bounds minor transgressions become real monsters.

“Being narrow-minded does not help anyone to ‘live-among’ but to ‘live-aloof’- within one’s own rigid boundaries. When such boundaries have been drawn, the constant look-out is only for trespassers, and it becomes a significant burden on the other members of a family.

“Water is an elixir of life and it has a philosophical lesson or two - filling a bottle, by straight away immersing it in water, is slow. The water refuses to fill in a hurry. Instead it patiently waits for the air, already occupying the space, to make way. In a physical sense they have worked out a rate and space compromise - water occupies the space as the air vacates from it. Here the patience and understanding of the physical world has resulted in harmonious adjustment. If this is managed by inanimate things such as water and air, why not the ones with the ‘power of thinking’!

“Instead, if the same bottle had been immersed neck down, the air residing inside the bottle resists entry of water and at the same time water will be trying to force its way in – a standoff! What happened to patience, understanding of the physical world and the harmonious adjustment shown earlier? Why the same inanimate things failed here?

“The attributes - patience, understanding and harmony did not change only the attitude of the “handler” changed.  Harmonious adjustment tolerated each others existence whereas the stand-off tried to assert an individual’s importance.The family is a fabric fresh from the mill. Parting it to suit different needs or repeatedly attempting to dye it with colours as per any whim and fancy only makes the fabric lose its intrinsic strength and sheen”.

After listening to all these points, without laying any blame on any of their individual family members, Imaginch felt nothing but admiration and deep respect for the inmates.  More than anything else the philosophy the inmates had formulated to carry on with life, everyday, made him to feel subdued.

He decided to pass on this wisdom from the old age home inmates to his friends-in-the park: “Try filling the water bottle, with patience and understanding. Harmonious adjustment is a better state - to be in”!

The cow

The overhead sun was not kind to the hapless persons and animals on the road. A tree here and there offered some shade but those who were in a hurry did not pause to enjoy the welcoming relief. Imaginch vainly tried to keep the scorching rays at bay with an umbrella so small that it would  barely cover the head of a 10 year old. He could not hurry and get out of sun’s domain as he was habituated to closely look at things on the road or taking in the scenery, mainly to spot rash & unmindful driving. This was fodder for him to lecture to a different kind of hapless victims, who gather every evening at the park for a senior citizen’s chitchat.

The search for the agenda weighing heavily on his mind, he did not hear the shout aimed at his ears. A few moments later he felt something hard swipe by his right hip. He was as startled as the cow that almost trampled over him. During that brief encounter lasting a few seconds, Imaginch noticed the worried look in the eyes of the cow as if it had lost something dear to it. Without wasting time, the cow had already run in to a lane emitting a cry of anguish. Even in that situation Imaginch did not fail to find fault with the cow for not having raised that siren before ramming in to him.

This question was far away from the mind of the cow as it was bent upon rescuing the errant calf which had bolted away without permission. The rushing traffic on the road added fuel to its anxiety. Some of this anxiety must have affected Imaginch and he also decided to follow the cow, setting aside the chores he wanted to finish. Like an explorer, he followed the trail of the cow some time loosing track and worrying before spotting it. He began to huff and puff and only the motherly concern of the cow made him to trek along. He closed the umbrella - thinking that it might scare the cow to break into a run as he was nearing the limits of physical endurance.

The strange looks of passersby irked him but ignored them as an unsolicited window shopping. Probably they thought the cow must be trying to escape the tyranny of an old man with a folded umbrella. With a mischievous smile playing in the corners of his mouth, he imagined himself in the role of a milkman chasing his cow.

Imaginch wandered wherever the cow led him and by now his slow brain understood the mission of the cow. He began invoking the wishes of umpteen good Samaritans to rush in and help the cow and calf to find each other. By now, the cow had entered and exited through many lanes and streets as though it had a virtual map in its head, which could easily out map Google.He had a strange feeling that both of them are now in a territory that vaguely appeared familiar. A look at the board displaying the street name confirmed that they have come back to the starting place where he and the cow had met awhile ago.

Before starting the second round, the cow raised its head heavenwards and let out a loud bellow. A few seconds later a plaintive voice answered the call. The angled ears of the cow picked it up and started to run towards the source of the answering calf - mother’s instinct has already confirmed the identity of the responder. Imaginch managed to reach the destination in time to see the calf and the cow running towards each other. The scene looked quite cinematic to him.The calf straight away went for the udder for a dose of nourishing milk and at the same time got a caressing lick along the spine making it to tremble with the tingling sensation.Tears welled in the eyes of Imaginch as he moved on trying to recollect for what purpose he was out on the road and whether it was important or not!

Hennu a.k.a Hemanth

 Mr. Hennu was furious. The women folk at home have singularly mastered the art of re-casting an episode from different angles, aiming to better the last attempt.  The experience was like watching a morphed version of breaking news from all the 24 X 7 channels. He could have walked out of earshot but that had repercussions of another kind. In comparison, the re-run stories were better as he had the choice of dozing off in to a far away land where ladies did not engage in this frivolous activity.

His reverie was abruptly broken by a loud metallic sound – a heap of utensils lay strewn on the kitchen floor. A few shards of broken china really frightened him, as he rushed and surveyed the scene before the womenfolk. There was a very valid reason to get in to a damage gathering mode – he had forgotten to close the windows which a cat always used as the entry point – not to say hello to the folks but to grab some eatable. They had specifically warned him about this forager and yet... While clearing the mess, he readied himself to hear the admonishment repeatedly till another faux pas is committed.

In the midst of similar mishaps he had developed personal solutions to effectively deflect their anger, by spreading a smoke screen of invented philosophy though the screen was inefficient in preventing the re-runs. He cursed the effect of 24 X 7 news channels for this inadequacy, within himself. Tired of waving the red, yellow and orange flags the womenfolk settled for the white flag he managed to wave with apprehension.   Savouring the reprieve, he wanted to go through the list of replies and find out which one he could have used and escaped without spending energy in waving the white flag.

Now, Mr. Hennu shifted gears and really became very furious. In the study where he had his writing materials and books of his choice but there was no trace of his compilation on invented philosophy. Further search revealed many of his treasured hand written papers and notebooks had vanished. The mystery surrounding their disappearance weighed on his mind as heavily as the missing military plane in the mind of the defence minister.

When he gave up on them as a lost cause, the womenfolk let out the secret – all his precious possessions (papers and notebooks) had been cleared to keep the shelf tidy and if he so desired  to re-posses them, all he had to do was to go in search of the old paper buyer.

In stunned silence, Hennu sank in to a sofa for inventing a new set of smoke screen solutions  to confuse and console a person like himself.
“Better not to engage and avoid conflict”, “Not hearing is not as harmful as coming up with an explanation”. Even to his ears these  murmurings sounded childish!

Before calling it a day, he wanted to pry out the secret why he is becoming called as Hennu but the mere thought of going back to the womenfolk and their penchant for the 24 X 7 syndrome prevented him from going any further down his memory lane.

Imaginch in hinterland 3 - the su do ku solution

Nobody in the right sense will understand that Imaginch means well but puts across badly. The other day a neighbour brought hot “vadas” and his daughter served it in gravy, all to make him taste the good thing, in style. Imaginch saw the proffered dish in a porcelain cup. As he ladled it up with a spoon, a thought struck him. Thinking that it will sound funny, he blurted out aloud “the vadas look like a pair of buffaloes floating in a pond” . It did not occur to him that this wisecrack might be audible up to the house of the neighbour. Worried about the neighbourly relation, his wife and daughter took cudgels against him with a sermon on etiquette and civil nicety. Secretly he cursed himself for the lack of ‘timing’.

The very next day the daughter came under the scanner of Imaginch’s wife. It happened because of a phone call alerting them to watch an episode on cooking and the daughter dutifully passed on that important information.  In the meanwhile, a burning smell emanated from the kitchen and must have reached her before Imaginch’s blocked nostrils could get to work on identifying the cause for that strange smell. Looking over the laptop and in a hurried voice cautioned her mother that something is cooking on the gas range.

Though, he was a standing joke in the house as a person with perennial cold and selective deafness, this epithet acted a shield from adding any addendum to his daughter’s comment.  At other times the same epithet had landed him in verbal duels with almost all the family members who never failed to exhibit unity to find a fault to a fight.  He had this axe to grind with the wife – “When others come under her scanner why single out me for the hammer and tongs?”  At these times, he nostalgically recalled the many ‘episode’ battles he had fought with his daughter or daughter-in-law to wriggle out of the present he-made-mess. May be one day this nagging question might slip out, as always at the wrong time, inviting further wrath.

Wanting to become a crossword buff, Imaginch spent his spare time (idle time  as per the family) in solving the clues, every day. Never in the habit of allowing others to teach or guide him, he patiently tried to unlock the clues all by himself. At the end of the attempt, the finished grid looked  like a patch on the bald man’s pate – a word here and there and no more. He became to be called sarcastically ‘the Vikramaditya of daily crossword” for his unflinching attempts. Disturbances at these times annoyed him and he usually came out with oblique statements only to get stung, like a person putting his hands in the beehive searching for honey. Only he forgot about the honey bees whose store he was to get at.

As it happens many times he missed the obvious – the number game su do ku appearing alongside the daily crossword. His wife has been using this to ward off afternoon beauty sleeps.  At these times even the usual bickering took the back seat. Slowly, the daughters also picked up this format to spend time in contemplation on which number should come where. The casual manner in which they slipped in to silence and peace suddenly appeared to be the viable solution and strategy to raise one more white flag in the house.  Imaginch plunged headlong, literally, in to the number game not before causing a disturbance in the household – a reason to fight over the newspapers and the su do ku appearing in them. He turned to a star power column to see what the stars are predicting and regretted reading “more of the same in the week to follow”.

Hand drawn squares were used and pencils and erasers had a field day, as three or four of the members vied with one another to complete their su do ku assignment first.  Light hearted banter, which once was the nucleus for starting a small scale battle, found willing persons to be the butt of a joke.  Even Imaginch could get away, after evoking a good laugh, with his witty ‘one liners’, timed to perfection, during these times. It helped to lift the veils on pent-up emotions. The family members started looking at Imaginch in a new light as a humorous person.

But for him it was different – he had to conjure up witty remarks and at the same time compete with them in solving a set of papers. Every day it was the same Vikramaditya story but he was determined to conquer the magic square at least once in his life time without extensively resorting to the “redo” routine.  He found time, while doing his paper work, to offer valuable suggestions on how to solve a particular diagram. More often than not, it ended up in the same number staring at each other from top & bottom and left & right of a column and row respectively. The withering looks of irate members of the family did not deter him in making another attempt on another day!

In this process he even came out with philosophical jottings:

“Thinking on behalf of others, without thinking about the consequences, would be dangerous and liable to attract blame in case of a failure because it needs a scape-goat”.

“The best example for selfless sacrifice is not the candle anymore. It has been replaced by a better candidate, in fact, candidates. The paper, pencil and eraser! By simultaneously sharing the burden of sacrifice are they not hinting at the benefits of spreading the joy of sacrifice? Are they not pointing it out that liberation is a co-operative affair and penance in isolation is intimidating?”

In the end,    he was happy to have found a novel method to keep the flag of peace flying – vive la su do ku. At this stage,  his  imaginative mind  took over and found a simple trick to keep the family members engrossed in su do ku as long as possible in a day – he created new 9 X 9 from already solved puzzles with the help of old newspapers. He added enough twist such that the puzzles were tougher than the toughest. How he did? It is a secret which he never allowed the family’s su do ku lovers to know. He knew he had an ironclad insurance policy as long as the secret remained so!

Imaginch in hinterland - part 2 : nOTHING WORKS

That scientific minded friend might have managed to rub some inquisitiveness on to Imaginch’s grey cells. He too started to look at things differently with the eyes of a quick fix mechanic. Eager to get his skills flowing, he raided in to the junk boxes of son, daughter and whatever bits and pieces of broken toys left behind by the grandchildren, after their periodic visits. The specially labelled carton box, actually the one that came along with the new microwave oven, got filled to the brim in no time.

Imaginch categorised them as metal & plastic - toys, curios, sprayers and defunct measuring & musical instruments. To these items, he added plastic & metal wheels, tubes, washers, thin metal strips, screws and other cannibalised parts - out of his own secret cache.  He spent a little time to assess the condition of toys and type of repairs needed.  To set up his one-stop repair shop, he decided that only the adhesives that are capable of bonding anything to everything was the solution. That was when he heard the serious objections from the home front. Objections – yes, he could take them at any time but not the riders - ‘are you good at anything?’, ‘anybody wants these things now?’ etc that came along.

Really he had no answers to the riders but if he had ventured to reply that he was trying to learn the art of mending broken things, his enthusiasm to breathe new life in to these crippled inanimate objects would have died then and there. He opted to remain silent, waiting for the home office to retreat in to her enclave. Like ships finding a safe harbour to ride out a storm, the carton box got pushed under the bed, for the day! For company he shoved his tool kit also along with it.

When the bug bites, Imaginch goes on an overdrive. The next morning, he held a closed door meeting with the items requiring band-aids, splints and surgery. Though averse to anything even remotely connected with the word ‘medicine’, he enjoyed naming levels of his repair programme as 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree – the medical speak to describe the severity of burn injury. He did not hesitate to borrow these medical terms as they did not demand a consulting fee.

Choosing a car with two missing wheels, he laid it on the table to get in to its character. He looked at it from different angles as a painter would inspect the canvas on the easel. The replacement he had in mind was actually discarded caps from a shampoo and hair oil container and that did not deter him at all. They resembled like wheels and that was good enough for him and the substitutes had a very good plus points going in their favour - the cannibalised caps were identical in dimensions to the missing wheels. The catch was that the plastic caps did not have an orifice hole at the center to receive the axle rod.

Though he has heard about computerised wheel alignment process, how to circumvent this technical snag, of non-existing wheel center, raced in his mind for a solution.  He knew the success or failure of repair depended on one ingenious idea. He rummaged in his collections and came up with plastic inserts, which slid inside the inner hollow space of the caps exactly like a cylinder and piston. And each of them had a central hole, solving his problem! Imaginch was overwhelmed by these lucky breaks, in the beginning stages of his maiden attempt.He positioned the car on its side, over the mouth of glass bottles, as wheels to be fixed were on opposite sides and ends of the chassis. As nearly as possible he ensured the axle center coincided with wheel center and completed bonding of the wheel at the top side. Repeating the process he fixed the other wheel at the bottom side of the car. To keep these wheels undisturbed, he built a stable platform by placing a plastic scale atop a bottle, under each wheel.

The manufacturer of the glue had prescribed “24 hours to full bond strength” and he muttered to himself, “Am prepared to wait a little longer too”! And in the same breath, he thanked his hobby for collecting bottles of different sizes and shapes. A wave of pride rose and congratulated him on the homely improvisation - a makeshift hydraulic platform to rest the automobile during its convalescence after repair. He built a barricade around the car to prevent someone from accidentally knocking it down from its lofty perch.

Imaginch felt elated at the thought that his ‘fixing operations’ could be completed without spilling the glue on any of the utility furniture. He was only well aware of the repercussions which would have engulfed him like tsunami waves – initiated by his better half and ably assisted by her sister, who was on a sojourn. With a loving final glance for the day, Imaginch closed the doors and retired to bed hoping to see in his `dreams, the joyous faces of the grand children who were expected to descend on the house any time the next day!

With the morning sun, he rose and went straight away to inspect the repaired toy. After spending a few thoughtful minutes, he gingerly took it in his hands and gently set it on the table. The first check revealed that the bonded wheels had some reservation to roll over the table top. At certain part of the revolution, they appeared to stand on their toes, as if to decide what to do next. Even this ‘goose stepping’ was not done in unison. Each one did it twice in a revolution at different a different interval. He realised his fault in assuming that the caps he had used must be cylindrical in shape. But for some reason the designer had fancied an elliptical shape at the closing end of the caps. Swallowing his disappointment and pride, he proceeded to take the car through its normal routines it had been performing before its imprisonment in the junk box.

The children and grandchildren arrived. Disappointing him, they all trooped in to the kitchen to enquire about the waiting menu. The home front, exuding warmth and smiles all around, started dishing out the delicacies with some homilies. He could not understand - when he dished out such homilies, why all of them fled the scene?  The feast on the taste buds made everyone to forget about Imaginch. The loud discussion about “who was on whatsApp and face book and what recent videos they have shared” interested him in the least. With people having nothing substantive to share around, he thought it would be better to do a vanishing act. He seriously thought about taking a walk in the park or drop in to a friend’s house. Instead, he strode in to the bedroom feeling like a giant bird with sparrow’s wings.

A good three hours elapsed before the grandchildren came to say ‘a hello’ to him. Normally, Imaginch would have ignored them for the indifference they have shown but what came in between them and the wall of anger was his eagerness to present the repaired toy in working condition. Without waiting for a green signal from them, he proceeded with a live demonstration.  At the end of the road show, he expected words of appreciation mixed with a little admiration and awe. He misread their silence as attempts to search for suitable expressions to describe their ‘live’ experience!


The number one said, “Oh, no. You have changed our car in to a reptile. Instead of racing, it is lifting the left front wheel and then the right rear wheel sequentially, like a chameleon!”

The number two was little imaginative and said, “If only you had the front wheels missing, we might have had the pleasure of watching a frog race!”

The numbers three and four were more direct in their approach; they walked out without uttering even a murmur.

Sitting by the side of the orphaned toy, Imaginch concluded: in his land nothing works to his satisfaction or for that matter to anybody’s satisfaction. At this moment he is preoccupied with the thought: “when to roll down the shutters?”