On the disappearance of Chicagoans

Update: The number of short stories on the 55 Word Fiction Blog is nearing the 100 mark. Some of the stories are true gems and by branching out across the tag-tree, I have come across some amazing blogs. Right now, I am completely enamoured by this lady - if I can manage to make a list of the top 10 stories, hers would be undeniably at peak position - but there are many others too.
I also have a request - there are some plans I have for the blog, but my limited knowledge of HTML makes it impossible. If there is anyone who knows how to jigger with blog templates, could you please mail me - I have some specific questions I need to ask.

This is not a post so much as a series of announcements.

1) The compilation blog is well underway - it can be found at http://55-words.blogspot.com. Much thanks must be given to my co-compilers Teleute and Babelfish. Right now, we are trawling the blogsphere looking for posts that have addressed the tag - a task that makes me realise that there's a PhD on social networking to be had for some enterprising soul.
The task of compiling is made more difficult because we're making sure that we have the permission of each blogger to use his/her creation. If you would not mind waiving copyright of your work, you can leave a comment, or email me at the address that is mentioned on the blog.

2) Good news - This man has started up his blog - something I have been pestering him to do for months now. He also comes highly recommended by his beloved Uncle Prufrock. Do take a look.

3) I am in the final stages of departing for India, hence bloggin will be put on hold until I reach the motherland. The next many months will be spent there - principally Calcutta and Delhi. Fellow bloggers in both cities, please take note.

As an old friend would have said - "Peace out".

Arithmetic Progression

I have, it seems, been double-tagged by Goti, in a post that signals his triumphant return to blogging - a brilliant example of putting coincidences to work in a double-play tag-out thats a double whammy. Read it. Also received one tag from a young lady who spends far too much time online with decrepit has-beens, and another from a young lady who is seen outdoors only after sunset. Both are in need of some sunlight.

Finally, one last matter of interest - my long-suffering roommate Siddarth, has started his own blog, after much pleading and cajoling (and a refusal to do the dishes). Here it is.

Right, so on to the task at hand. Shamelessly plagiarised from an old English rugby song, here is my attempt at 55-word fiction, dedicated to that world-renowned chick magnet - Samit.

Oh, my DEAR Master Basu! Please do NOT come closer!
Oh, my dear Master Basu! Please do not come.
Oh, my DEAR Master Basu! Please! Do NOT!
Oh! My dear Master Basu. Please do.
Oh! My dear Master Basu - PLEASE!
Oh, my dear Master Basu!
Oh my dear master!
Oh my dear.
OH MY!
Ohh!

As for the 23/5 post. Here is the offending line.

There always is.

Indeed.

Addendum: A brilliant idea has struck me. After seeing some of the exceptional things that people have been coming up with using just 55 words, I think a blog should be created to collect these stories, with their permission of course. Any thoughts?

Her suit

Aaaand - back with our regular programming. This one could offend the squeamish - so be warned.

We recently had a heatwave (In Chicagospeak, that means we could feel all our parts), and as if to celebrate, the shorts came out in force for a week. Its interesting to observe that while men feel absolutely no embarrassment in displaying their foliated lower limbs to the general public, women wouldn't be caught dead in those outfits without a session with Mr. Gillette.

Many men I know have expressed surprise when informed that women are not naturally hairless. Yes, it is true that they grow less hair and less coarse hair than men do, but variablility across women is incredibly high. So while some get away easily, there are some who spend a significant fraction of their waking hours with scary-looking implements for cutting, tweezing or even yanking (OUCH). See what Belle de Jour has to say about it.

Even if we grant that the women have less to yank, I will just ask my fellow men to think back to the last time a razor malfunction cause a single moustache hair to be yanked out by the roots. Painful, wasn't it? Now think about a few hundred follicles being uprooted at the same time (YOWITCH). Over the entire body (OWOWOWOWOW). Weekly (AAAAAARGHGHHHH). Sometimes more often (STOP STOP STOP).

So why, why, why do they subject themselves to it?
Is it yet another conspiracy by a patriarchal society that seeks to force women to conform with unnatural expectations of external attractiveness, thereby further suppressing their ability to formulate independent expression? I am reminded of a legal eagle who, in her school days, had distracted her team to quizzing success on more than one occasion, thanks to a pair of legs which were a sight for sore eyes. Rumour has it that thereafter she chose to rebel against male notions of female beauty and left the aforementioned limbs in their natural state as a sign of protest.

Or is there more to it? Evolutionary biologists suggest that men's preference for silky smooth skin is a manifestation of an evolutionary instinct to choose a mate who is likely to ensure the safety of her child. Body hair tends to attract dirt (especially in a cave), and becomes a breeding ground for unfortunate diseases which could jeopardise the life of both mother and child. So clean sweet-smelling women just tended to be better suited to the task of keeping the human race alive.

And then we come to the next question - if depilation such a good thing, why have the men not bothered. Frankly, Salman Khan notwithstanding, men across the world keep their God-given overgrowth - like their cards - close to their chest.

And not without reason - the India Today Sex Survey reveals that 42% of women surveyed felt that a well-foliated torso was the most sexually attractive feature in a man (Aside - HAHAHAHA! Eat your heart out suckers!). What is that all about? Evolution, we are told designed men's bodies so that their more vital organs would be encased in a protective coat of armour, when they went to hunt the friendly neighbourhood sabre-tooth. Therefore, women were evolutionarily conditioned to be attracted to men who were more likely to return home alive from the hunt and so they developed a fascination for breastplates.

However, I believe that even Anil Kapoor would have difficulty stopping a .35 with his bare chest, so thats quite irrelevant nowadays. Why then do women retain their odd fascination? The only explanation I can think of is that evolutionary forces act much faster on men than on women - three times as fast, in fact. So women's tastes evolve at a much slower rate then men. So we might eventually see our grandsons fussing over the new Braun model in an attempt to win their ladys' hearts. But that isn't something we need to worry about.

And if the women think thats unfair - please also note that the average human male, in his lifetime, grows as much hair on his face alone as the average human female grows on her ENTIRE body (except her scalp), in her lifetime. So seriously, its just infeasible, unless you're an egoistical lunatic with lots of time and money to spare - or a Bollywood actor - which, come to think of it, is basically the same thing.

A case for Sex Education

For the first time - a title which means exactly what it says.

In many ways, this is a continuation of the previous post. There, I attempted to show, through fictionalised accounts, how boys are scared away from physical intimacy through a series of subliminal messages that come at them from all directions. An unfortunate consequence of this is that Indian boys grow up either to be depraved boors who feel every woman is theirs for the taking, or repressed introverts who cannot get over their inhibitions about women long enough to pursue them on their own. Consensual sex is not common among either group, sadly (except post-maritally - and there too, the issue of consent is not quite cut and dried).

And where does that leave the Indian woman? Sadly unsatisfied, and yet afraid of her own sexuality. Quite a depressing state of affairs all around.

But this is not about the women - I have no locus standi on that issue. Further, I am not duly concerned with the depraved boor. Reams of newsprint have been dedicated to the analysis of rape in our society. I am more interested in the other kind of men - the sexual wallflowers. Their situation is all the more tragic, because they could have been the very men that most women spend their lives waiting for, but ended up as much less.

All this could have been avoided with a little bit of well-aimed education.

Here, culled from my own experience, are examples of the potential dangers of "learning it on the streets".

WARNING: EXPLICIT CONTENT



(mandatory white space)



YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED



(this is really going to boost my daily page hits)



IF YOU ARE UNDER 18, TURN BACK OR ELSE...



Yeah, I know. None of you turned back, did you? Bunch of salacious perverts. Right, so here we go.

You've already seen this one.

Girls have babies in their stomach. So if you hit them in their stomachs then it gets damaged and they can't hold babies there anymore.

Then again, it always worried me how most Indians use the local words for "stomach" and "womb" interchangeably. But it didn't stop there. Not even close.

There was also a friend who never ceased to amaze us with his in-depth (no pun intended) knowledge of women and their anatomy.

Hey, look at that chick.

The one with the pimples?

Yeah.

What about her?

She's really horny. I bet she's dying to be fucked right now.

Do you know her?

No.

Then how...?

Its the pimples, see?

Umm, no I don't.

You know what causes pimples, right? The extra flow of sex hormones. So if a chick has so many pimples, it means she produces a whole lot of extra hormones. That happens when they masturbate too much. So this girl clearly fingers herself three-four times a day. With that kind of a sex drive, she'd let you take her if you just said hello.

And my mother always insisted it was a result of not drinking enough water.

I was blessed to have friends who were so skilled in matters relating to women. One even explained an interesting phenomenon to me once.

You see, every time you put your dick into a woman's cunt, it gets wider. In fact, most prostitutes have been fucked so many times that you can easily put your fist in.
That's also where the Hindi word "bhosadike" comes from. Its a variant of an old Sanskrit word which means "A cunt you can put your head into". So its only the most slutty kind of whores who will have one of those.

The linguistics of fictional sex. I'm sure some school somewhere offers a PhD in that.

There was a time when I used to take the school bus. Most of the kids on it were far younger than I was. One day, the bus pulled up next to a school bus of a well-known girls school (of which at least one of my fellow bloggers is an alumna), when a brat of ten screamed.

HEY SEXY!!!

Stunned silence ensued. Dirty looks poured in at us from the fine ladies in the neighbouring vehicle - most of them directed at us older boys, who were (for once) blameless. Luckily the lights changed and the buses roared off in opposite directions.

YOU! KID! COME HERE!!

That was me, displaying ample indignation.

What did you just say?

Hee-hee. I said "Hey sexy" (with an impish grin)

Do you know what "sexy" means?

(shakes head)

Do you even know what the word "sex" means?

Ya! (An expression that sounds terrible when not uttered by a German speaker)

Well, what does it mean?

Its what homosexuals do.

Huh!!

Ya.

So tell me, what are homosexuals?

Boys who like boys.

Score one for gay rights, I guess.

Then there was the time a group of friends noticed a poster of an upcoming Bengali movie, starring a recently married actress, who had begun showing signs of the indolence that accompanies marital bliss.

God, look at how fat she's become.

Her face is still cute, though.

Yeah, but her arse is HUGE.

That's because her husband is so kinky.

Explain that statement right now.

Notice how her arse has grown while the rest of her is still the same. She doesn't even have a tummy.

And...?

So that can only happen if you have a lot of anal sex. Clearly he's giving it to her in the arse all the fucking time.

New butt reduction technique - don't break the Indian Penal Code.

It wasn't only the guys who were so grossly misinformed. I still recall the time I went to watch There's Something about Mary, accompanied by the Duck and some girls from our class. During the movie, the Duck and I were rolling in the aisles, but our female compatriots were strangely subdued. Their reaction during the now-classic "hair-gel" scene was surprisingly muted. After the movie, I overheard the following conversation.

So what exactly was that stuff on his ear?

I think it was some kind of cream. I know that guys use these lubricating creams sometimes.

Even while shagging?

I guess.

No, no! I'm quite sure it was a melted condom.

Sometimes, I find it difficult to imagine how family planning programmes are ever expected to work.

But the best of all was the following one.

What is "fucking"?

So, you know how a car has an exhaust tube...

(the remaining details are slightly fuzzy)

Do I really need to continue?

Maybe I'm overreacting. Its quite possible that people and attitudes have changed dramatically in the last five years, and I haven't noticed. After all, we were the last of the pre-cable TV generation who grew up in an era of blinding naivete.

To think now that I actually acted in a stage production of Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat, where I recited all my lines to my female co-star while tenderly holding her hand, without a single snigger from me or anyone in the audience.

The kids of today can just type in all their intricate queries about sex into Google's search bar, and be taken directly to the Jabberwock's blog, where all the answers to their problems can be found (along with a healthy dose of literature). If only that were true when I was young.

But thats just crying over spilt seed.