Second Innings!

 Hello People,

Today after almost a decade, because of the motivation from a few kind souls, I have made this brave decision to get back to writing. I am a little worn out and out of touch, so please bear with me here. 

Even until I turned 30, I was hopeful that I would become a published writer some day (Stop mentally guessing my age now!). Writing stories was all I ever wanted to do growing up, and this is the first time I'm telling this out loud in public because I had always had the fear of being seen as a failure if I were not able to get any of my work published. But I am older and wiser (!?) now to know enough not to care about how the world perceives you.

I have not published a blog in over 10 years, but I do have plenty of posts in my draft status, most of which are stories that I'd begun writing but had never gotten around finishing. 

I am going to post now the first few lines of a couple of the stories that I've got in my draft now and I am going to let my friends choose which one they'd like to continue reading - 

So here goes - 

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1. Mayhem in Alleppey

"The thing that we feared is going to happen during the next full moon day! -- #&X" 

Ben turned the letter around, hoping to find more. But there was nothing else. Just this one weird, mysterious line. He kept thinking about it for a long time, 'what' thing, 'who' did this 'we' mean? There were multiple questions running on his mind, but he had no answer. The only thing that he did know was that he was not the intended recipient of this cryptic note. That only intrigued him more, to find out to whom this letter was intended for.

The next day morning, it was a lazy, gloomy sort of Sunday afternoon in Alappuzha, the kind of day where one would want to do nothing at all but to cover oneself under soft blankets and sleep the day off until it dawns. Ben had planned to do exactly the same, when unfortunately , he was woken up by the harsh sound of people dragging some heavy wooden stuff right outside the window of the Houseboat he was staying in. Disturbed by the noise, Ben peeped out of the window to look at what the chaos was all about. 

What he saw mesmerized him, for, there were rows upon rows of beautifully decorated, sharp cornered, long paddled, shiny war canoes, being pulled into the lake by around 20 men for each canoe. Ben counted at least 9 such canoes being pulled into the lake that morning, one behind the other. He went out of the houseboat and caught hold of one guy from the group to know what was going on. 

What he gathered was that the war canoes were actually Snake boats being readied for the team of gents there to practice for their upcoming Annual Snake Boat races, known as Vallamkalli. And lo & behold, this year's Vallamkalli was happening on the 15th of that month, which was exactly the day of the next full moon!

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2. One night in Mumbai

It was 17/9/2015,  9.30 PM on a Saturday evening. Traffic on the road was unusually high that day. Lights on the vehicles approaching from the opposite direction were all in high beam. A giant "Thanni Lorry" (Water Tanker) was spraying mud-shower gloriously on anyone who dared approach it from behind. Karthik got a full blast of it while he was trying to over-take it. He was thinking to himself, "Velaila dhan munnuku vara mudiyala, ippo idhu veraya" (He couldn't get any further in terms of career growth, but did he have to get stuck even here?) .You would think this mud-shower was bad enough, but poor Karthik had been through a lot worse that day.

While driving back from work, he was thinking to himself, "What have I gotten myself into? Why did I have to leave my city and come here? Why the hell did I become an "engineer"?"

Basically from a small town in Coimbatore, he was accustomed to signal-free roads and free driving. Now having gotten a job in Mumbai, which was much more "hi-fi" than his city, where there was a traffic signal for every 2 KMs, where people spoke in languages he could not understand, where a slightly brownish skin was all it took to be treated like an untouchable, Karthik was feeling as out of place as possible. All he knew in Hindi was "accha" and "shukriya" which he had learnt from an old Tamil movie where Sowkar Janaki kept using these words to prove that she had returned from the North.

The only good thing for Karthik was that he wasn't alone. He was sharing a room (of course, you cannot dream of renting a room alone in Mumbai without handing over your paycheck to the owner) with 4 other Tamil guys, who were as efficient in Hindi as he was. They did have their occasional fun by going out and having a few beers, not in any fancy pubs or bars, but on the shore of either Juhu or Chowpati. Having come from a city where there were no beaches, the beaches of Mumbai were like heaven to them. This was also because the beaches were probably the only few places where you don't have to dress nicely, pay for an entry ticket and yet can enjoy the yummy street food without burning your pockets.

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So now you have read the beginning of both stories, do let me know which one you would want me to develop further into a fully finished story.

That's all for today, folks!