A story

Dear Puppy Manohar,

The Ornots

"He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,	320
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you." - The Wasteland, T.S Eliot.

The hour glass of morality topples from time to time. And the grains of value in one section slowly slip in to the empty but slowly filling bottom. Villains of one era become the heroes of the other. And vice versa, of course. Grains that were the last to slip in to the apparently despicable bottom during one toppling epoch are the first to be perverted in the next.

And vice versa, of course.

Chandrashekhar Ornot aka Chandra rode on one such grain. He belonged to the family of hereditary skeptics who questioned their values and changed their lifestyle every alternate generation. So thorough was their belief in this way of moral evaluation, that after ages and ages they had come up with an extensive corpus of documents that enlisted every aspect of life (as discovered by them in all their limitations of visualizing the infinte spectrum that is life) Generation after generation, the eldest son in the family would be given to the cause with a heavy heart by the mother. He would then spend the next few years of his life putting a simple “Or Not” in the end of every “Rule of Life”, alternatively if there existed an “Or Not” already, he would have to erase it. Chandra was the eldest son of Mr. Ravikrishnan. He had to follow this tradition as did his father and all other elder sons of the Ornot lineage.

Chandra was not quite unhappy with his Ornot lineage. He liked his family. He loved them more than anyone else in this world. But some idle Tuesday, whilst watching kids play, he would wonder how normal and laid back a life of a conformist must be. He was not envious of conformists. But some where deep inside his heart, he felt it was cool to conform. It made life simple he thought. Simple enough to bother being an unwarranted maverick and adjust with people who dislike rebellion. Simple enough to avoid wasting long intelligent man hours in philosophizing life. Simple enough to circumvent the responsibility of coming up with newer “Fundamental Truths”. Truths, that will give way to new “Rules of life” for his eldest son to “Or Not”.

He felt sorry for his father. His father had spent a long time coming up with innovative “Rules of life”. He had lived those rules religiously. He had dedicated his entire life towards his principles. Principles that would change the way people thought, that would revolutionize an entire generation. He had to watch his only son, “Or Not” all that. He had to watch his son conform to all the old traditions and truths of his forefathers that he spent his whole life “Or not”ing. Every night, when he closed his eyes, Chandra saw the agonized face of his father. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t fathom the amount of pain he had caused his father just to continue the way of his ancestors - the same list of ancestors that his father was a member of.

Chandra had a gargantuan task in front of him. He had spent all of his adolescence and most of his early youth negating the “Book of Rules”. He now had to meditate upon some of his own rules. He had to research life and find new truths. This, he knew, took a lot of contemplation. It wasn’t that he was unsure of himself but he was now questioning the whole premises upon which this tradition was based. He was wondering if he could stop this madness (if he could be that audacious to call it that) so that his son would not go through what he had undergone.

The Plate Alarm Rings….

"I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of."

-Walden, Henry David Thoreau

Chandra was ten. He was called by his mom whilst playing.

“Chandra”, she screamed.

“Yes, mom.”

“Time for you to come home”

“But its just been an hour and 3 minutes; I still have 27 minutes to go”

“Time for you to come home”

“But I still have to time..”

Then he heard the rigging sound of the spoon being hitting on the steel plate. His lamenting was in vain. It was the “Plate Alarm”. There was no point arguing with anyone when the plate alarm rang. All the children in the town ran into their houses hopping straight to the comforting security of their fathers' hugs. But not Chandra. He knew he had to wait where he stood. In the center of the playground stood his mother drumming a huge spoon on a large steel plate. The whole village knew what to expect. But not Chandra. He knew he had to wait where he stood, he was told that once in his life time (and only once) his mother would come out in the center of the playground and play the “Plate Alarm”. He was told that when that happened, he would stand wherever he was, and memorize all the best things that have happened to him as a child. Relive them; those joyful moments of childhood in his mind, for that was it, his childhood was over. The “Plate Alarm” terrorized the other kids as they knew its ringing meant some little innocent Ornot has just lost his childhood. They felt fortunate to have not been Ornot. But somewhere in their little egalitarian minds, they felt it was cool to be one.

..to be continued

regards,

Baby Vaijayanthi.

oh baby you're so fine I wanna make you mine- backstreet boys