Simple Pleasures...

- Buried in a pile of paperwork, you get distracted by a spider nonchalantly making its way across the table. Driven by your first impulse, you squish it with one swift motion of your hand. You feel invincible, ready to take on the world. Nothing seems impossible anymore.

- Its three o' clock on a Saturday afternoon. After a sumptuous lunch and hours of your favourite television show, you decide to sleep. Curled up under your comforter, you doze off without setting an alarm. Without stressing about what you need to get done when you wake up. Without the slightest bother in the world, you sleep. Like you never knew it to be.

- You look outside the window of your apartment, on a dark gloomy day. Amidst all the bland grey monotone, you catch the slightest hint of orange in the leaves. Autumn is here. You smile.

- You wake up in the morning to a call from an old friend. From thousands of miles across. You talk about all the times when you randomly met, sat down together with a steaming cup of coffee in hand, and hours passed by in idle conversation. You talk about the last time when you met at a party and danced to loud discordant notes all night long. Carefree. You talk about your last heartbreak and how in hindsight it seems like such a waste of precious time. You laugh at your own stupidity. Your friend laughs with you. From thousands of miles across. A touch of melancholy. A moment of unfiltered joy.

- You spend a weekend working alone. And at sundown, just when you are about to leave, sad that the day is over, you step outside and find yourself caught in a hailstorm. Tiny, ice crystals falling on your head and covering your foot-trail in white. A muffled pitter-patter. Like the low vibrato of a drum. You catch the scent of wet earth. You still find yourself fascinated by the arresting beauty of it all.

- You have a particularly rough day. A friend tells you that everything is going to be fine. You know it probably isn't. But you want to be naive. You remember your mother telling you the same when you were a kid. Whether you fell down the stairs and hurt yourself. Or you failed an important test. 'Everything's going to be okay'. There's a strange sense of comfort in those inane, meaningless words. The familiarity is reassuring. You want to believe. You feel better instantly and start over.

- Its your best friend's birthday. You try calling at twelve. She doesn't pick up. You leave a minute-long message and hang up. She never returns your call. You think about the time when you stayed up nights planning her birthday. Hours of running around. Secret late-night meetings. Figuring out logistics. Making it happen. All to catch that sparkle in her eyes when she sees it all. How simple it all used to be. Uncomplicated. Spontaneous. Impulsive.

- You spend hours squinting at your computer screen, reading out your favourite apple pie recipe. Its your first time. You're nervous. The adrenaline. You hear the ping of your oven. Your heart is beating in anticipation. You slide the tray out carefully. It looks beautiful. The crust is golden. Crisp. You heave a sigh of relief. You let out a cry of elation. You take a picture and save it for posterity.

- You plan a trip home after a year of skype and expensive phone calls. You book your air tickets four months in advance. You spend hours excitedly planning every day of your vacation. Who all to meet, where all to go, what all to do. You want to make the most of those days. Just the thought of it gives you a high. Enough to take you through the rest of the year. In that moment, it all seems like a breeze.

- Your sister's getting married. Your friend's having a kid. Your cousin makes it to the school of his dreams. Your dad wins his first golf tournament at sixty. You're thrilled for them all. They all seem like your achievements. Your victories. Your moments of glory. 

The Art of Manipulation

Its subtle. Its divine. Its rare. And most importantly it works wonders, and you're hardly the prototypical 'obvious' villain in the exchange. At least that's what I tell myself - 'Taking advantage of naive, unsuspecting (often dumb) people to get your way is OKAY'. And that's enough to squash whatever little conscience I have left. Peace! But seriously, don't you think conscience is overrated? I mean what the hell do you get out of it, except maybe earning the 'you're a good man' tag that doesn't really do you any good in the first place. You get laughed at, trampled upon, taken advantage of, every waking hour of every single day and you almost never win anything. So if you ask me, get out there and fight your own battles and fight them dirty, as a wise man once said 'All's fair in love and war'. And in this world its mostly war. And aren't we all headed to hell anyway? Sounds like a really fun place to be!

But I digress. Let's get back to the topic of manipulating naive trusting souls. *rubbing hands in glee*

Here's an exchange I recently had with one of my roommates. Lets call him Bo.

Day 1: I entered the kitchen one evening and found a pile of dishes in the sink, the kind of thing that makes me seethe. The counter-top was a mess, strewn with shells and what looked like octopus tentacles to me, which I later found out to be pork intestines! I'm generally quite accepting of different kinds of food that people are into and I'm sure when cooked, the intestines would turn out to be delicious, but I don't necessarily want them hanging off the oven door for show. Nope. Not having it. But somehow the dirty dishes disturbed me more. There's something about half eaten meals floating in a pool of water that grosses me out. The prospect of having maggots in your house maybe?

Me: Hey Bo! (Trying to be exceedingly sugary) What you cooking?
Bo: Pork. Umm. Ma-ki-ng soup. (Dragging every syllable.Yes. His English is more than stunted.)
Me: Pork Soup? Sounds delicious. What are these? (pointing to the mound of chopped up octopus tentacles. I was convinced it could be nothing else.)
Bo: PORK!! (I could sense from his tone that he was slightly annoyed.)
Me: (Gasping) Are you sure? Isn't it octopus? (Flailing my arms in the air and doing a little bit of a tribal jig, trying to make them look like tentacles, quite unsuccessfully ofcourse. And in case you're wondering that the question was rather dumb and he obviously knew what he was cooking, in my defense, I doubted his limited vocabulary and thought maybe he referred to all kinds of meat as 'pork'. Ahem.)
Bo: NO! Pig.
Me: Got it.

Slightly offended at being cut short this way and determined to finish what I started, I continued.

Me: Bo, the sink is almost overflowing and beginning to stink. I think 'we' should get the dishes done soon. Don't you think? Sometime tonight maybe?

Without a word, Bo quietly proceeded to do his dishes, frantically scraping away at the two week old, dried out gravy clinging to his plates. I barely suppressed a smile, when I saw the sweat on his forehead and defeat in his face. Revenge is sweet.

Day 2:  I entered the kitchen the next day and found Bo standing in front of a wok of boiling sesame oil, releasing large chunks of chicken into it, rather ungently. And as expected, with every release, there was a deafening sizzle, a cloud of smoke, and spurts of oil all over the chimney walls, counter-top and the floor. My sandals squeaked as I tried to make my way through the oil puddles. Way to go, Bo! ( and that rhymed! )

Me: Bo, is that chicken you're cooking?
Bo: Yes. Taste? (His face lit up)
Me: (unable to refuse) Sure.

I dipped my spoon in the curry and greedily gulped it down. It was hot and had ten times more spice than I could handle. I almost choked. But a couple of tears escaped me.

Bo: (disappointed by my reaction) No good?
Me: (wiping that treacherous tear) Its great. *cough*

Bo went around his business, with a smile of contentment on his face. I guess I AM a good actor. Recovering from that unprecedented assault on my alimentary canal, I continued with renewed enthusiasm.

Me: The kitchen floor is really dirty. 'We' should clean it up sometime.

Bo runs to the next room, and re-enters a minute later with a mop in his hand. How sweet! But well it's oil. And dry mopping would just end up spreading it uniformly on the kitchen floor, thus laying out an impeccable death trap for all of us. No, thank you. Riding high on my manipulation success rate so far, I continued.

Me: Bo, that won't do any good. You know what 'we' should do? 'We' should get some soap water instead.
Bo: Sorry. Me has assignment. Submit tomorrow. Clean after. Please?
Me: (alarmed at the prospect of having to do it myself) Err.. It wont take too long. Its really easy. Wait.

I ran to the bathroom, fetched some soap water, and came back. Animatedly splashing the mop in it, I continued.

Me: See. Its very easy Bo. Dip it in the water like this. And then take it out and....
Bo: Late. Assignment. Good night.

And before I could say anything more, he fled.

Moral of the story, it doesn't work all the time. But hey, one in two times is not so bad eh? Also, my victim turned out to be smarter than I thought. Maybe you'll have more luck?!