“Daddy?”

He smiled at her whimsically “What is it pumpkin?”

She bit her lip and tried to hold the tears back from her eyes. She didn’t want to hurt him. But she had to ask him.

“Daddy, is Ma really in heaven?”

He closed his eyes and bowed his head. His gentle Melissa was gone forever. He tried to be patient with their daughter just as Melissa had taught him to be.

Put the anger and grief on the back burner. She would have said. He could actually hear her say the words in his mind.

How he missed her sweet warmth.

He looked at his daughter and tried to smile.

“Yes, sweetie she is in heaven.”

“But daddy!” She chewed her lip just like her mother used to do when she was under tremendous stress; the same gentle chewing of the lip between the upper and lower teeth when the biopsy reports said she’d live less than six months. His brave Melissa was gone leaving behind a grieving husband and a confused daughter.

He shook his head and went back to weeding the earth with renewed vigor.

Tears fell from his eyes, tears he didn’t want his daughter to see.

She sat back on her haunches and watched a little ladybird crawl up her arm.

The beautiful black spots on its red shell reminded her of the times she had gone ladybird hunting with her mother in the fields, she remembered the times when they had sat together and eaten berries freshly plucked and slept under the same maple tree.

Her chest tightened and she could breathe. She was swept up in a maelstrom of grief but couldn’t reach out to her father. He no longer smiled; he couldn’t look at her in the eye. Grandma told her to give him time. He will come around she had said as she hugged her little body against her ample bosom till she couldn’t breathe.

Grandma hugged her too tightly nowadays but her father couldn’t bring himself to touch her.

“Daddy!” She tried again, a little more hesitant this time. Had she done something wrong?

He brushed a hand across his eyes. Jesus, he didn’t know how to comfort his daughter.

Throwing the weeds aside he decided to take a breather and talk to the only precious thing he was left with.

“Tell me honey.”

“Daddy if mama is in heaven why are we here?” She blurted out. Apprehension made her shiver. She had finally asked her father the question that had been plaguing her for a while.

“Here? Because this is your mother’s grave.” He told her trying to keep the impatience out of his voice.

The harshness of his tone made tears spill from her eyes. He cursed himself; she was so fragile.

She brushed her tears away just like he had a few minutes ago. So much pain, how were they to deal with it?

He tried again

“Honey, I come here because it makes me feel close to your mom.”
She crawled up to him and snuggled in his lap. She was again a five year old wanting comfort from her father. He hugged her close to his chest while his heart broke.

“But daddy it saddens me to come here. I miss mama even more.”

He rocked her silently and watched the sun go down. So many memories lay under the maple tree. The leaves of the tree whispered gently along with the breeze. The sky turned molten giving the few fluffy clouds a silvery- gold sheen.

The lights in the farm came on. Melissa’s mother must have made lasagna. She was trying to fill in a gap she never could but bless her heart she was a rock of Gibraltar he and his daughter had leaned on. She had held the family together.

He buried his face in his daughter’s hair and drew in the clean fragrance. His mother in law had given Kelly a bath. He had been neglecting his daughter. His grief had made him selfish. He hadn’t been there to comfort Melissa’s mother either.

He gathered his daughter up firmly in his arms and tried to speak in a lighter tone “Tell you what we will talk to your mom during Grace before dinner what do you say?”

“Will mommy hear us Daddy?” She looked up at the gaunt face of her father.

He gave her a reassuring smile

“Sure she will honey.”

She laid her head against his shoulder and he walked towards the porch of the farm house where Melissa’s mother waited for them.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

-----Charles Bukowski

Crocodile tears streaming down satin cheeks might melt the male heart but rarely does too get beyond a certain point on other women. Why? That is because the fairer sex knows that tears come easy to some of their sisters. Scold them and a thousand rivers flow. They snivel into their hankies, dupattas or pallus. Moppy women are tedious to bear and are similar to the emotional wrought ones.

Emotional Wrecks Or Drama Queens:

These damsels are always in distress and demand regular men play Lancelot to their Guinevere. These divas swallow men whole. These kinds of women abound - they expect someone lse to save them from their lonely marriages, their boyfriends, their parents, their siblings, their jobs, etc. Their hearts are forever broken and wounds never heal. Generally women are able to sieve the fake wolf criers from real victims. It is intuitive.

Menstrual Cycle As a Weapon-

Some use their monthlies to garner sympathy. Of course there are those who suffer tremendously - myself included - but to make it a tear jerking scenario doesn't work every time on women. It isn't a form of illness or affliction but a natural phenomena that makes us women. If it hurts, get some medicine, use a hot water bottle, go lie down for a while but if the bleeding is bad, a visit to the Gynecologist would be better than being an periodically ailing damsel.

The Flirt: These are easy to deal with. With the high heels, swanky clothes and tinkling laughter they use their sexuality to impress the opposite sex. They instinctively repel the insecure and the feminists alike. To use one's sexuality alone to be popular rarely works after a while since everyone cannot be Mata Hari in the making.

Lies and Sweet Nothings: The ones with the sweet tongue are the toughest to deal with. Their forked tongues can bring empires down. Manipulation, lying and flattery comes easy to such women. They revel in causing conflict. Not only do men fall in their traps but so do women with simple hearts.

The Matriarch Syndrome: These women use their age, position in the family to have their way. These are the control freaks who would run a finger and show the dust even in the most sterile cleanest environment. No one can best these kinds of ladies. They know best and rule with an iron hand.

Best Way to Deal With Such Women: We may detest them, try our best to avoid them but when circumstances demand interaction there are a few tried out tips that seem to work. Once we know the kind of personality, we are dealing with more than half the battle is won. A heavy dose of humor helps when it comes to dealing with the female dictator; with the forked tongue women, humility works, along with taking everything that they say with a pinch of salt. With the hot air heads keeping them at an arms distance works, mostly.

The hypochondriac ones ones require heavy doses of Oxycontin to zone them out painkillers and a matter of fact attitude works to keep their hysterics in control 

For the emotional wrecks, deliberate deafness is the perfect solution. 

And when all else fails, the best thing to do is just cut ties and run for one's life for once tangled in their webs getting out with a sane mind is kind of difficult.

Protests were made by those who cannot fathom why we are supposed to identify with psychopaths like Dexter, or Tony and his gang and Anne Rice's books considered to be against Christianity for identifying with demonic forces.

Dexter kills but only those who he sees as evil, Tony likes children and animals yet our value system demands that we condemn them as heinous human beings and Lestat loves those whose blood sustains him.

Dexter can be seen as a superhero who kills the villains instead of handing them over to the cops and Tony Soprano just a New Jersey mobster to be taken down but not someone totally evil and likewise Lestat and his ilk feed on the dregs of society.

That's how they would want us to perceive them since that is how they justify their own evilness to themselves. And like wise due to our love for them we try to find innate goodness in souls twisted with perversion and evil desires.

The envelope is pushed even further when we don't want them to be caught by the good guys. We don't want Lestat to be staked or Dexter or Tony to face the chair. Why?

Evil deserves to be eradicated and righteousness demands the right to surmount. That's the mantra we all grew up with. The meek shall inherit the earth but as sinners is it possible that we tend to understand the motives of other sinners and at least in the fictional world want them to have the last laugh?

Another show that has the morale brigade up in arms is a new CBS show called Swingtown. Its more like an adult version of That 70's show where the old and new world collide. Though the storyline of Swingtown centers more or less around the burgeoning sexuality of a teenager and her mother, it also tests our own levels of social acceptance.

Most of us consider swingers to be weirdos but when a perfectly happy couple decide to sleep with another couple not only do we, as viewers, find ourselves grappling with our perception of right and wrong but reflect upon the insecurities of the characters themselves who otherwise had led conservative lives in the past.

The couple who continue to lead a normal life seem boring and stodgy whereas the ones willing to move with the trends of the time hip and daring.

While there is more to Swingtown than I'm discussing here, what got me thinking was the deliberate manipulation on the part of the script writers to make the regular couple seem mundane. Similarly in Dexter and The Soprano the scriptwriters made the cops ineffectual and the bad guys devious, charismatic and intriguing.

That, in my mind, is the crux of the matter just like in SpiderMan 3 where Peter under the influence of evil becomes cool, confident and oozing with sex appeal.

We are made to think that heaven is boring and hell is entertaining, that regular Superheroes like Superman are simplistic whereas dark heroes like Batman, Hellboy, Hulk or even Iron Man are far more interesting. Where simple living and being content is not interest worthy but a spicier, adventuress living for the moment, economically prosperous life is more pleasing.

Does media then have some sort of an unconscious effect on our psyche? Where we may find ourselves accepting more than just some liberal change in social norms such as swingers and take it to a higher level where we empathize with certain kinds of psychopaths if they are packaged and marketed just right?

Tales of suave criminals such as Charles Sobraj abound and titillate the public . People fall in love with murderers and marry them and there are times when crimes of passion intrigue the masses and fiction then replicates reality as it happened with the Nanavati Case back in the fifties. We tend to think we are saner than these people who find glamor in lives of criminals but then in the fictional world find ourselves seduced by evil or it that we find our own innate darkness reflected in their deeds?

The book is as creative as the title. Old household items can be used in the garden and some even  add that extra creative touch to the garden like putting an old teapot near a pond for a toad to reside in. The book provides tips on how to get rid of weeds, harmful insects and on how to keep pets away from ponds, seedlings and expensive plants. Just about any thing can be recycled and it gets the mind ticking in the right direction.

Constructing A Garden

This book is a slim read but with useful information on the planning, designing and maintaining of gardens. Ideas are provided for landscaping of formal and informal designs and even the placements of plants around ponds. 

Different kinds of mulches and paving materials have been discussed along with the right kind of methods for pruning, sowing, propagating, division etc have been shown with pictures.

What makes this book handy is the specific details provided for those without any prior training in gardening.

Both these books are available at Strand (Bangalore). Another book which is a pleasure to posses is-

The Cook's Garden 

Nothing satisfies the soul than to eat what grows in one's garden. Since I am still a newbie when it comes to growing vegetables this book has been of great help. Apart from providing information as to which herb, fruit or vegetable should be grown at which season the book also provides handy recipes and preserving techniques.

The pictures provided are pleasing to the eye and the information encourages us to put our gardens to use rather than just please the eye.

Another book that can bring the family together is-

Fun With Gardening 

This book comes in handy to get small kids excited about growing vegetables and herbs in their backyard. It provides imaginative ideas like having a little water garden in a Tupperware or designing a little potted desert with cacti along with growing potatoes, bulbs etc.

This book is also available at Strand. As it happens there are some Indian gardening books available at Blossoms but are more detailed, informative but less exquisite to the eye.

These books have helped me get better acquainted with nature and provided hours of relaxation.

Shyamalan could take a few lessons from Carter Smith. The trauma suffered by the victims in The Ruins was far more palpable than by those in The Happening.

While Shyamalan's movies tend to fizzle somewhere in the middle, The Ruins kept a tight rein on the suspense right till the end. There was no hidden subtext in The Ruins unlike Shyamalan who continues to harp on the post-9/11 effects on American psyche.

The ending of Carter Smith's movie was tinged with dry humor, reflecting touristy ignorance whereas Shyamalan's movie ending was oversimplified and illogical, given the human need to take all kinds of preventive measures when faced with an extreme situation which may cause total annihilation of human existence.

The Ruins and The Happening are both about nature turning against man but that's where the similarities between the two movies end.

Once I returned home I found myself drawing the curtains once the sun went down. My sense of security demanded that before I left home I draw the curtains and at night keep them closed.

Today I left the curtains open and at about eight in the night found a little red light dancing on the LCD screen and on the wall. Some asshole was pointing a lazer pointer right inside my house!! Fear engulfed me and I drew my curtains.

Was that asshole in my garden? I checked my doors, called out to my helper to check the place out and he found nothing. Obviously the miscreant stopped doing it when he saw me draw the curtains.

What kind of a motherfucker would do such a thing?! Bloody uncivilized gavaar!!

The celebrity Web site TMZ posted a 25-second snipped of the video Wednesday, but pulled the clips down Friday evening after a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order requested by Troyer's attorneys.

U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez wrote that Troyer's motion "demonstrated that he will suffer irreparable harm to his reputation" if the tape is distributed.

Reparable harm to his reputation? How? He wasn't one of the dwarfs doing Snow White, right? Okay, my bad in this world of being politically correct.

Doesn't he want to be known as a hot stud muffin? A delicious little morsel? French gourmet? A little bit of heaven?

Frankly it isn't his reputation that would be harmed but his psyche.

Verne Troyer (a.k.a Mini-Me) sex video is out for the highest bidder and the bid may go up to one million dollars. Yeah, no question mark there- one million? thats it? Size really shouldn't matter, right?