The Weather of Memory

It was raining outside, and the raindrops trickled down the windowpanes. She stared into the glass and her image looked back at her, piteously. “Far away”, she thought. And deep into her thoughts, she flew away, away to a land where everything was blissful. Colorful. There, she dreamt of a life of unhindered joy, where everyone was gentle and kind, where everyone did their business without poking each other’s noses. She had been staring into the glass for more than an hour when she came to reality, with a start. She checked the rooms. He was still not home. It was 10 PM already. Where in the world would he be at this hour, she wondered. Dead into the night, he was with his friends, drinking and making merry. Time to time, he took out a lump of dark matter nicely covered in plastic. He took a portion from it, pierced a needle into it, took a match, lighted it, and burned the portion to some degree. After that, he mixed the roasted matter with tobacco, rolled it up in a paper neatly, and...

It was when I was in class four that the year was 1992, and krackjack biscuits were all the rage that I fell in love with a girl. At the age of 12, one’s heart is still tender with your brain still knitting its lobes that you discover an extraordinary taste for biscuits. In 1992, krackjack biscuits went very well with our class four taste buds. Students with rich parents would buy krackjack biscuits and send them over to their best girls. And the best girls, in turn, would give them their best smiles that made the boys think they owned a fraction of the world, which was hardly true. Boy, that was some age! For the rich little guys, though… On a Tuesday afternoon with the sun high up in the sky, class four students were out in the open with the Dzongkha teacher telling tales of pancakes and old folks. I, for one, didn’t agree so well with the sun and the heat. I would go all red in the face and sweat to some acceptable degrees that I almost hated my Dzongkha teacher. A girl ...

In a room, where only silence prevails, is a man standing on the floor? In good time he looks up at the ceiling and sees a lizard equally staring at him. The same thoughts resonate through the room breaking the silence… The man thinks “a lizard hanging on to the ceiling”. Slowly, as you move up to the lizard’s standpoint you hear it think “a man hanging on to the ceiling”. Moral of the story: Point of view and choices of perspectives are what make even lizards right in this bamboozling world! 

Lethargy.  The last time he suffered this disease was when he was fifteen. Ever since the disease had put up so well with him.  Lying down in his bed alone, a prickly fear crept over his person that he decided to drink some beer. No sooner had the beer flowed down to his liking, he had a strong desire to smoke. He lit himself a smoke and looked at the side of the wall where portraits of his parents and siblings were put on.   His dad seemed to look at him with those stern eyes, as though, he was lashing him hard with those looks.  But, there were days when his dad lashed him even though he didn’t smoke or drink.  He let those thoughts linger on for some time. All the same, he went strong with beer and smokes. By the time, the beer was gone, it was already time for his bed. He slept like a log for a very long time.  No one knows if he got up after that.... ever!

Agent P from the intelligence department flew his car inches apart from the seawater-pump tank, and got into a building, which was, initialed “Cultural Productions” that was also floating in the stratosphere… Agent P, from the intelligence department, was also a superstar in the adult film industry, an occupation he took up as a cover-up to his core profession. In 2052, the only culture that survived of human originality was pornography. It was one-thing human beings valued, and the only thing that survived through the test of time. And adult movies were made in the original and human techniques. Other than that, even human reproduction happened through artificial methods. Human beings languished in an easy life of luxury. And all odd jobs were carried out by humanoids. But there were people like agent P who followed in the unrest of their spirits and sought after improving themselves and the people around them. As agent P got out of his car, he touched his little finger on his ...

There was excitement in the room. Our hero, in his acts of utmost love, was full of expectations: Expectations that spoke of something undone, that something that hints of perpetual waiting. And, at this moment in time, he was expecting a call, or even a short message text that we do prefer to call SMS, from the one he loved. And thus, time passed on, with a glass of whiskey by his study table. Well, if I have forgotten to brief my worthy readers of our hero who was a mild drinker that a few glasses of whiskey would have made him feel he had conquered the world, then I would have not done our hero justice. He sat there, our hero, with his ripened tomato eyes fixated at something he sought to find meaning and semblance to. His reason failed him as it always did. But those were strong gaze but the object didn’t budge a bit. The mobile phone just sat there with no life of its own. He took another sip from the glass of whiskey, his second glass for the evening. No extraordinary thou...

The sky was abuzz and filled with flying automobiles, buildings, and factories. The automobiles in the sky left a trail of water vapor behind them since they were running on seawater. In the year 2052, the concern was not carbon dioxide but water vapor. The little land left on earth after the greenhouse effect was in another great peril. Due to advanced technology, the automobiles started operating on seawater, producing gallons of water vapor, filling the troposphere with clouds. The clouds in turn produced lightning, thunder and rain in plenty that it rendered the surface of the earth inhospitable for human settlement.  The combined team of scientists, philosophers, engineers, and politicians of the world came to an agreement that the future of the earth was in the stratosphere. Accordingly, the earthlings shifted 11 km above the earth's surface and into the atmosphere. The mission to Mars had failed a long time back. The cities existed floating in the sky now, made poss...