Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Great Expectations

Kaptain Kantaap wakes up.

Kaptain Kantaap wants to get up from the bed but for some biological problem stays there for some time. So, he starts counting.

After some time, he realizes it is fine to get up. He gets up.

He walks towards the window and like one of those movie scenes hopes to open the window in a true philmy style and then plans of spreading his hands, be delighted at the beauty of the world and then break into some humm…Hummmm. Hmmm.

So Kaptain Kantaap opens the window, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He also doesn’t forget to put on a fake smile to fake him self into happiness.
However, a stench resembling shit or the one he smells near railways racks early morning enters his olfactory cells which immediately puts his sensory neuron cells into action to retrieve his hands to mouth and he opens his eyes to find out where the cause for this change of plans is?

He also sneezes as he looks out to realize that he opened the wrong side of the room. Kaptain Kantaap blames Earth’s rotation for this and wonders if it would have been any different if Earth were rotating the other way round. He also wonders would he have been a woman if earth was rotating the other way. But he felt he was better off being a male (barring the biological problem every morning) and therefore didn’t probe further into the effects of counter rotation of earth.

Meanwhile, he closes the window and turns realizing that his idea of the philmy morning was gone.
Little dejected, he turns, only to see a slipper hurling towards his private parts.

As of that moment one of his nerve cells got ready and sends a command to the numerous body parts to turn left with immediate effect. However, another lazy and slightly damaged nerve cell also gets into action at the same time (it was damaged and was therefore, being recycled, or to put it simply was in the process of being thrown out via the common exit passages in Kaptain Kantaap’s body; This nerve cell had got highly agitated because of this rejection and therefore chewed off some innocent nearby nerve cells as a sign of protest. The far off nerve cells hadn’t yet received their newspaper because of the strike of vendors (red blood cells) and therefore didn’t know this. This lack of information to other nerve cells made our evil nerve cell very happy and it was using it’s memory to think of all the villains it resembled in one of those films his captor, Kaptain Kantaap saw.) Now this nerve cell also interprets the rescue signal and finds it extremely amusing. It was thinking of a movie “Saving Private Ryan”, and here is the Kaptain Kantaap in a situation apt to be called “Saving Ryan’s privates”. It laughed.
Then it sent some other signals to some other tissues in some other part of the Kaptain Kantaap’s body. It didn’t know exactly which signal was going where but just that he sent many instructions to many other parts of the Kaptain Kantaap’s body.

The end result of this internal confusion was that Kaptain Kantaap’s privates could not be saved as some of the signals from the damaged nerve cell went to the same tissues- to whom the previous nerve cell had sent instruction to move left; the message from the damaged nerve cell being to smile.

Since, those tissues didn’t know how to smile (as their primary responsibility was to expand and contract and some times also move here and there) got confused as to which command to follow. While some tissues in the concerned organ went with the first message, some went with the second one, a large minority said they didn’t want to be awake now and therefore decided to stay put. Some other maniacally depressed tissues started crying which led to an uneasy feeling, which was further aggravated by the kiss of the slipper.

The other signal of the damaged nerve cell went to Kaptain Kantaap’s lips, which were asked to move left which they did and therefore, when the slipper hit Kaptain Kantaap’s privates, he had a twitch on his lips which looked like a twisted evil smile.

Other nerve cells being confused as to how they failed to avert the crisis, were still debating about the cause of this catastrophe happily unaware that another community member had chewed some of their community members off.

Mean while, Kaptain Kantaap while still struggling with the pain in his private parts heard his room partner shout at him “Your respected mother’s private parts”, and then his room partner described those private parts to Kaptain Kantaap.
While the room partner kept on shouting and abusing and bending two of his fingers on the left and right corners of his hand, he was also shouting why Kaptain Kantaap had opened the window….

Now, Anyone else seeing this- that what happened now and what shall happen pretty soon- would have thought, Kaptain Kantaap was crazy; which would have been the right thought to think of, but then would have-like every pretentious rational being who like to think they are rational- judged himself to be too judgmental about Kaptain Kantaap and in general about everyone else and therefore would have let go of the accidentally true fact about Kaptain Kantaap that he was a crazy fellow. He however would have joked about this to other people over a round of drinks calling Kaptain Kantaap a fool, which again was true of Kaptain Kantaap but since it would have been discussed over a round of drinks in a joking manner, even those people -like every pretentious rational being who like to think they are rational- judged themselves to be too judgmental about Kaptain Kantaap, narrator and in general about everyone else and therefore would have let go of the accidentally true fact about Kaptain Kantaap that he was a fool. The same people would have later on told other people who would have later through a not so small a chain of Chinese whispers told the same to Kaptain Kantaap(like; you know this guy my friend knows, it so happened one morning that….and so on.) And Kaptain Kantaap would have thought to himself after listening this story “Interesting. Seems like an eccentric guy” but he too-like every pretentious rational being who like to think they are rational- judged himself to be too judgmental about the said person in the story and in general about everyone else and therefore would have let go of the accidentally true fact about himself that he was an interesting and eccentric guy.

Kaptain Kantaap didn’t know that about himself but then Kaptain Kantaap didn’t know many other things- for instance that Earth did rotate the other way round morning and he would have been a girl if earth was rotating the other way on the day he was conceived- and admitting ignorance made Kaptain Kantaap happy.


In the mean time, Kaptain Kantaap ignoring his room partner’s morning rants, was wondering whatever happened to his philmy beginning of morning.

And then he realized it was a philmy morning.

He was not the hero of the philm.
He was the side-hero.
He thought of Dr. Watson, he thought of Hiren Bhojani of Jo jeeta wohi sikandar, he thought of Hrithik Roshan in Koi Mil Gaya, he thought of Al Pacino in “The Godfather” but then he realized Al Pacino wasn’t the side-hero so he felt apologetic and let it be.
Kaptain Kantaap realized it was a philmy opening to his morning where everything was not going fine and how he would continue having a bad day. He felt he had the power to see the future, he knew his day wouldn’t improve at all and so he won’t even try. He’ll just be careless and be the perfect side-hero in this philmy day of his life.

As Kaptain Kantaap walked towards the bathroom, he remembered there was no toothpaste and just as he thought this, he was happy.

Kaptain Kantaap was happy.