Canine to canine

Sunday. You wake up after a relaxing afternoon nap. You look at the time. Its 5:30. You remember you still need go shopping for your everyday supplies. You've been putting it off since Saturday morning, so its either now or the next weekend. You realise you can't do without razor blades for a week, so you shove yourself out of bed and make yourself decent enough to walk to the neighborhood market.

So, you're walking down the road, all relaxed, wearing your pair of shorts and an old T-shirt, glad that you made yourself get out of bed and go for this walk on this beautiful Sunday evening. As you're walking, you see another person approaching from the opposite direction. You're in a good mood, you feel like whistling to yourself, but you don't, thinking that passing-by women might take exception. You see a man walking in the opposite direction, towards you. When you're about to cross each other, your eyes meet. You give him a smile, a genuine 'Isn't it a nice evening?' smile, owing to your good mood. You expect him to return your good-natured gesture. Its not too much to expect of a fellow human being. A smile to acknowledge a smile. It doesn't have to be an ideal world for that to be possible.

But he doesn't. Instead, he gives you a scowl. A look, that, for a moment, makes you wonder if you've ever wronged this person in any way. You haven't. This is the first time you've ever seen this person. Then why, why does he seem to hate you? Why does he look like he wants to murder you? Why, oh why, does he look like he wants you to burn in the fires of Hell for all eternity?

Determined not to let it ruin your spirits, you brush it off as a one-off incident. You move along, but now you think twice before flashing a stranger a smile. In your joviality, you become daring, even to the point of recklessness. You decide to give the smiling thing another try. Surely, the scowl won't happen another time. The first guy was probably in a bad mood. In your naïveté, you place your trust in the humanity of humanity, and venture to push your luck. You walk along, ready to flash a smile to the next gentle-man who comes your way. You see one at a distance, walking towards you. From his silhouette, you can see that he's walking with the gait of a boxer who was wounded in his last fight and can't wait to exact his revenge. You walk along slowly, dreading the moment when his face comes into view. For some reason, you heart begins to beat faster, it has nothing to do with your lack of exercise or the length of the walk. You've barely walked 50 meters and you just know you're only another 25 away from an ideology-altering experience.

With your metaphorical finger on your metaphorical smile-trigger, you're having second thoughts about shooting. You wonder if you should have brushed your teeth this morning, you wonder how wide a smile you should offer so that he doesn't think of you as some sort of a pervert or just plain crazy. You finally decide upon a canine to canine smile, barely showing the beginnings of your first premolar.

A car, at high beam as always, comes at a high speed from behind you. His features are suddenly thrown into sharp relief. Shadows of his nose and brow on his face traverse a small arc on his forehead. The sudden exposure to bright light makes him narrow his eyes further which only heightens your terror upon seeing his face. In your stupefaction, you keep on walking, but your metaphorical finger slips, and your face lights up with a molar to molar smile, well beyond the premolar limit you had thought of. The man, now mere feet away, looks at you. He sees you smiling brightly at him through the blind spot in his eye left from the bright headlights of the car. He assumes you're laughing at his predicament and gives you another venomous look, your second of the day.

You don't understand what you did wrong. You had only good intentions in mind. All you wanted was to spread your cheer, share your happiness with the world, but the people of the world have only contempt for you. Your high spirits, flirting with the clouds mere moments ago, fall a long way and crash to the ground around you. You hear every piece break with the sound of your belief in the kindness of all humankind shattering. You walk on their shards, hoping that they won't cut through your rubber sandals and leave a scar at the bottom of your feet, which nobody would ever see, but would make it impossible for you to walk without feeling the pain in every step.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

As I sit here fondling the Les Paul guitar doodle on the Google homepage with my mouse pointer, I am instantly reminded of the real guitar I have lying around in my room. It’s a two year old Givson acoustic that was once a gift from three of my friends. After four years of college was wasted without learning anything of value that I didn't already know, my friends, who were earning their own money by then, decided to make an extravagant contribution towards their pursuit of my happiness. It was a birthday gift, something I had wanted for a long time but couldn't gather enough courage to make such a large investment in one of my whims. I was well aware of my dubious fancies and how I would be obsessed with something one day and want nothing to do with the next. I knew then that letting them buy it for me was a big risk. Not only would I have my own expectations, of learning how to play the damned thing to fulfill, those dear friends of mine would be looking at me with their scornful eyes if I failed to learn a single chord in two years.

I failed to learn a single chord in two years.

I'd like to think that I gave it a try in the beginning. I had already decided that I wouldn't take classes. I'd learn it myself from practice, diligence and good ol' hard work. I wouldn't even use a pick; fingerstyle is how a guitar is supposed to be played. Just your fingers and the instrument, that's the way it should be. I used to come home from office and bring out my brand new guitar and sit in front of the computer, looking at YouTube videos and trying to play the easy chords. I ended up being able to play a near passable version of the first 15 seconds of Pretty Woman. I didn't try much after that. I let other things take higher priorities in life. I had no time for the old guitar any more. So it lay there in its cover, its strings slowly losing their tension, its wood that once smelled heavenly slowly losing its fragrance, expanding in the next summer, retaining water from the air when the rains came, contracting in the winter.

One fine day, when I had nothing else to do, I brought it out once again and fiddled with it for a bit. It was no surprise that I had forgotten everything, even how to hold the thing itself. In my chagrined state of mind, I strummed the strings a little too heavily and the G-string broke in my hand, almost hitting my right eye. Glad that I had barely avoided losing depth perception, I decided to placate my vengeful guitar by getting it some new strings. Some research, shopping, clamoring, fiddling with the old metronome and frustration filled hours later, I managed to get it all together, tuned to the low E, ready to belt out covers upon covers.

And then I slept.

While my guitar gently wept.