Butterflies and Hurricanes

So, for the first time ever, in the history of my blogitude, I have found someone worthy enough (and willing) to write a guest post for my blog! Presenting, Mr. Nitin Awesomesauce Kumar, and his hilarious piece about a phrase I’m going to probably stick to my office desk very soon. 

You can’t hear it but I’m screaming. And scratching my head. And screaming some more. All because of this guest post. What I wanted to write was a short story – because that’s what I do. But I was asked to crawl out of my comfort zone and not write fiction.

It is so easy for me to introduce a bear named Subbu and a peacock named Blukoli and make up a story that somehow ends with Blukoli slurping Subbu’s intestines and dancing in the rain, showing off beautiful, blood-splattered plumage. But I won’t go down that road.

I am Nitin Kumar, a friend of this wicked sunshine called Astha. When I am not picking ancient bits of food from my beard, I write short stories at www.facebook.com/365shortstories. Shameless marketing out of the way, ladies and gentlemen and genderless, green-colored blobs, today, I will tell you all about NALE BAA BHOOTA and how it pushed me to fall horribly in love with two things – ghosts and words.

When I was a kid, a long time ago, my mom told me the story of NAALE BAA BHOOTA. The Kannada-to- English translation, quite literally, is COME TOMORROW GHOST. In the story, there is this demon who comes to your door in the dead of the night and calls out your name. Why? So that you come out and become demon dinner. But people were smart and would shoo away this evil spirit by writing NAALE BAA on the doors. COME TOMORROW.

My mind exploded into a thousand pieces when I first heard it. It was pure desi ghee-nius! Think about it. Each night the evil spirit hovers up to your door, sees COME TOMORROW and goes away scratching its translucent head confused. Look at the economy of language, the brevity. No reams and reams of mantras and hours of nasal chants. Just two tiny words. I found it beautiful. I still do.

Two words were all it took to reduce the image of a malicious, cackling demon to a buck-toothed little ghost going, “D’uh!” in my head. This is the story I will be telling my kids in the future. And hope they learn the same lessons I did.

Lesson #1: Appreciate the power of the written word. Keeping it simple is the most important lesson in writing. And most other things in life.

Lesson #2: The only way to kill monsters is to drag them out of the grey darkness of your skull and watch them bleed on the whiteness of a fresh paper. That’s why I write ghost stories sometimes. I write them when I am scared. And I find that I am not scared anymore.

Lesson #3: Always, always pre-soak pasta to have it cook faster. Don’t give me that look. I know you’ll remember this lesson forever!   And that’s it. Thank you for reading!

Thank you so much for this space, Astha. Hope you like this. Thank you for your stories. Thank you for your friendship.

Love you.

P.S.: http://on.fb.me/1MG9jf8