Bach Flower Essences Cats

Everyday, full or semi full, men who got down from the red bus paid their respects to the putrid corner- everyday, full or semi full, men on the way to the bus stop from the nearby offices, paid their respects to the putrid corner.

There were confused men who came and stood facing the grassy spot, tool in хэнд but were unable to do what they came to do. There were funny men who stood tool in хэнд, publicly trying to pee, while simultaneously trying to hold their breath and not gag, finally failing and giving up on all three.

The polished men just paid their respects however large or small, tucked in their tools, rubbed their hands together and contentedly carried on. The uncouth ones would spit at the ground while they peed or once they were done or both, as if admonishing the patch of earth for what it was.

"That's the thing about the stench of piss in the open- if it does not make you gag it will pull you to its source to go make a piss. Guess some of the conditioned behavior learnt as animals is yet to be let go off" thought Singh to himself, looking at the northwest corner of the plot.

It was a medium sized rectangular plot of land. Its eastern and western boundary was demarcated by a barbed wire fence and its southern end by a concrete wall. Adjoining the plot's eastern periphery was an apartment complex- a road perpendicular to the main road ran parallel along the plots western periphery. This road went on towards the office complexes.

Rajinders tiny paan shop was situated on this road. It was unlicensed and мейд of tin sheets. The shop sold various tobacco products- both legal and illegal- sometimes original but mostly spurious.

From its southern end up to its middle the plot was covered with thick green elephant grass. From its middle to its northern end, the plot was populated with patches of dried brown grass, shrubs, and littered all over with the discarded debris from repaired or renovated washrooms, of the nearby residential and office complexes.

Its northern edge had no fence and opened into the raised pavement. The pavement was what separated the plot from the main road running in front of it. A few feet to the right of the plot, on the pavement was the Bangurnagar Bus Stop.

On the pavement, Singh sat on his wooden chair, close to the noxious corner. He was too old to learn skills for a new job and too young to be solely taken care of by his sons. He did one thing and that's all he could do, sit beside the smell all day and somehow get through it.

The chair like Singh was old and rickety. It was brought by him from a junk store and tied together and repaired with whatever strips of plastic he could find, to make it usable. Singh who had migrated to the city nine months ago, was also old and in no condition - physical or mental to do work.

He had been hired from one of the numerous tiny unprofessional security agencies, which cheaply rented out professional security guards. And like the various strips of plastic on the chair, Singh had a newish blue security guard uniform, his only qualification to and sign that he was on the job. In a way they were both apt metaphors for each other - take away the external aid and both would cease to exist.

And as if aware of this they always remained close to each other. He never got off his chair for fear that if separated neither one of them would have a place in this world. Singh would sit on his chair for a few hours, then depending on the strength of the stench emanating from the corner, like a pendulum both Singh and the chair would move a few feet to the left or right between bus stop and the north-western corner of the plot.

That is how he did his work- work which required him to stand watchful and ramrod straight at the edges of the plot, and make two rounds along the periphery every hour. That is how he spent fifteen hours every day, on his official eight hour work day. For which he got paid almost the whole amount that was promised for working eight hours a day.

He was away from home, but it was much better than being in the village he thought. Back in his village he was always running into relatives and petitioners for of his first wife. And constantly being harangued by their entreats: that he should leave his second wife, and that only his first wife and her children had any rights over him.

He had married his first wife at the age of fourteen when she was twelve years old. He had three sons and three daughters by her. He had been married to her for twenty five years, when he left her and got remarried. His second wife was twenty years younger in age than his first wife. He had been married to his second wife for twenty two years and had two sons and daughter from her.

Singh had left his first wife saying that she was not pretty and that he never found her to be pretty. He said that the only reason he married her was because he was forced into doing so at a young age by his father, who wanted to pay off his own debts with her dowry. And once his father had died, now at age forty Singh was his own man and free to decide, and he wanted nothing to do with his first wife.

In a way it is quite OK he would say to himself. He didn't mind having to work in the hot sun- the sun was hot in his village too. He didn't mind that they got only enough water to bathe twice a week- he was old and didn't care to bathe everyday as it were.

He didn't mind just the one meal that was given to him every day- his daughter in law was no great cook. He didn't mind not getting paid his promised full salary, he only needed to show that he could earn so that his son would let him stay with them. He didn't miss that he couldn't talk to his wife, after their fight near the cooking stove she couldn't talk much anyways.

He didn't miss his old acquaintances, because they were all jealous that he had a young wife, while all of them had to wait for their old wives to die first before they could remarry, and their old wives unfaithfully refused to die. He didn't mind having to sleep out in the open in front of his son's shop- he quite liked doing so even back in his village, especially when there was a calf tethered to the front of the house. All this was fine.

But above all else Singh was a man of delicate sensibilities. What he just could not tolerate was the rancid decomposing smell of piss, which he was constantly enveloped in at work. It was a smell that irritated the air, as he said.

In this one olfactory shortcoming he missed his village. He missed the smell of the mango orchard that was in front of his house, he missed the smell of the jasmine flowers that came from the tree in his own compound. He missed the way his second wife smelled at the start of their marriage, and later the smell of his daughter in law when, he used to needlessly follow her about in the house.

He missed the smell of his perfume which was not available in the city - the special perfume, that the travelling village mendicant had sold him, which promised to make him virile and irresistible to women. He missed all those good smells. And in mid-afternoon, when the stench acquired a particularly pungent potency, he sat on the chair with his eyes closed and reminisced about all those smells.

Some days when the stench was especially bad, in his frustration Singh would get up from his chair, carry it in his left хэнд and walk towards the corner, as to find out as to what people had pissed that мейд it smell even worse than piss. It was on one of these trips to the heart of the stench that he noticed that there were dozens of small multi coloured flowers that grew right at the edge, inside the north-western corner of the plot, and that only the ones towards the plot seemed to be recently wet.

And after repeatedly seeing this for a while, he immediately мейд the astute observation that - unless city folk could stand in one place and piss six or seven feet away, quite a few thought it appropriate to move into such a position so as not to piss on the flowers. Then he thought that considering city folk didn't know much about nature, the level of deference shown by piss heavy men was noteworthy.

One night, when the noon day sun had been particularly harsh, Singh was sleeping outside his rented hut and had a nightmare. He dreamed that he was tiny and was running in a meadow while being chased by angry torrents of dirty water that wanted to drown him, and that the only thing which he could do to avoid drowning was to run as fast as he could and try to climb onto a flower stalk, and move from one flower to another, and he was running out of flower stalks. He woke up in a panic covered with cold sweat.

After gathering his bearings he looked around to see if his daughter in law was washing clothes and if that was the cause of the dream. The reason why she might be washing clothes outside at that time of night was twofold: one she was not allowed out of the house when people were outside, two and more importantly she was forced to wash clothes at night because the municipal water only came from two am to two thirty am on alternate days. However, on that particular night she was not doing so and thus not the reason for his dream.

Singh then settled back into his cot and thought how Singh - the local go to man, had hoodwinked them. He had sworn and told them, that they would receive water every other day for half an hour from two to two thirty and did not care to inform them that he meant from two am to two thirty am at night, because they did not clarify with him as to whether he meant day or night. How could a Singh, even a city Singh do this to another Singh, he thought.

He then muttered curses at city Singh and thought of how he always managed to come to their house to collect the rent, when only his daughter in law was at home. He then started to think about city Singh's own daughter in law, whom they had seen when they went to meet him after first coming to the city. And thinking of her he slowly subsided into sleep.

The next day he was sitting on his chair, with the first two buttons of his uniform shirt undone, the next two had come off due to his habit of inserting his хэнд inside his shirt to scratch his belly and snoozing under the sun. And in between snoozes he thought about the previous night's dream. And thinking about that, he had his next snooze. However this time he had a happy dream.

He dreamt that it was pleasant and he was sleeping outside on his cot during daytime in a meadow and that giants were standing before him and peeing large multi coloured flowers at him. At first he enjoyed this dream and the sensation of the petals falling on his face, as was evident from the contended grin on his face. Then he thought of the insult he was facing at the hands of the giants, and woke up with alarm.

And then it hit him: if there were more flowers on the plot, people would have to move farther and farther away to pee. And the farther away they had to move, the more reluctant they would be to pee there. And the lesser they peed there, the lesser it would smell, making his life much better.

He thought back to what his grandfather, used to say to him when he was a boy "even though man was natures woe, only nature can solve man's woes." He thought what a wise man his grandfather was, and how he died in a river flood. That was going to be his solution, to make more flowers grow on the plot so that people had to piss farther away.

He sat up and thought about how to put his plan in action. He had to do it in such a way where it would look natural. If people got the feeling that the flowers had been planted there to make them stop peeing in the area, they would piss back in a vengeance all over and around the flowering plants, flooding them with more nutrients than they could handle.

The flowers had to look natural, like nature intended for them to be there, to beautify their open air urinal. And no one would go piss on natures intended to beauty. Thinking that, the smirk on his face broadened into a wide smile and then turned into a condescending chuckle, as he marveled at his own sharpness and shrewdness. At once he could feel his chair going higher, his knees felt limber and there was energy in his legs.

He got up and walked over to the flowery corner. He was a man filled with hope. Standing in front of the flowers he felt the happy sensation to pee.

He had always мейд it a point in the past, not to add to his own misery by peeing there. He would always walk to the opposite corner of the plot facing the residential building and pee over there. And no amounts of complaints or abuse or threats to mutilate his manhood from the residents of the complex would stop making him pee there.

But that day was different. That day he could sense that the defeat of his olfactory tormentor was at хэнд. And as if to taunt his nemesis he mockingly peed in the very spot next to the wild flowers.

It seemed as if in retaliation, immediately the flowers send a thought to his mind. He didn't have the money to buy saplings, he didn't know of anywhere in the city where he could just get some flowering plants and most importantly, if men stopped peeing into the plot, the flowers would get no nutrients and die. His plan had failed even before it started.

And while his face regressing into a scowl, he had another idea. He realised that all he had to do was, pack up the northern periphery of the plot with the debris of broken sanitary ware, because as all men know, pissing on a broken piece of ceramic or plastic lying on the ground, is not nearly as satisfying as pissing directly on the ground. And so armed with this thought he mobilised his indolent nature to work.

Every day he would walk into the plot and gather two of the biggest pieces of flush tanks or basins or urinals that he could carry, and deposit them on the northern edge of the plot facing the main road.

At first the work was slow. Singh's body that had never worked hard a day before in his life and revolted at having to do this kind of work, so early in the day and so late in his life. His mind which prided itself that, neither it nor his body had to work hard before, for that is how great he was, revolted even more at the humiliation at having to carry the broken debris of the city folks plumbing.

He did feel a momentary pang of guilt for the pretty flowers, but then realised that their smiling faces were just taunting him at his misery- why the very thing that kept them healthy мейд him miserable. Their dying was necessary for his survival and so he plonked the broken basins on them. He was a man on a mission.

However Rajinder was starting to get very curious as to what Singh was up to, and when he finally figured out what the old man was doing, he panicked. Because Rajinder had set up his shop in that exact spot, to accrue of the dual advantage of servicing bored men waiting for the bus and content men longing for a post piss cigarette. And what Singh was doing was detrimental to his livelihood.

So Rajinder tried to impress upon Singh, as to how moving other peoples broken sanitary ware was beneath the stature of a man like Singh. When that did not get the desired response, he cautioned Singh, that in the city moving someone else's property, even broken discarded property could land one in trouble with the police. When that too failed, Rajinder threatened to spread that word, that Singh had lost his mind from sitting under the hot sun, and if he was so hell bent on doing work, why doesn't he do the actual work that he was paid for?

Singh was a sensitive man, but more than that he was a principled man. Once he figured out how a certain action could benefit and improve his lot, no matter what the cost or inconvenience to others, he would see it through to its end. That was his principle, a principle he would never compromise on.

So he was unmoved by Rajinder's words. No amount of flattery or inducements of free betel nuts or threats would stop him. He told Rajinder that, he was not doing work for works sake but that his work had a higher purpose.

He was trying to better his life by stopping people from pissing all over it, or rather so close to it.

At first the results were negligible. Men continued to pee around the ceramic debris, only a little inconvenienced at having to move about to find a spot between the debris to pee into. But within a fortnight Singh had managed to so pack the periphery- that people standing on the pavement had no access to any open ground to pee on.

And slowly and steadily the flow of people who came to pee there reduced to a trickle, and for want of nourishment the smell began to evaporate away. As if mirroring the effect, the small crowds around Rajinder's shop too started thinning.

Singh was a man besides himself. He had learned another valuable life lesson, "if nothing else works then try hard work" he thought. He was sitting on his rickety chair next to the plot, inhaling the exhaust fume heavy air minus the stench of piss, toying with the idea of adopting this maxim into his life's philosophies and, to pass this knowledge onto his grandchildren, when Shah was being driven along the same road.

It was evening, Shah's had left from office in his sleek long silver Мерседес, driven by his chauffeur. Shah was in the back seat along with his latest pretty young secretary. The car had tinted windows, and he was giving her a personal lesson, as to how things are done in the real estate business, when he happened to chance upon the road facing open plot.

Shah was the owner of a real estate company- he had been driven by the plot almost on a daily basis, on his way to and back from office. But he had never paid much attention to the open sewer of a plot that came on his right until then. Yet somehow that day it managed to catch his attention.

Maybe it was because his new secretary wasn't doing a good enough job of handling his business, that his attention drifted out of the car, maybe it was because there were no more crowds standing at the corner of the plot and so he got a clear view of it, maybe it was because not being drenched in the smell of piss increased its appeal, and maybe it was because the plot was cleared of its white and off white porcelain and plastic pock parks. Whatever the reason, when he saw the plot, it immediately caught his eye.

Two days later the big sign board on the plot which read 'S.S. Associates - this plot under legal proceedings and sealed and not for sale, by notice of the High Court' was removed and replaced with a board that read 'Property of Shah Builders - under construction apartment complex, trespassers will be prosecuted'.

Singh and his agency were fired. Shah hired new security guards from a professional agency. The chair was confiscated as part of their property by the new guards, broken and thrown onto the plot.

For Short Humour Stories And Long Despairing Poetries: