Winter Flamenco
29.11.09
ihath
From the land of Arabian Nights, comes a story teller of a partially different kind.
Adventures of Frakash ... Page 4
27.11.09
Frakash encountered the ever vigilant and always watchful office manager that the geekmeisters called Jenny. Despite her charming appearance, she could be monstrous to an uninvited guest at the office. In no time, the stowaway garden refugee found himself being unceremoniously kicked out of the office.
Frakash was stricken with a thunder bolt of emotion. He never felt such anger in any of his past gnome lives. Wishing he could lay flat on his stomach and pound his fists and feet on the ground like he saw Laila’s children do sometimes, a dark shadow eclipsed his heart. “I belong with the geekmeisters, I want to be one of them”, Frakash found himself thinking. “No giant glass door, no office manager and no security system can keep me out”, he muttered to no one in particular. For the first time in his life, acts of mischief of a dark kind entered his fantasies; the kind that is forbidden even by the gnome essential book- Mastering the Art of Mischief of Every Kind. Frakash surprised himself with an impulsive act.
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Adventures of Frakash .... Page 3
21.11.09
That night Frakash sneaked himself into Laila’s backpack, the same backpack he saw her carry to work every day. His plan was simple, to slip himself into the office of the geekmeisters and later jump out of the backpack and try to mingle with the people pretending he was one of them. After all, he had spent one whole year observing the way Laila talked and behaved. With a bit of ingenuity and cunning he was sure to blend in. “Nobody will suspect that I am just a garden gnome”, he told himself.
In the morning, everything went according to plan. As Laila walked past the large glass front door of her workplace, Frakash was riveted with a mixture of emotions that rumbled inside his body the way hamsters partied in their burrows. He was amazed by the large glass door. He had seen little shards of glass in the garden, glass windows of a house, but never something so big. The door was smooth, pristine and so perfectly flat. The adventure had already started for Frakash and his heart was spinning like a twirling dervish. His plan worked like clockwork. Laila, busy thinking about the next brilliant design, never opened her backpack in the morning and never suspected the stowaway garden refugee on her way to work. Frakash managed to get through the security without a problem. As soon as Laila walked through the large glass door, Frakash jumped out of the backpack and into the front hallway of the office of the geekmeisters. “Wow! I made it, I am here!”, Frakash jumped up and down with excitement. As he looked around his new surroundings, he was awestruck by what he saw. The walls were perfectly white, not a single smudge or speck to be seen. The earth was covered with a plush and fuzzy light blue material that was so pleasant to touch; Frakash wished he could roll face down in it. It was so delightful; Frakash reasoned he didn’t even need to wear boots. Everything was clean; there was no dirt, no worms and no crawlies. The geekmeisters sat in perfectly shaped boxes, focused on their work. There was no noise, except for a faint sound of the efficient clicking on the keyboard in the background, which blended together into a harmonized buzz. There was no smell either, not of manure, not of dirt, not of anything. Frakash could feel the relief in his sinuses as they smelled nothing for the very first time in their tired existence. “Oh this place is heaven”, Frakash thought to himself as he closed his eyes to soak up the moment, but, alas, his rapture came to a hasty end.
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The Adventures of Frakash .... Page 2
13.11.09
One beautiful sunny day, Frakash was weeding and planting pink tulips in a garden that always needed oodles of work. It was the garden that Laila liked to call Laila’s garden, and Frakash called it the Heaps of Labor garden. Laila was the woman that lived in the house right next to the Heaps of Labor garden and Frakash would observe her when she sat on the sundeck, drinking a cup of coffee or working on her laptop. Laila was an interesting person to Frakash. She was a quiet sort that rarely said anything but when she did, it was sharp as an axe. Laila was nothing like Frakash’s gnome friends, she always used few well chosen words to express big ideas. She worked as a computer programmer in a software development company and would say words that Frakash didn’t understand; like server, upload and database, but the unknown words only made her seem more intriguing. Laila would sit on the sundeck for hours focused on her laptop, tapping on the keyboard with piercing attention. Every once in a while, her breathing would slow down, her body would stop moving completely and a fierce look would appear in her eyes. In those moments, Frakash wished he had a magical crystal to show him the thoughts forming inside Laila’s head. He was certain that intricately majestic worlds was forming and dissolving inside her head, right in front him, yet he was deprived of chance to see them. Laila’s children would poke Frakash in the eyes sometimes and her husband would try to foolishly compete with his gardening work, but Frakash enjoyed working in the Heaps of Labor garden because every once in a while he would hear something that tickled his imagination. One day, Frakash finished his work and decided that it was a good time for a sighing break. He sat underneath a shrub that seemed suitable for the pursuit and just when he was about to exhale, he overheard Laila talking with her husband. She was bragging about her latest victory at work: “Yesterday, I presented my new design ideas to the team; the boss loved it and said that my design was the most brilliant design he had heard in months. Everybody else agreed. Even Mr. Grumpy Bumpy had to agree that my idea was the best. I am the queen of the geeks.” Laila said to her husband with careful excitement. Frakash’s ears perked up as he heard a trace of sadness come next in Laila’s voice. “I love my work, but I feel a dark menace lurking underneath the surface.” Laila paused hesitating and then looked straight into her husband’s eyes and said, “Somebody among my co-workers …. Darling! Are you listening?.... is trying to sabotage me with doughnuts. It is as if an evil spell has been cast upon me. You know how hard I have been trying to lose weight in the last four months. Everybody knows that it is my number one goal of this year. Every few days, somebody brings free doughnuts to the office. I try to ignore them, but it is as if I am possessed by the sugar seduction fiend, I can’t resist.” Frakash overheard Laila complaining.“I can hear the greasy calorie bombs saying with an alluring voice: Come grab a doughnut and stuff it in your mouth. ” she continued.
Unable to sleep, Frakash spent the whole night thinking about what he overheard in the garden. “Wow! Laila uses logic to solve problems at her work”, Frakash thought to himself. “Instead of memorizing the same tired old list of magic spells that has been passed down the generations for thousands of years, Laila gets to come up with something new, something that she created all by herself, something creative”, Frakash nearly stopped breathing in awe of Laila’s work. He was tantalized by thoughts of presenting genius ideas to a group of geekmeisters and impressing even the smartest among them. He fantasized about a meeting where he presented impressive ideas and then as a reward the geekmeisters would bring him mouth watering doughnuts to feast on. He could imagine others looking at him with adoration admiring every word he uttered. O even Laila is looking at him in admiration for breaking the evil spell cast upon her using his magical skills. An irresistible urge to visit Laila’s place of work overcame Frakash. He tried to convince himself that an adventure would not suit his temperament and that routine and sameness was the foundation rock of his being. Yet all night he dreamt about eating doughnuts and roaming around between all those geekmeisters that call themselves computer programmers. The next day he tried to push those ideas out of his head, but a flood of yearning has been unleashed and Frakash was possessed by a single passion and that is to join the office of the geekmeisters. It became his goal, his calling, and his reason for existence.
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