the deZiners/definers.....

Summer of 2000, and way into October now. We had already celebrated K's birthday followed by Gandhiji's Birthday on the very next day. Two more elite members of the 'Clue Clutz Clan' had their birthdays in the same month, Babu & ACP; practioners of 'non-violence' or 'ahimsa' as we call it. (P.S, if you have no clue of Gandhiji, feel free to use GOOGLE technology to educate to yourself. Of the thousand search results, 90% are bound to be relevant this time). Let me take this moment to introduce these three close friends of mine from a long list. (Guys, if you happen to read this post, Be happy; I am introducing y'all to the world!!)

K - 5 ' 11" tall, weight....? hmm.. lightweight, brainy but lazy, recharges sporadically (sometimes it feels like starting a 1940's cadillac with ignition trouble), at times he is the Bentley of 2025; a class apart.

Babu - Short for Anand.S (that's our code), 6 ' 2" (i always wondered if the air was cleaner 3 inches above me), weight...? (heavy weight category - 'those times'), a penchant for depicting time in various scales (2 min = 30 - 60 min on an average, hence a true 'hindustani').

ACP - not the ‘asst. commissioner of police’ (but short for Dhawal M, how he got this code is still a mystery but paparazzi has been hard at work for years), an average frame, height is not technically important as he walked with an inclination of 10 deg to his left, an efficient story teller, our common entertainment for the five years. His stories used to be so efficient, that he had answers to all the flaws and never left a trail to question. But then that’s why he had better TRP ratings than Bill Cosby.

Our common mission – submit a study; title we hadn’t figured out yet. Half way into it, and still not aware of the requisites we turned to our common entertainment source ‘ACP’ to break the shackles (we had relaxed for too long). As usual, he seemed to be inspired by a lizard on the wall. He started his story.
“I saw this man recently….”
I was quick to interject….”Where? In Ranip?” (That was his home town, and all stories had to have some relevance to his home town)
“Obviously” he replied nonchalantly.
He continued; “So, this guy; middle aged, runs a cycle repair shop. He was unique. He used to catch these house lizards by its tail and throw them….”(Now, his action was crystal clear – an open mouth and made a sound so as to indicate that he swallowed it).
As serious as his face and explanation was, we knew it was fake. So we asked “What do you mean? That’s not possible”.
“Why not, it’s simple”, was his reply.
“Sounds simple, but why on earth would one do that? We want to meet him to believe you.”
“Oh. He died yesterday” was the spontaneous reply. We knew that was coming.
K said “Oh. Shucks!! That must be a feat, one of its kind. To eat lizards live” Crafty ACP was quick to respond and twist the story “When did I say he ate them? He just tossed them over his shoulder, into the sack he was carrying”, and once again made this weird sound of swallowing.
Arguing on it was baseless. First, he killed the imaginary person and then twisted the story. No prints, No clues.

Babu was already asleep; he had the 3 o’clock sleep syndrome. I stood up to head out into the open and clear my head. I looked for my floaters. They were missing. It was obvious that only one person could have taken them. I shook him like a bag of roasted peanuts and screamed into his ears “Babu!!!! Where are my floaters”??
There could have been possible sound barriers as he barely squinted, with a dreamy set of eyes locked on a fan revolving in the anti clockwise direction.
His barely audible but sincere reply was “can’t you see them floating?” Mixed emotions and laughter echoed in the designers room.Its a wonder how even a 5% performing living machine can be creative. I guess thats why we are the crazy 'deZiners' who define and defy logic.