Finger's Wrought Iron Resolve

A long Finger quivered with a repressed urge. It straightened itself out, drummed itself on an ebony table restlessly and then sat motionless. Suddenly, it jerked up and ran, insofar as a finger can run, in a tight circle. This helped. It seemed to heave a big sigh of relief.
A few seconds passed innocently.
The Finger seemed to be swaying. A nervous hum escaped it. This hum slowly developed a nervous overture, a few jittery verses, an interlude, a refrain and a swelling climax. There was no one to applaud it's musical prowess, but the Finger wasn't affected by such trivialities. It was fixed, it had to admit to itself, unwavering on one pressing need which it knew it must not succumb to. It must not. It told itself so sternly.It thought waggling itself admonishingly might be a nice touch, but it couldn't really waggle itself at itself. The Finger flicked at a speck of dust irritatedly. It darted a sideways peek behind it and felt a thrill.
The Finger decided to make a plan. This only took one snickering second.
It turned around, extended itself and...
It was tickling a foot!
The Finger was ebullient. Why had not it done this before?
The foot, however, belonged to Time. It has been advised that it is not wise to tickle the feet of Time, however alluring it might be. This advice, buried under several cushions in the Finger's conscience, might have been what was causing it such agony.
It is not an advertised fact that Time is ticklish. Fingers that had ventured to a tummy or a knee(there are several) of Time always found they had a little too much time on their hands, time which sniggered out of shutters and chuckled out from patchwork rugs. No one had ever dared to tickle Time's feet before.
What happened was this - Time wriggled and bucked and guffawed and roared with delightful laughter and suddenly, there were little bubbles of seconds and hours and minutes, all congealed together and floating about the world. They settled on noses and creeped in-between clams and nestled next to cocoons. And one drifted into a particularly ancient cloud to form a castle in the air.

Let's go to Iyengar Bakery

Every Iyengar* bakery has its regulars. Among these regulars are a minimum of three stray dogs that make the area just outside the bakery their permanent home, and a cow. They have a well established, if obscure credit system with the bakers, good-naturedly offering to never pay for all the various bakery items that are thrown over the counter to them.
The dogs usually make friends with the other regulars and urge them, good-naturedly, to part with a little of their purchases. They always find one old lady or man who willingly do so.The cow lumbers up at some point in the day, makes a place for himself beside everyone else outside the counter that displays all the freshly baked white butter biscuits, golden hunched scones, creamy cherry-topped cakes, bulging puffs and whole loaves of soft bread and drools copiously and waits patiently, while looking hopefully at the goings-on in case the goings-on might decide to throw him a loaf of bread.

No one grudges the dogs and cow. They understand. It is impossible, with those wonderful smells of whisked butter and fresh bread, which promise to melt in your mouth, to walk resolutely past an Iyengar bakery.

*Iyengar: a notably south-Indian folk, some of whom decided one day to open a string of bakeries and make some drool-worthy egg-puffs.

The Morning After

The world is so still when in unfolds in the morning after being battered by an entire night of rain.
A little sheepish.
Almost subdued.
But so pretty.

Mishaps in the Cook's Fort

The drain in our kitchen regurgitated last week.
Our drain isn't one for drama, but likes giving us it's share of surprises(It once had a colony of mushrooms thriving along it's rim, which had the cook in a fit of giggles). So when it regurgitated, it didn't go about doing so with much pomp. It just slowly oozed out some dubious-looking water all over the kitchen floor. For days together. It reduced several super absorbent-cloths to a dark grey, grimy pulp.

The drain in our kitchen doesn't lose too easily. And our ammunition consisted only of a bottle of bright green Drainex which gurgled happily and ineffectually down the drain, and a plunger.
For some reason, we didn't use the plunger. It was our cook, one dark night, who braved herself and grimly asked us to hand her the plunger. But heave and plunge as she might, the drain steadfastly oozed dubious-looking water all over the kitchen floor.
For some reason, we didn't call the plumber either.
Who, it turns out, quite obviously, is the drain's nemesis.
I could have sworn I saw it blanch and lose some of it's sheen when it heard the announcement of the plumber's arrival- a faint hiccuping of drops of water that lodges on to all plumber overalls. A faint hiccuping, that if you strain your ears to listen, has a tinge of pride to it.

Our drain has been behaving ever since.
You can tell that it's biding it's time and scheming though.