Release of Ebook 'Convoluted: Tales of Mystery and Terror-1'!

Freelance writer-author Chinmay Chakravarty has released his new Ebook titled 'Convoluted: Tales of Mystery and Terror-1' on Amazon Kindle. In a longer short story format the Ebook is a crime thriller based on the present surge of crimes against women in India. 

Although the Ebook is not marked as a part of a Series, it tells us this is the first Tale which means the author must be having several plots up his sleeve! 

The Ebook is also available on KindleUnlimited that can be read for free! Here is the link to the Ebook! 

The VIP Brat: A Study in Contrast!

Here we’re talking about only two compartments inside a particular AC 2-Tier coach in a particular daily train under the Indian Railways that departs a particular originating station at around noontime and reaches the destination city early morning the next day. The train is popular because it is superfast and always on time. That fateful noon too, the train was ready for boarding about one hour before departure. We cut to the inside of that particular coach having those two compartments for our contrasting study. Two elderly couples were in a state of considerable distress. One of them, both technically senior citizens, had been allotted two upper berths and the husband was at his wits end how to proceed, because his wife was being taken for check-up after surgeries in both of her knees—she could hardly walk and her climbing up the berth was a sheer impossibility. The husband was also on the wrong side of the sixties, but he thought he could manage the climbing once he managed a lower berth at least for his wife. Luckily for him, he found a much younger but understanding passenger who was traveling alone and agreed to adjust his lower berth for the lady.

In the next compartment another elderly couple, the husband being a genuine senior citizen and his wife approaching the landmark fast, was sulking apart from being distressed since early morning when the Railway text message came informing them that they were allotted one lower berth and a side upper berth—the lower berth at the third compartment of the coach and the other berth at the end. The husband always hated that side upper berth even in his younger days, because he always found it inconvenient and awkward to climb up. In consultation with his wife he decided not to take the risk of climbing up that berth at this age, and they both agreed to share the lower berth for the night. However, the expected arrival of the TTE infused them with some hope, maybe he’d be able to do some adjustments.

Since the husband of the first couple had his second upper berth in the next compartment he came presently to deposit his backpack there, and glanced at the other passengers. Noticing the dejected yet surrendered second couple he approached them with the usual pleasantries. And eventually they shared their stressful stories of the Indian Railways trying to despatch them up, rather too early!

The husband of the second couple observed ruefully, “You know! The advanced computerized booking system doesn’t bother at all about our age or physical attributes, they allot the berths as they come. And the human fellas behind the system always express their helplessness! Some progress!”

“Still, perhaps the TTE can help if some berths can be adjusted! This lower berth opposite yours is not yet occupied.” the other senior citizen opined.

Whatever hope they had of some adjustments evaporated that very moment as two servile attendants escorted a young boy of about eighteen years of age and right royally installed him on the very lower berth they talked about.

Wife of the second couple made a cardinal mistake sometime after the spectacle. Acting upon her motherly instinct she addressed the boy sweetly, asking him if he could mind climbing up the side upper berth for the sake of people older than his parents, and only for the night. She got a snub with the most brutally shortened and abrupt ‘no’. Her husband murmured, “Don’t make such terrible mistakes, my dear lady! Do you think any sensible human being would ever agree to give up a lower berth that ensures a window seat for a godforsaken upper berth, that too on the sides?”

The TTE did come eventually. As expected, he expressed his total helplessness to help against the wishes of the master computers. He made no promise of adjustments as he moved on to check the other berth-takers.

For the rest of afternoon and the evening Railway staff and uniformed catering pros kept on coming to the boy asking him about his comfort and entertaining him with his food preferences. At every major station halt multiple food packets arrived for him, and occasionally he brought up a pal from somewhere to share the food as both of them devoured in blissful and merry oblivion.

The attendants came again to make sure he sleeps well and in full comfort for the night. Much earlier than that everybody in the coach knew he was the son of some high-ranking railway officer.

The VIP brat lay down full stretch and luxuriously on the berth surfing his mobile phone even as the senior citizen of the first couple left his handicapped wife behind and laboriously climbed up to the upper berth above the brat. While the second couple moaned and groaned throughout the night as they tried to accommodate themselves in reverse positions on the single lower berth and struggled to find their respective leg and torso spaces. In one of his countless toss-n-turns the husband made what he thought a devastating comment, “No! human fellas behind the computerized booking system are not as helpless against their master computers as we thought! Human intervention is still possible and exists for every single train in the country! However, this intervention works only for the VIPs or the VVIPs or their respective brats! No wonder, at what ease the other VIP brats drive their dads’ imported SUVs and keep on mowing down, maiming and killing useless commoners like us at will!” 

Kolkata: The Deadly Tentacles of Global Warming!

It’d be wrong if I say I’ll never be able to forget about that particular near-dawn while nestled inside a crammed flat in a congested locality of Kolkata, which was once, in my opinion, given the euphoric title of ‘City of Joy’. Instead, I should say I’ll always remember that particular near-dawn which is essentially to keep myself somewhat prepared for more similar or worse experiences in the near future. Yes, it’s about the IMD-described ‘one of the longest and deadliest summers in India’ of which Kolkata is a very significant part. Now to what happened in that near-dawn which is, in fact, is only a day before. 

I woke up suddenly in the dead of the night and immediately felt the oppressiveness which was apparently the cause of waking up. The ceiling fan was whirring above us, my wife and I; but its gusts of air were no longer airy—it only seemed to have lost itself into the relentless clutch of that oppressiveness. I was sweating profusely and the heat rashes all over my body were pinching me like long needles, rather letting me only have the usual itching. The night was calm, still and thick. As if the tentacles of that oppressive heat that was raging outside barged in through the concrete walls and the closed doors and windows and launched themselves into our hapless bodies mercilessly. I checked my mobile: it was just past three in the morning, a near dawn. I couldn’t believe my eyes. How is it possible? This time the surroundings always cool off leading all of us humanity to a welcoming relieving beautiful morning.

 

I tossed around on the bed for some time, thinking the air was going to cool off soon and the hands of the ceiling fan would restore themselves to their normal business. But nothing of the sort happened even as my wife stirred, sat up on bed and shared the oppressiveness with me. It seemed like an attack from the aliens: perhaps they are launching the final assault after all those preliminary warnings.

 

I had before me only the last resort to fall upon. We have an ageing window air-conditioning machine that befits the old rented flat and which we normally run in the evenings for a few hours to cool the house, and at bedtime we switch it off. That night too we switched it off around one in the night. Scared by my writhing body my wife asked me if she should switch it on. I nodded at her with a guilty feeing—guilty because I was thinking about the huge majority of our country’s population that still cannot afford an AC machine. I do always think about those daily labourers, the cleaners & rag-pickers, the rickshaw pullers and all others caught in that cruel cycle at no point of which could they afford a day lost without work. And for that matter, the ACs are not the solution at all—they only give temporary comfort like painkillers to the ‘lucky’ users and make the world a far worse place to live in.

 

It was not important that we managed to fall asleep within the next two hours and could also afford the luxury of waking up late in the morning; what is of utmost importance is the question as to what future we’re running toward! Kolkata is just a case study for us even as the summers in India and in many other countries around are becoming warmer by 2-3 degrees more every year, and in this particular summer the ‘landmark’ 50-degree Centigrade has been reached in many parts of India including capital Delhi. Like last year, the heat waves started in Kolkata in the month of April too this year, and as a departure from the previous year the 40+ temperatures this year raged on for several weeks on the trot, not allowing even the seasonal thunderstorms locally known as ‘Kal Baisakhi’ for mid-term relief, even once. And to add more, the nights everywhere in the country are no longer cooling off with temperatures refusing to come below 30-32 Centigrade; occasional rains too are failing miserably to bring the temperatures down.

 

Cyclone Remal brought some relief to Kolkata in terms of a user-friendly weather, apart from the damage it had caused in its trail in the eastern and the north-eastern regions. However, the cyclone probably left a veil of moisture hangover, and therefore, as the temperatures started to rise again the humidity became a deadly factor, not to speak of the immeasurable damage caused by the UV index to the human bodies thanks to the intense sunrays. At nights or even in the wee hours if you have 32-degree temperature, the humidity of about 80% would surely make it feel like 40 or more. And this tells the exact story of Kolkata in the last fortnight, and nobody knows for how long yet: intense sunlight and the occasional clouds coming together in the evenings to make the nights horribly hot and gloomy.

 

But we cannot explain it off with only the cyclone occurrence, because from late May to June the atmosphere gets laden with moisture due to the advancing South West Monsoon. It boils down to the mercilessly rising temperatures which become near-fatal if combined with the rising humidity. This does not augur well for humanity at all. And even with temperatures alone, more than 50-degree C can cause havoc to the human body, leading to sunstrokes and deaths. This summer many humans have perished in India including poll officials on duty for the General Elections and many are falling sick and perishing still, which our politically supercharged media hardly takes any note of. And our leaders or the world leaders? Well, less said the better! They’re more interested in power and war games! How the hell are we going to combat Global Warming and to protect our planet and humanity from its relentlessly spreading tentacles? Time is running out! Anybody listening at all?