Autoplay: Not-so Stories
Page 16
2 Many apartments in the Society were owned by the same family, but registered in the names of different family members, and in matters of dispute involving any one of the residents of a given family versus non-familial residents, members of the same family who might otherwise be residents of different apartments or even on opposing sides of some long-standing intra-family strife were, nevertheless, all on one side (their family member-Society resident’s side) – generally speaking.
3 It was their mutually agreed upon policy, following a daytime theft that had taken place in their Society in an apartment in the next block a couple of years ago, never to leave the apartment unlocked even if they were stepping out for ten seconds. In the case of the theft that had taken place, the wife had left the apartment to go downstairs to the presswala round the corner – having only bolted the apartment – and come back to find her iPad, iPhone and MacBook, all of which she had left on the dining table in the living room, gone. Her marriage, it was rumoured, never recovered from the tragedy.
4 He was on a one-year sabbatical to finish his second PhD.
A CRIME HAS BEEN COMMITTED
1 Indian Institute of Leadership Development and Executive Excellence, Sambalpur, Orissa
2 Excluding the dupatta, which she liked crumpled
3 The cabinet, not the living room or shelf
4 Ocean’s Eleven for the fourth time, Ocean’s Twelve for the third time, and Ocean’s Thirteen for the second time
5 Incidentally, a CHRO trained by her hubby, a detail which they discovered only post-facto, in the course of a 360-degree post-mortem that they conducted on the incident, its lead-up, and its repercussions along the multiple axes of both their lives, considered individually and as a two-member unit.
ALL QUESTIONS ARE COMPULSORY
1 Another instance of the petty politics of body parts. Because the muscles of his right eye were weak, his left eye was susceptible to strain on account of taking on the additional responsibility (for coordinated movement so they could achieve their common goal of delivering world-class 20/20 vision with minimum fuss and without drawing attention to themselves) of its weaker partner, which caused him to assume that the problem was with his left eye when it wasn’t – it was his right eye that was the problem but it, by being cleverly mum and all low key, ensured that the left took all the flak for being a whiner and all the blame for being a pain in the head.
2 Lucrative from the perspective of yield determined by the ratio of the quantum of marks a given segment of the examination syllabus is typically allotted in the question paper and the quantum of time-effort needed to prepare for questions from that segment of the syllabus.
3 It never occurred to Roll No. 27 to include in this equation such additional variables as teacher inputs, post-school tuition costing thousands of rupees that his own parents (unlike that of his competitors’) could ill-afford, fitment between student interest/aptitude and subjects studied, a sense of belonging to a community of mutually caring co-learners who would (even as they compete with each other) also empower and aid each other in their quests for knowledge, or, at a broader level, an education system that was obsessed less with student assessment and concerned itself more with student engagement.
4 Even though to you, discerning reader, it might be, to Roll No. 27, it was much more.
About the Book
A cancer survivor wreaks vengeance on the world, a builder erects the Taj Mahal of public toilets, a woman buys a treadmill for her depressed pet, a husband’s life is hijacked by his wife’s nightmares, a matrimonial advertisement says it like it really is … Autoplay explores the futuristic, semi-dystopian, Hindu Aryan Republic of India.
G. Sampath’s stories work at the level of the pre-conscious, verbal kites waving their never-ending tails in the sky of consciousness. Through a minute rendering of feeling-states, he explores a whole range of emotional landscapes: from melancholy and mirth to rage and disgust. This is adventurous new fiction, exploring the themes of marriage, adolescence, love, terrorism, technology, consumerism and other familiars through feeling-eyes.
About the Author
G. Sampath is the author of How to Make Enemies and Offend People, and the editor of The Pleasure Principle, an anthology of erotic stories. He lives in Delhi.
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First published in India in 2017 by
HarperCollins Publishers India
Copyright © G. Sampath 2017
P-ISBN: 978-93-5264-309-7
Epub Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 978-93-5264-304-2
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G. Sampath asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction and all characters and incidents described in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under The Copyright Act, 1957. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers India.
Cover design: Saurabh Garge
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