A short love story with no end

I had never seen her looking so beautiful or so sad ever before. In fact, she wasn’t beautiful, really — cute, yes, but she had told me never to call her that. She said that if I had to call her anything it would have to be beautiful, and since she wasn’t, I never did. I think it hurt her, but I didn’t want to lie to her. How did it matter anyway, when there was something about her that made me leave work early almost every day, take my Maruti (which I cleaned thoroughly everyday because otherwise she wouldn’t sit in it), give her a call to say I was outside her office, waiting with sandwiches and coffee. As she would come out as soon as I called (she never made me wait) she would look at me with a smile that never ceased to make me feel that I should tell I was madly in love with her right away. But I never did that, and that had made me lose her once, but hadn’t made me say it still, so I guessed I didn’t feel it strongly enough. And maybe because I never said it, she went away for a long time, married to a man who loved her more than me, or maybe a man who just said it without being cocky about it. But now she was back, and we had fallen into our old routine right away — lunches at our favourite Idli joint, coffee afterwards, and a game of chess, and then kissing feverishly later. But this time, she was different, and though she kissed me with passion when she did, she often gazed out of the window afterwards, avoiding talk or eye contact. And she never ever asked me to have the “talk”, never asked me where we stood, which was my luck I suppose, but it worried me that she never asked. I guess it had to do with the fact that the man who told her he loved her had died last year. And with him, died her expectations. And so now she was with me, without really being with me. I suppose I was talking like a woman right now, but I wanted her to say something to me, something that would make me feel she was into this.
“I am not going around kissing people and feeling them up in a smelly old car, if that’s what you want me to say. There is no one else I am doing this with,” she told me one day, when I had been all whiney and asked her if she even realized that she was with me. “No, I don’t want you to say that,” I said feebly.
“Then what do you want Gautam? Isn’t this what all men want? I don’t even mind it if you meet other women, just don’t tell me you tell them they are beautiful,” she had smiled, and I had taken her hand in mine and walked with her all over Lodhi Gardens, looking at the ancient structures sometimes, and sometimes at her uncombed hair, already showing traces of white. She didn’t look at anything, she just walked staring right ahead, her lips curled in half a smile, and once in a while she squeezed her hand around mine. We then sat under a tree, watching the love struck couples indulge in carnal sin all around us, behind bushes and on uncomfortable rot-iron benches. But we sat with a foot of space between us, when she suddenly said, ‘Do you love me?’
I must have stared at her a tad too much, because she then said, “why is that such a surprise…If you say yes, I won’t ask you to make an honest woman out of me. I just wanted to know if you capable of loving someone like me?”
Instead of answering her, I asked angrily, “capable of? What do you mean by that?
She started laughing, “you look funny when you angry. All I meant is that you have known me for so long now. You have seen me when I was dressed in a dowdy school skirt, with hair on my upper lip…and you have seen me naked, with my wobbly bits at your fingertips, you have seen me like a girl falling all over a man, and a girl who just doesn’t care anymore. After knowing me so intimately, can you love me?"
I didn’t know what to say. Was this is the time to tell her that somehow inexplicably, she had become the one woman I realized I hadn’t got, and that made her special. I had held her in my arms, yes, but I hadn’t got her. I had let that chance slip away long ago, and she now thought of me as incapable of loving her. I didn’t answer and but couldn’t stop looking at her.
And that’s when I saw her looking really sad, and for the first time, really beautiful. Maybe she needed to be sad to look beautiful. “You look beautiful today,”
“You mean that?”
“Yes, there is a sadness in your eyes that is making you look so incomparable.”
She stopped smiling and said, “Gautam, I think if you keep me unhappy for ever, I might just be as beautiful as Aphrodite herself.”
“But I want you to be happy,” I said lamely.
“Happy or beautiful? You choose.”
As we walked back to the car, our hands still touching, with an unspoken knowing look that said we were going to make love in my apartment later, I knew what I wanted her to be for now — I liked her when she was beautiful.
And beautiful she was, that night as I played with her hair, and she nibbled on my ears. She stood in the kitchen, making cheese omelets the morning after, and singing along with the her favourite, “I feel like a natural woman,” wiggling hips with the beat.
“So what’s the plan today?” I asked with an easy nonchalance, just so she didn’t think that whatever she did, I wanted to be included too. But I did, I wanted to spend another day with her. I wanted to see if I could answer her question, I wanted to test my feelings for her.
“Why do you ask? I checked your phone and saw that an old flame was in town. Aren’t you meeting her today?”
“You checked my phone?"
“Yes, what’s up with that? We are friends right?”
She suddenly looked mean to me, like a green monster covered in goo and with a tongue forking out — a monster who was pretending to be my friend and infringing on my life.
I got up and walked towards my room, “Yes I will be spening the day with the ‘ex flame’, and wewill be coming back here tonight, so be gone by then.” I screamed as I shut the front door.
I was really angry, and I was going too make her pay. I was going to go out, have a great time, and then ….i didn’t know what else, but I was going to make her pay.
The ex flame looked better than ever, but by the time the second beer was dwindling down my throat, she seemed less interesting. She laughed at the right times, cracked a few ood jokes herself, licked her lips seducatively and even offered to pay, but somehow it wasnt clicking. As we made out clumsily in the back of her big car, I found my thoughts going back to the laughing face that had told me that it had snooped through my phone.
One the games were over, I was graciously dropped home and somehow I managed to not invite the lady up, even though I knew my home was empty and the night was just young. The house seemed realy quiet, and I removed my shirt and got into bed without switching on the lights. Under the sheets, there was another body, she was still here.
“You back?”Yes”
“Good, now snuggle up and sleep. I had a long day,” she said as she kissed me lightly
She was here, when I had told her to leave, it was getting out of hand, but for tonight, it was fine.

The next few days were spent in a strange reverie — she was next to me, and I was her man. We shopped for fruits, made salads, laughed at people in the malls, ate greasy Punjabi food every night, and then hugged each other with a fervor that I hadn’t felt with anyone ever before. It almost felt like a relationship. I listened to the Snow Patrols singing a weird version of Beyonce’s Crazy in Love, but it struck a chord, her love was having me look crazy in love, and I couldn't let it be like that. The balance of power had to be managed. At least for now, it seemed in control. I had a date today with another woman, and she had just nodded when I told her — no tantrums, no sulks — she had even laid out the table and spread new sheets on the bed. She had removed her kajal from my bathroom cabinet, and her underwear from the clothing line outside. She did have a home somewhere in delhi, but I had never been there. But she was there tonight, and I strangely felt at ease. IT was my home after so long. I wined and dined my date, and the let her entertain me.

And just as I was falling asleep, my head in her hair, my phone beeped, “I miss you” her message read, don’t you miss me.” I slept without answering.

She came over around noon the next day with a bunch of daisies and dressed in a dress I hadn’t seen before. “I have realized something. I love you,” she said as if it was an epiphany that had just dawned on her. “and I am going to make you love me, I know I can, enough of this sleeping around pretending things are a okay, pretending I am just a friend I Love you and I know you are capable of loving me. Let’s move on, Help me move on Gautam. Only you can,” she was smiling, she looked happy, and hopeful, and it was sad at all, and she wasn’t beautiful at all.
And though all the days I spent with her whizzed past my eyes in that moment, I knew this was te right thing to do, “I am sorry,”I found myself saying. “You are great, you get me, you know what I need, you know I love the middle of the bed— not the right, not the left, but the middle, and whenever I see you squeezing yourself into a ball on one corner, so that I can be comfortable, I know I should love you. You know that I am incapable of sometimes looking for things that are right in front of my eyes, and you make sure you help me see them — be it a gesture, or my pj’s that I can never find. And every night when you hand me my plate full of all that I like seeing for dinner, I know I should love you. And I would have loved you, only that I can’t now, now that you have asked me to. Why did you have to go and spoil it all? Why do you even need to be in a relationship again? Isn’t one dead husband enough? You’re free now. Enjoy it.”
Her face lost the colour, and she was Aphrodite herself — beautiful beyond imagination. She walked upto me, and for a minute, I was sure I was going to get a shiner. But no, trust her to do what I never expect her to. She slowly kissed my nose, and then my lips, and whispered, “remember the feeling, because you will never feel it again.”

make it happen

Ihave not written in so long. i think we just get so busy making money, that we really forget matters. Ihave also realised in the last few months, that if i want to make my life worthwile, i need to do something about the country i live in. I love India, i am proud of being an indian, i cry evertime i hear the national anthem being played, i suport the government, and i want to it. How can i do that?Well, only if i stop cribbing an start doing. Isn't that true?I have decided i will start small and will try and improve the living conditions in India. We all have to do it, otherwise tomorrow, we will regret it. I will let you know how it goes.

fiction

here is a list of fiction i have written

do read if you have the time...and give me much much criticism

An affair to forget
I was getting grouchy. My legs were moving restlessly and my stomach was cramping. The song on my iPod was thumping…thump…thump…and I could feel his face forming in front of mine, slowly and clearly. His tall frame, those soulful eyes and the way you couldn't tell if he really liked you or if you were just a lunch date. The way he indulged me so intimately sometimes and sometimes left me feeling a little out of the loop. The way he stood a little loopy, with a cigarette dangling off his lips, and that hair in his eyes, listening to a comedy show on his phone, as he waited for me outside pizza hut. The way he casually hugged me for the first 5 dates and then as I drove off after a morning rendezvous on our 6th date, pulled me just a little from my car window and gave me a sweet kiss. It had been a wonderful day.I remember a few years ago when we had a small fling, just before we went our separate ways for a really long time. He had ended it by sending me a message on my phone that said, "The flame has died out". When I had asked him forlornly about what went wrong, he said that the passion had just died out. We never spoke about it again. I look back and wonder why I didn't react the way I usually did in such circumstances. Why didn't I sulk and brood, cry, call and message him. But as strange it may sound — I know I didn't go all ballistic because he had always been the tall, cool one. And I couldn't let him think I wasn't cool. And when we got back together, he was still the cool one, and I was still the uncool one pretending to be cool. So I could never tell. I had not been able to tell.Rahul had stood with a bunch of posies in a light beige shirt that looked so good with his flawless face. The only thing I remember other than the shirt was his face. Ho could I forget that? The expression was a mixture of longing and strange apprehension on how I was going to react. There was joy too, the bubbling under kind of joy. A joy that was so innocent and so large in measure that I had felt shy as I walked up to him. He had slowly put his arms around me and leaned down. And then he just held me. My toes were off the floor and my arms around him. "People are looking," I whispered smiling into his ears. I don't think he heard me because he stood like that for a while before he finally let me go. "You're here now, and you're mine." I had always known with him, I could always tell. It had just been so much easier.I went to watch the movie alone. It was about a woman who loses her husband in the war and then spends her life pining for him as his brother tries his best to keep her happy. Her last words are, "It was never anyone but him. I could see him till my dying day." I felt like that sometimes. Especially when I saw him sitting on a car, parked in a colony on one side of the rail tracks, as I stood on the edge of the women's compartment. I used to smile at him sometimes. And then here he was, sitting next to me, just sometimes leaning towards me, smiling a little, and then nodding in despair, the way he used to when I put on his favourite perfume. "You shouldn't have done that," he used to flirt. "I can't concentrate now…."I slipped out of the theatre and put on my wedding ring. I couldn't wear it when I was sitting with him inside, could I? Granted, he wasn't actually there, but his thought was. It would have been a betrayal. But wasn't just thinking about anyone else a betrayal? He was suddenly talking to me. He was whispering in my ear. I tried to shake it off. "You know you want to call me. Please dial my number…you remember it. I am here. I knew you'll change your mind. You had kissed me that night you remember, that last kiss, when I wasn't letting you go. And you had suddenly slammed the car door and run away. You perfume had lingered in my car for days."Though, there was no doubt that I loved Rahul. Every time he held me tight on a Monday morning before I left for work, I knew I loved him. Every time he carried me from the door to my bed when I came home after a long day, I knew I loved him. Every time he nestled his head in the nook of my arm and begged for forgiveness, I knew I loved him. I loved him and I knew I would never ever leave him. So why was I doing this?"That's the real question. Why are you sitting here with me, when you say you love him," he smiled cockily at me. His fingers were in my hair and I could feel him laughing behind my back. "I can't explain it. But when you ask me questions like these, it makes me not want to be with you. It makes you mean," I said and looked back at him. He wasn't there. Oh, how I wished he was there.Was I going to get in touch with him? Just a message. No, then he would know my number and if he ever called me or messaged me…no, no, no. Maybe I'd call from office or from a colleague's phone. No, that would still be traceable. I had to leave no trace. I just wanted to hear his voice, tell him how I was, ask him how he was. I just wanted to hear that he missed me. That he was trying to forget me and that he was delighted that I had called. Just for a bit, just to hear his voice. I wanted to call him, but I didn't want to stay in touch. Would he understand that? I held the phone in my hand and dialed his number for the 100th time. No, no, no…this wasn't how I was going to do this.I was standing below his house. His car was parked in the driveway at a strange angle, leading me to believe that he was not okay. The stairs just seemed too many to climb, and at each step, I stopped and turned around. I couldn't do this to the one I truly loved. But I had to do it for myself. The door bell boomed in my ear and I suddenly before I could even breathe a breath, he stood there. What had I hoped would happen? What was going to happen?I walked in and sat on the bed and looked around. The dust just sat there and I was part of it. Dull, lifeless and dirty, I was nothing better than the dirt on his books, on his music system, on the floor. He touched me on my hand and suddenly as if on cue, my phone rang.The damn phone kept on ringing. And with each ring, he moved one step closer. I wanted to leave and I wanted to stay. Stay, sink, succumb, sleep…The ringing stopped, but I kept feeling the reverb. So we did the deed with the ring tone providing us with the ambience we deserved — shameful and heavy with guilt. And as the waves swept over me again and again, I could slowly feel the guilt being washed away.He held me close and I could feel his deep warm breaths on my neck. I got up, put on the clothes back on my relieved frame and looked at him. He looked surprised at my doings, surprised I laughed, surprised I ran out, surprised I didn't look back when he ran behind my car and surprised that I left.I returned home to find it as I had left. My left-over tea in a broken cup on the table, the laptop still playing the soundtrack of Amelie over and over again, my dog sleeping on expensive silk bedsheet. I sat down and whispered in his floppy ears "It's done. It's done. It's done. Let's move on now." And we moved on.

Killing is fun
I could just kill somebody. I wanted to put my hands across someone's neck and just wring it and throttle the living daylights out of them. But what difference would it make. Would it reverse what had already happened. Those days when I could have my way were a distant memory. I didn't care less now, cause I had more pressing problems on my head. I wasn't loved enough. Yes, I wasn't loved enough. I needed more love in my life. Where was all the love in the world when I needed it. Didn't people realise that to get something back you need to give something. If they didn't give me love, why would I be with them? I, the princess of darkness, the queen of sunshine, the biggest bitch that ever lived, the gem of this earth. Me, who was every woman a man wanted and every woman aspired to be. I was myself.Hence, I desperately want to kill someone. I wanted to see my fingers lined with red pieces of flesh. I wanted to see somebody writhe in front of me. I just wanted to see someone suffer the way I was suffering, all because I couldn't be loved. Had I ever thought I could be deserving this kind of treatment. Naah, surely not me. But then, I didn't pay attention to that crippled beggar who wanted nothing but a mere rupee. And I had screamed at my mother who woke me up so lovingly in the morning. Me, who lied and then swore by my father to defend that lie. May be this was all part of some joke played on me by the only woman above me, Mother Nature. Anyway, I had to think of a master plan to get out of this rut. I had to start afresh.I do not love you except because I love you; I go from loving to not loving you,From waiting to not waiting for youMy heart moves from cold to fireI love you only because it's you the one I love;I hate you deeply, and hating youBend to you, and the measure of my changing love for youIs that I do not see you but love you blindlyIn this part of the story I am the one whoDies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.Pablo Neruda's verse rang true in my head and I wondered if I had lost it. I think I had. It was that feeling of deja vu all over again. Could I actually be suffering from a mid-life crisis at the tender age of 24. I had seen dead rats in better shape than me. Was I actually capable of anything at all.There, it was done. I had killed him. Where was I going to hide the body. I never thought he would be that heavy. I looked at the dead body and saw him smile. Where was I going to dump this heavy, stinking, rotting, yet smiling piece of crap. I had no clue what I could do. I was scared now. I had to work my way through this. Isn't that what life was all about. Networking. Public relations. It's the right way of getting things done. You spend your childhood trying to bag the snazziest plaything. You spend your adolescence trying to be popular. You work you twenties trying to find someone to love and who loves you back and the rest of your life trying to hang on to them. For a woman, its even tougher to find someone who would be addicted to her. Men suffer from commitment phobia, along with admitting he loves you phobia, and then letting you go if he doesn't phobia. Woman suffer from a different kind of phobia, letting themselves be treated well phobia. I had to leave now. For once, I had to be treated well. I opened the door and saw the newspaper on my mat. I picked it up and tossed it on the dead body. Let him read it. He had always been more interested in the world than me.

marriage
I first realised the error of my ways when, out of sheer boredom, I typed my married name in Google. It promptly asked me to think it over, and asked me in with full seriousness: did you mean Aastha Atray ‘Banana’. No, obviously I didn’t mean that. But then there are many things you don’t mean, but still end up saying or doing once you get married — that too if you’re a North Indian married to a South Indian. Now, I am not being prejudiced. I wouldn’t. Because, here, I am the victim of prejudice. I, who has been labelled a stuck-up North Indian and an incorrigible “Delhi brat” — all by my own husband.I am also loud, domineering, spoilt, irresponsible, an insufferable snob and a show off, vain to the bone and also completely useless around the house — again, all because I am from Delhi. According to my husband, it’s because of my North Indian mentality that I am immune to what is truly life. My inability to pay the bills, get the rice cooker repaired and monitor our errant bai, form the basis of my spoilt existence. Our fights usually begin with small sparks, which are obviously set off by my ‘Delhiness’ —food being the biggest drawback. If I refuse to eat yellow dal for the 3rd time in a week, and order pizza instead, I am sure to be greeted with the brat expletive. And though he indulges my shopping sprees, if there are no vegetables or bread or butter or milk in the fridge next day, the favourite rebuke is, “You can remember to buy yourself unnecessary clothes, but this, you don’t have a clue. So Delhi!” And God save me if I ever interrupt his lectures addressed to me with an “okay, okay, I get it now”. Because, according to him, that is where I show my Delhiness the most — being a little miss know-it all.My defense to all his misconceptions has always been the same — does living in a city with wide roads Mumbaiites couldn’t even begin to imagine, affordable real estate, honest to God dal makhni and ample parking space make me an arrogant know-it-all?Most of the times, I squeeze out of these North-South squabbles with my sweet Delhi drawl and fluttering North Indian eyelashes. Anyway, love conquers all, doesn’t it? Just in case it doesn’t, I’m going to hide this edition. If my husband dearest does manage to read it, I have just one thing to say, in the words of George Bernard Shaw, “Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.” Sp I guess, we will be, just alright.

I just came back from a visit to charni road to my landlady's house who stays in a gujarati community there. On my way there and back, I was stuck in the TRAFFIC for an hour each. And i wanted to cry. With the days i have been having, i wanted to cry. For making all the wrong decisions in life, for being where i was....that's why i started this blog...to just write. The post on the slum tour is a story i worked on for almost one month...wrote draft after draft...changing it entirely every time...but my copy editor hates it. Am i a bad writer....i dont know...but after writing the last draft, which is posted here, i was happy....i smiled all the way to home yest. Today i was told it stinks...i still happen to like it...hope you do too...I miss the way things used to be..
And if you think i stink...well join the club. I stil want to write for either TIME, Newsweek or the New Yorker someday.
so...here goes

I took a slum tour

A TALE OF A SLUM

Enterprising and hardworking – this is a slum that is characterised by its people. On a hot sunny day, I learnt the lesson Dharavi has to teach – the survival instinct

From an airplane window, the slums of Mumbai look like miles and miles of grey, filthylandscape. Come a little closer and the rugged, unplanned structures start to take shape. Even closer, standing in the middle of the largest slum in Asia, the picture just gets clearer. Tiny rays of sunlight peek through the one foot of space between two settlements. Thick bundles of electrical wires creep up alongside narrow passages and open drains and public bathrooms send out smells that become common place. There may be no legal electricity, but that doesn’t stop the TVs from functioning. There is no sight of a sewage system, and the waste finds its way through the alleyways. It is a jungle – of people, concrete (or something like it), ambitions and a unique spirit. A jungle called Dharavi.
In the heart of Mumbai – the business capital of India –the slum is now in the spotlight as the perfect site for an unusual business venture. It’s the hottest new tourist destination – and Reality Tours and Travels is taking visitors and Mumbaiites alike for a trip along its intriguing lanes. But this vast ghetto is no stranger to the business of business. And that’s what the trek focuses on. It snakes through the commercial bylanes of Dharavi – a slum that ironically has more than 10,000 small-scale industries that churn out an annual turnover of almost $650 million. And the manpower is at the industry’s beck and call. Almost one million of Mumbai’s population, that inhabits this piece of land sandwiched between two major north-south railway axes, works at this ingenious hub.
Dharavi surprises you every step of the way. The tour guide, Krishna Pujari, an enterprising young man,
navigates his way through the unusually named roads like a seasoned pro. Characterising the slum as slightly, ok very, eccentric, the roads are named after the lengths of the nallas running alongside them. So there is the 90 ft Road and the 60 ft Road. Just when you think that’s it, the names just get even more interesting. The first stop for the day is the 13th Compound. Why the 13th? Is there a 1st, a 2nd and so on? The guide laughs, “Nahin. What’s in a name?” He may just be right. No matter what the name, the goings on at the 13th Compound deserve an applause. This is the recycling hub of Dharavi, along with the heel-making hub and the oil container cleaning centre. The walls remind one of the remains of a bombed building and the path is slushy and pot hole-ridden. But work is work and it goes on. That Coke can you discarded, it is here, getting crushed, coloured, moulded and remodeled into newer plastic, which then gets ready to head back to the ones who discarded it in the first place (at much cheaper rates). But that’s not it. The compound also recycles cotton scrap, metal scrap, tins, paper, glass bottles and plastic drums. The slum doesn’t just excel at redoing things, it manufactures some hidden gems of its own. One of them being the heels we all strut around in, not the whole thing, just the heels - be it flat, pencil or wedge. Talk about delegating tasks.
Before one can examine their footwear in a totally different light, the group is ushered into a tuition centre and suddenly kids start reciting poetry. The efficient way the disrupted classroom reacts is evidence enough that this has happened before They all know Krishna and in correspondence to his winks and words of encouragement answer all questions with great ease. The sight may look orchestrated, but is impressing anyhow. Not impressing though is the pungent smell that indicates the advent of the tanning industries. The grounds are covered with wooly, bloody hides which are being tossed on to huge machines and the air is filled with a pungent smell, reminiscent of the school laboratory. Supposed to be the source of the cheapest and best quality leather products in Maharashtra, the slum boasts of shops that sell everything - jackets, shoes or car seat covers – you can get it all here. The harsh sound made by the massive machinery is interspersed with a strange music. And this is why the slum is a trove of surprises. Bang in the middle of the chaos is a video game parlour, with two slot machines and a mini fridge with refreshments. If there was ever an enterprising lot, they have to be the people living here.
As everywhere in Dharavi, one small scale industry gives way to another. Amid a large group of laughing women who are bent over their colourful utensils gently rolling out papads, the group is heckled at and giggling fits of laughter follow the remarks. Even though the foreigners are unaware of what sins they have committed (or what’s so funny about them), few of them buy the papads in a bid to redeem themselves. Nevertheless, the laughter continues.
The day is coming to an end, but there’s one last stop. The city of the potters- Kumbharwada – stands proud before us. Home to 1,200 potters (and growing), most of them from Saurashtra, this area is like an oasis. Relatively cleaner than the rest of Dharavi (Krishna tells us that is so because the potters are all vegetarian), the small exclusive settlement is like a model village - houses made of mud and lanes lined with wonderfully carved pots and lamps. “You can buy a lamp here for Rs two, but outside it won’t be less than Rs 12,” says a smiling potter as he effortlessly moulds one pot after another. The women smile at the strangers (even though their faces are half covered with their coloured sarees) and invite them in for a thali and a cup of tea. Some stop to oblige, but business here is finished and Krishna hurries back to the car. He collects the Rs 600 that the travel agency charges for this tour and swears that 80 per cent of it goes to an NGO working for the slum. It’s all worth it. The slum seems like a familiar place. It may be full of contradictions - be it the uncommon names for the roads and areas, the cross-cultural mix of people living here or the unique way the past and present exist in the same space – but that’s what is endearing about it. Proud and enterprising, the people of Dharavi welcome you into their territory without prejudice. And that’s how they should be treated. The next time you view it with a mixture of fear, curiosity and revulsion – try a little understanding. It is a living example of the spirit very few of us possess. The spirit of undeniable courage and determination – the spirit to exist.