Anton, a tall gaunt man with a pronounced square jawline in his early 30s, stood in the dock. He had been standing there for the last two hours. His hands were tied behind his back with a nylon tie. They had been tied behind his back for the last two hours. He wasn’t allowed to talk.

“Look, look, look!” shouted Bruce standing in his garden holding a large green vegetable in his arms, while extending them above his head. His shouts of glee went unheeded, but his enthusiasm did not diminish. “Look!” he shouted again but this time he addressed those in the house by name.

“Next stop Africa!” Howard enjoyed proclaiming that in a most dramatic fashion, by throwing his arms wide open while facing the ocean. He especially enjoyed doing that when a friend of his visited him at his home on the Eastern coast of the US.

“The world’s worst invention!”

“What is?”

“Leaf blowers.”

“Leaf blowers?”

“Yes, leaf blowers are the world’s worst invention.

“What are you doing here?”

“Hello Marjorie,” replied Kumar getting up from the plush armchair he was sunk in and extending his hand towards her.

Marjorie closed her eyes for a second and took in a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she said sounding apologetic for her direct sharp question.

“No, no, but listen to this, she says to me if these don’t work, there are others available to us.” Chris laughed. He hadn’t stopped laughing ever since his friend Barry and he had sat down together under the shade of a very large beach umbrella, while their wives went off for their morning walk.

“A man and his dog should never be parted.” Steven shook his head in disbelief. “How do you think up these things?”

Bryan shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. They just come to me, but in this case, I don’t think I made that up. I’m sure I’ve heard someone else say it.”

One can always count on Nathan to do the wrong things when it matters most. Nathan lives in a perpetual virtual world in which he is the only occupant, or if there were others nearby, they were inconsequential. Nathan fails to rise to the occasion, in fact fails to rise to any occasion.

Robert slipped out on to his deck just as the first rays of the new morning sun were a faint glow on the horizon. He sat down on a seemingly cold wrought aluminium chair and put his coffee down on the table. He wasn’t ready just yet to take the first sip and thereby welcome in another day in his life.

“Where did you go to lunch?”

“We didn’t go anywhere.”

“You mean to tell me that Mr Levy met with you and didn’t take you anywhere for lunch?”

“That’s not what I meant. We didn’t go out for lunch. We had lunch in his office.”

‘I never really knew my father.’

That one sentence had taken Evan over three years to write. Once he had done so, he sat back in his chair and stared blankly at the computer screen. Then suddenly without any warning he broke down and tears dripped down his face.

“There you are! Where have you been?”

“I was in the bathroom, if you have to know.” replied Alan rolling his eyes. “Why?”

“Well, what do you mean by why? The house is on fire. You could’ve been burnt alive!”

Scene One, The MI Room on Cornwallis Road, New Delhi

June 15, 1959

Unfortunately, a true account, mostly.

Picture this, a play unfolding at your local theatre. The curtain goes up on a split stage.

“I hate going shopping nowadays!”

“Whoa, Ken what’s come over you? The Ken I know but not necessarily liked, lived to shop.”

“I know, I know, I know, but not anymore.”

A few days later, when Kumar returned to his college room after spending a few long hours at Marjorie’s country club, he was asked what the most memorable part of the golf outing was. Kumar, naturally answered, the 19th hole!

“I’m going down to the beach darling, are you coming with me?” Tina waited for a few seconds before she followed up with another question. “Darling, where are you? Did you hear what I said?” Still no answer. Tina was about to ask again in a louder voice, when she heard the toilet flush in one of the downstairs…

Kumar lay awake the night before he had agreed to catch a train to Newark where Marjorie told him she would pick him up. It took a lot to convince him to go, “just this once,” Marjorie had said to him. “Really, my parents aren’t as bad as they make themselves out to be.” The problem was that Kumar had met her parents when he agreed to go over one evening and have dinner with them and…

“This is the eighth day in a row it’s rained.”“No darling, the sixth.”“The sixth, are you sure?” Tina nodded her head, “feels like eight. Look it’s raining so heavily you can’t see the railings on our deck.”Tina had had enough of her husband’s whining about something totally out of their control.

Chris closed his eyes, crossed his arms and sat further back in his chair. He listened to the sounds of the angry seas and the rain from a tropical storm beating down against the windows of the restaurant where he was with some of his friends. He shook his head at a random thought.“Anyone know,” he asked as his friends kept discussing what he felt was an irrelevant issue in …

“What are you up to today?” “Not much. Probably sit on my deck and read.” “What book are you reading now, anything interesting?” “I always read interesting books.” “Not the last one you recommended to me.”