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- Adult Friends, a Short Story by Abhishek Udaykuma
Adult Friends, a Short Story by Abhishek Udaykuma Mauna hadn’t been out in a month. Except to the grocer’s, the pharmacy and the ice-cream shop. The cold didn’t demand much. And life was simple with a different sweater every week. She was busy indoors, writing her last journal for the year. After months on the field, she felt content with spending her evenings on the terrace, listening to the raspy city streets. It wasn’t till the previous evening that she decided to attend a literary meet. It was a motley group that talked about books. Most of its people were older by ten years at least. Except for one girl who was around thirty like her. But it was their mutual interest in snakes that got them talking. They spent the following hour at a diner that looked like it was out of Sherlock Holmes. Ridhima took her number and promised to call the next day and plan a more extensive meeting. Mauna woke into Saturday with an old serenity, much like a girl sipping tea after a day at the pool. She had barely spoken more than a few words that month, until the previous evening, and the feeling of speech made her long for more. She chewed her French toast, listening to country blues, and then shook off the mood and switched on the news. It helped her get back to work. She’d lived in the jungle the whole of last year, her phone barely received any tower there and the food lacked salt and protein. She had returned thin and colorless, like a pale leaf clinging to its bark. The following year was for publication. She had published five journals starting in February. Her most recent volume studied the patterns of the Russel Viper in the territory of the King Cobra. Her research was aimed at investigating the nocturnal habits of Vipers and its impact on the Cobras’ mating. Mauna sat on the computer and looked out of her room. It wasn’t a romantic city by any stretch of the imagination. She was often confused about whether she preferred the forest. It was hard to ignore loneliness in the city and easy to forget people in the mountains. But she knew she needed a companion before she went back to the field. It was eleven-thirty. She had hoped to hear her phone ring by ten. What if Ridhima had already made plans for the weekend? She didn’t think she’d meet her on a weekday. Mauna regretted that she didn’t take her number. Perhaps Ridhima had agreed to meet in the heat of the moment. Maybe she’d forgotten her already. She didn’t seem like a regular at the literary meet, and perhaps it was but a passing hobby. It was for Mauna. She had seen a poster of the literary group outside a coffee shop and had decided not to work that evening. But Ridhima wasn’t merely intrigued by snakes. She had spent the summer of that year at a snake awareness camp organized by an NGO, clicking photographs and writing articles for them. Her corporate job had restricted her from venturing out, and she decided to take a sabbatical. Mauna had imagined that they would go out for lunch and then to the park. If Ridhima wanted, she could come over and have a cup of hot chocolate with her. The morning hobbled into a breezy afternoon. A subtle fragrance of sandalwood filled her house after a long shower. She had left the phone outside the bathroom and had plugged it into a speaker. She checked it inadvertently as she dried her hair. It was past lunchtime, and she didn’t have anything prepared. She toasted some sourdough and made a sandwich out of fried okra and potato. It wasn’t the happiest of meals, but she satisfied herself with a healthy bowl of vanilla yogurt. She sat at her desk and sighed. She had spent considerable time last year learning the local language to build relationships with the forest dwellers. The dialect was similar to her native tongue but difficult to remember and keep up with. A year away from the mountains had spoilt her, and though she longed for the forest, she had grown wary of hard work, patience, inadequate information, lack of entertainment, and disillusion. There were times when her conviction felt like her own invention. By four, she shut her computer and went up to the terrace. She thought she’d read for a while before getting a milkshake. The anticipation of activity helped her overcome the severity of routine – which often resembled a desperate form of actualization. The clouds had formed into a stainless-steel plate that obscured the rain. She thought about a boyfriend she had some years ago. It was her first year as a research scholar, the only time she felt like she was still in college. They had regular classes, eight hours a day, five days a week; the only respite was library study on Saturday—which she spent with him. They weren’t from the same class, but it seemed like their only difference, and they decided to pursue their research in the same region. They had even considered living together until their fieldwork began, but Mauna said she needed her space. She wondered now if living together would have helped her see their differences earlier. And if she had moved to the field sooner, if she had known. They were together for six months; it was the only relationship in her life so far. She had never understood why he wanted to work close to her, but she realized later that he didn’t have the ability to endure his loneliness. And she was unwilling to sacrifice hers for someone who had yet to catch up. She closed the book and flipped her phone unconsciously. She didn’t expect to make a friend outside her niche. It was an occupation hazard she MORE
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Have you read the July issue yet? If not, what are you waiting for. Click HERE and enjoy.
Click pic for MORE _____________ - Say Cheese? Be Real.
It is currently popular to lie. It is also popular to be fake. Fake face, fake body, fake credentials, and so on. Sales have become an exercise in faking a positive to create a sale. With millions of products available, there is little in the way of a policing agency for this problem. There are also fake writers, those who use AI to write ebooks about nothing for the sake of marketing it, generating clicks, and getting page reads on Kindle. And so I share with you what I found on a neighborhood walk on a day where the temps reached 108º. Fake cheese. Well, actually, it is American sliced cheese, a popular product used for sandwiches. But is it cheese? And why doesn’t it melt? Had you spent money on real cheese slices they might well have melted, however these products from discount brands are chemically different. Some even state “this product will not melt.” And, they contain hydrogenated oil, some milk fat, food color, artificial flavors, and a bunch of conditioners/preservatives. Ingredients: Cultured Milk, Water, Cream, Whey, Sodium Citrate, Milk Protein Concentrate, Modified Food Starch, Whey Protein Concentrate Calcium Phosphate, Salt, Sorbic Acid (Preservative), Sodium Phosphate, Citric Acid, Apo Carotenal And Beta Carotene (Color), Lactic Acid. Enzymes, Vitamin D3. And we wonder why our population is not healthy. Perhaps a Veggie/Meatless Burger might help that. Ingredients: water, pea protein, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, rice protein, natural flavors, cocoa butter, mung bean protein, methylcellulose, potato starch, apple extract, pomegranate extract, salt, potassium chloride, vinegar, lemon juice concentrate, sunflower. And Pea Protein is in everything now. Health? However, consuming protein in high amounts could cause several pea protein side effects. In fact, research indicates that overdoing it on the protein could cause issues like weight gain, bone loss, kidney issues and impaired liver function. By definition (using the common NOVA classification), any food product with industrial ingredients is ultra-processed. If your veggie burger is made of soy protein or pea protein, your lunch is ultra-processed. Everything we had been told was healthy is now not healthy at all. Perhaps the funding from Pharma that also owns the media and the government controls —have you seen the official food pyramid lately—explains why the information is as fake as the products themselves. So how does this tie to writing, you ask? The answer is that as writers we have to offer a genuine experience, not some drivel that sounded good when you told a buddy over a beer. Well-written, and interesting enough to compel the reader to turn the page. Not a cheat. And that takes effort and time and care. Read about fake books HERE. PS: Three days later the cheese was still there, although somewhat baked. Not melted.
Click pic for MORE _____________ - JULY 2024 Books & Pieces Magazine is here.
If you are having trouble seeing this, click HERE. In this issue: INTERVIEW WITH: • Charles Breakfield & Rox Burkey, Award-Winning Authors and Tech-Experts on life, writing and more.… CONTRIBUTORS: • Abhishek Udaykumar • Michael Sussman • Penny Newcombe • Samantha Horne • John Grey • Jill Hedgecock • R.H. Nicholson • Emil Rem • William Gensburger • Addisen Gensburger • Facts • Product Review •Videos to Watch •Books 2 Read •Photography & more…. READ THE ISSUE BELOW If you did not receive an email with your advance copy, then you are either not subscribed or have been unsubscribed for not opening the emails. If this was in error, please check to ensure our emails did not go to your spam folder and resubscribe HERE. NOTE: Videos are only embedded on the flip-page format. Downloaded PDF will have links. READ THE ISSUE BELOW. Pages D/L Print. Full Screen While reading, double-click on page to magnify
Click pic for MORE _____________ - Truth and Lies: A Writer’s Perspective
Truths and Lies: A Writer’s Perspective We live in an age of attempted absolutes. Truth, Lies, Misinformation, and so on. Experts… Science says… Medical officials report that… Amidst the political polarity, a topic I’ll refrain from delving into, we find ourselves inundated with ‘reported facts’ that often lack thorough research and study. Consider this: medical officials make assertions bolstered by a list of citations to lend an air of authority. Yet, a meticulous examination of these citations frequently leads to a different, more ambiguous, or even a paid conclusion, a trend all too prevalent in our times. Where’s the money coming from? This underscores the crucial role of critical thinking in our quest for truth. As a writer well-versed in the art of research, I find it disconcerting that many individuals do not take the initiative to delve into the sources of information before forming their ‘informed’ opinions. This lack of personal research not only hampers our understanding of complex issues but also undermines our ability to make truly informed decisions. So here is my assertion. We are all different. One size does not fit all. Truth is never absolute; it is relevant only to the moment and the particular case/person to which it is assigned. Truth changes over time. Anything that is not a truth is not necessarily a lie. A lie is equally subjective. Misinformation is a misnomer since truth is subjective. And I posit that there is no such thing as an expert. I know some of you will jump on that one. A qualified person is offering a subjective opinion about something that cannot be quantified as an absolute. And attendance at an overpriced, four year or more institution with a formal degree does not mean that they know what they claim. That is an assumption, and as my father used to tell me, if you take the word ASSUME and split it up, you make an ASS of U and ME. Eggs used to be lambasted as artery-clogging cholesterol time bombs that would shorten life. They were an absolute under the saturated fat label, along with olive oil and coconut oil. Not anymore. Elements of that information were correct; eggs are high in cholesterol; however, research has shown the level of cholesterol in the body is a small and transient rise. So, was that fact wrong? Misinformation? A lie? Or a transient truth until more information was learned? In the 1940s and 1950s, medical doctors often advertised the safety and health benefits of smoking cigarettes. Need I say more? You are only hurting yourself if you rely on the experts without question. And there are so many things to be questioned. Did you know that pharmaceutical companies employ teams of scientists and medical professionals? Can you be certain that these paid people are not endorsing a product because their employer said so? You can’t. You want to have faith in the medical professionals, but…. Lawyers examine every nuance of every contract. The law is so detailed that almost nothing is left to chance. If we had the kind of time needed to research life on that level, we would have no time for anything else. So what can we do? Schools used to teach common sense, critical thinking, debate, and analysis. Nowadays, schools are more political, pushing social agendas over education. That does not mean you cannot question everything. You should. It is a complicated world, and it is becoming more complicated by the day. What’s in the trails left behind by aircraft? Are they contrails or chemtrails, and what’s the difference? Should I eat a vegetable diet or a meat diet? Where’s the data? And what’s the difference between an epidemiological study and a controlled, double-blind study? As a writer we have to question everything. What was the motivation for the character to act a certain way. What are the implications of a certain course of action? Everyone lies and we have to find a path that allows us to remain strong and not become victims to groupthink. Your character definitions need to include the ambiguities of logic. Improve the depth of character through levels of logic or illogic over certain things. Or as the slogan of the Tyrell Corporation read: More human than human. Question everything, assume nothing, do your own research, be your own advocate, challenge everything, and your writing, and your life, will be richer for it. W
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William Gensburger is the bestselling author of Texas Dead, Angle of Death, American Dead, Homo Idiotus, and Distant Rumors: 10 Short Stories.
He is also the publisher of Books & Pieces Magazine since 2017 featuring short stories, interviews and articles. You can learn more and view his books at www.MisterWriter.com.
©2023 William Gensburger