Bright Side of the Story - In light of things

We entered the dimly lit tent together. Though attendance for the post-day battle presentations has been dimming, the class size was still quite large. I spotted a distant, rare two seater in a corner, we were in luck. Negotiating through the rapt audience, we settled ourselves in the cozy confines and flicked open our laptops. The speaker was some olderly gentleman, showing some excel graphs and powerpoint slides on some weird collateral damage equation. A great deal of boasting, and strategizing takes place in these meetings. We, however, are careful not to offer too much advice in the fear of axing our own foot, so to say. I remember once my dear friend started ranting about some war funda, you know, to boost his credentials, and he was stuck in putting the same funda loop. Painful. But luckily, he got away with it and I was able to convince him to just remain silent. He has been practicing his brooding face for a while and looks like its working. Presently, I see him peering at his screen with a bemused expression. My own laptop hasn’t been able to catch any signal. I bet its some stupid lame video on youtube. I nudged him with my knee and he showed me what he was looking at. No wonder Voldemort was afraid of Dumbledore, I guess he was homophobic. At this point, I felt the speaker pause and his eyes on me. I expertly rearrange my smirk to the ever beautiful brooding one and return his gaze. Yet, another trick that I need to pass on.

Bright Side of the Story - Part I

As the dust settled, the view of the distant horizons became clearer to the eye. Not that it mattered. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a horse drop a cart load of $#*. I return my gaze to the kneeling figure, in front of me. Arjuna got up after tying his shoe lace and wrinkled his nose. May be he glimpsed the shitty action not far from our vantage point. He scratched his beard, adjusted his toupee and looked at me with reverent eyes. I could practically see him begging for my god level fundaes. I silently mulled, pretending to chew the non-existent gum in my mouth. I felt I cannot lie to this man. There were bigger things here at hand. I notice my protégé quiver at the sight of gathering forces.

“I cannot fight this war”

“I know”, I say blandly. I could have worded it better. He opens his mouth but the words won’t come out. Okie, that one I stole from eminem. But, he gaped for a long while.

“Is it because of your relatives on the other side?”, I helped him. He latched onto it like a moth onto a flame. Fatal but useful.

”Yeah, that’s it. I can’t fight my own relatives”. Brilliant and yet simple. The trick was how to convince the others that this indeed was the reason. They would see through it like a moth sees a flame (I think I am stretching this moth thing a little too far).

“How about others?” he surprises me sometimes with his shocking insights. This time, I choked for words. We need more time, but unfortunately, that’s exactly we are running out of. Well, we are running out of ideas, as well but you get the drift.