T for Tintin (2022 A-Z)

 

“Billions of blue blistering barnacles, @#$^%$%” I curse, quoting Captain Haddock from the famous adventurer/detective graphic-series Tintin.

“What happened, Sheel?” asks Ramya.

“They want everyone back at work. All 5 days, 9 hours a day, to be monitored by biometrics,” I growl.

“Nooo!!!” she gasps.

We’re a bunch of people pampered in our work ways, thanks to (unfortunately!) the Covid pandemic. Like many others, having tasted work from home for 2 years, we no longer desire travelling to work.

“That’s it, I quit,” I state.

“To be precise, she says, quoting Thomson and Thompson, from the same series, “we quit.”

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Tintin – the European detective boy, with his enthusiastic dog Snowy, and his quests had the ability to whisk away kids on mesmerizing adventures. It was one of the first series that introduced foreign situations, cultures and even the dialect/slang to me – be it through East Asian or European or African locations of crimes/mysteries. I would look forward to my parents getting me these books every few days from the library. If not for the library, sometimes we would purchase second hand copies of Tintin from the second-hand book store near the corner, next to the Bata showroom at Chembur. Eventually, my copies ended up being well-worn, but oh so precious and full of memories!

I have written this 100-word flash fiction for the 2022 Edition of the Blogging A-Z Challenge, a blogging event held every April. Click here to read more on the challenge! My chosen theme for this year is flash fiction driven book recommendations. Whether or not you are a book reader, you would enjoy the flash fiction. And if you’re participating as well, do leave your blog site in the comments!