30 August, 2008

SUBURBAN SUNRISE

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27 August, 2008

THE INDUSTRIAL TOWN

The 80s rang our door bells and were eager to welcome it. The first generation of arcade video games, Indian cricket world cup, the Bhopal disaster, famines in Ethiopia, Chernobyl disaster, Soviet-Afghan war, Tiananmen Square protests and we were playing hide and seek in an ever changing world without an ounce of fear in our minds.

I must have been in my 1st standard 5-6 yrs old maybe and I was like a drunken butterfly in psychedelic world. I had limited and simple hobbies like running along with an old tyre around the neighborhood when the sun was blazing down the afternoons with a vengeance burn everything around.

(Modi Continental—>Correct me if I am wrong ...was the only imported tire in my locality, all my friends had the MRF tyres)

We also used to play "Bachha" (A game) in the evenings, where the winners took home a handful of bottle caps as spoils; I had found this flat piece of 3" X 3"stone when I was walking back home from my school. It was a two face kind of a stone, half rough-half smooth and boy!!! it was my lucky charm ,By the end of 3rd week I had enough bottle caps to start my bottle cap business and I was excited!!!.

Well I had my evil neighbors too ,a family of 5 .Husband and wife with their 3 boys ,the youngest was nagesh aka "naga" the middle one was a mean guy (don’t remember his name but I called him "kunta" slang for handicap) and the oldest was a 16 yr old called Jai who had his own set of teen problems and he didn’t bother to mingle with us, although he once ripped me off of 3 rupees for he promised to build me a origami paper boat which I never saw.And my other neighbor was a Marathi family with two normal chubby looking porky boys.

I distinctly remember that evening the sun was setting and I was on the house terrace doing my daily chores and I had this 6th sense that something bad was to happen ,Few seconds later the gate screeched due to its old hinges rubbing against each other and therefore I looked towards my front gate, to my horror it was kunta walking out of my gate with something in his hand .I yelled at him and he threw whatever he had in his hand and fled the scene .I ran down ,prayed that it was some other stone from my collection. When I reached the crime scene I could feel my cheeks were wet because my tears had rolled down. My lucky stone was cracked into two pieces .My good times had come to an immature end.

The next couple of days saw the worst loosing spree in my gaming history, I lost every last bottle cap because I had lost my luck and along with it my winning streak, also my bottle cap business had come to miserable halt. So after the initial depression of 3 days I overcame my misery.After a month the seasons had changed the trends had changed too.

For kunta’s younger brother naga the trend was "Clint Eastwood".He must have been in 2nd standard and one day he told me that he had something cool to show and took me to the local bus-stop and searched for something and after a while he found his "something", It was a smoked up cigarette to the butt and he got it my terrace and began to smoke it like a chimney on a clear blue sky, I was shocked and amazed to see smoke coming out of a living and breathing human being .

Of course this freak show came with its statutory warnings like

1) "tell another living soul and I'll be killed like a dog"
2)"I will hunt you down and shoot you in the head--->twice!!!".

So I did what every kid would do .Went back and told my mom, if you thought that was'nt enough ,I told his class teacher and she called me in between my classes just to show the rest how good a kid was I in not being naga’s accomplice and then she informed naga’s parents to complete my evil propaganda.Naga was warned about the brutalities he had planned on me and was told he would be suspended from school if he showed any vengeance. The next month naga’s family shifted to Bombay for some reason and I breathed a sigh of relief.

The grass was green, the birds were chirping and summer vacations had come with all its grandeur. That summer my cousin Kumar came by and we collected some sticky pulp from the trees around the neighborhood in the hope of making a cork ball, things were fine the tree pulp was a natural glue and was holding up pretty well, until I told my cousin to start the mini fire to dry the ball, So that we could cut down on valuable time rather than sun drying it. We were men of action and we needed quick results and boy we were wrong .After we took the ball out of the fire and tried bouncing it on the concrete ground below .It cracked right in the middle. That summer I had planned to sell 100 balls and sell them at 5 rupees a piece, but like always "down came the rain" on my ball making business

(If things had gone my way that year ,I would have put COSCO and NIVEA out of their buisness).

The second time my cousin came around, it was disaster!.We were playing war game with the kids from the Marathi family next door. We used to hurl stones at them and the best team dodged them all without breaking a sweat. Of course I and my cousin were nimble footed and it must have been 6:30 Pm, I guess my stars had lined up. I threw this stone ; I could see the trajectory clearly unlike the other throws, the stone moved frame by frame and kissed his chin gently, because of the god damn gravity!!!, the damage was obvious and a bit heavy

(The stone hit his chin because the moron looked at the stone eye to eye and might have thought that he could scare it away with his mean stares, stone never cared and did the obvious).

That night I came home and explained the whole scenario to my mother, I even drew it a pictograph to show it was an accident and that such a thing would never happened If the kids lead feet had moved a couple of inches. I was grounded in an Indian way of course. That night I knew their parents would come back to fight mine cause I had drew first blood, I wanted my family to defend me and so did they. My dad was trying to convince the boy's parents. He must have told them that it must have been an honest accident or something. I took a look from the window clearing the curtains subtly to see how bad the kid was hurt. He looked like a bunny rabbit from hell. He had a bandage cloth wrapper from the chin all the way around his ears and to the middle of his skull.

(like the one kumble had when broke his jaws in the west-Indies tour).

The doctor had skillfully tied a butterfly knot, Like the kid was gift wrapped fresh from the Hospital.It looked funny and I must have had some laughs at that time.

I also had a weird passion of gardening I used to sow a mango seed in the garden and dig it every day for two weeks to see the progress .In my later year I realized this was bad thing to do for mango seed’s and dead bodies.

(Sorry for that Analogy, It took me 1hr to come up with it and I said to myself "I am not throwing it away" .so here it is).

When I moved out Industrial town ,I took back with me '4 pet fishes' I purchased for 25 paise each from a kid ,which were enjoying their new home "An empty kissan jam bottle" (MY make shift aquarium) ,And not to forget the bitter-sweet memories I had gathered.

26 August, 2008

CHILD IN TIME

Nostalgia is a hazy but powerful & long-lasting feeling ;
So is our childhood, a surreal and magical time.
Infact this feeling is as realistic as today's stern realities.

Sometimes,when I close my eyes during those routine coffee breaks on a boring Tuesday afternoon ,my mind runs a 70mm movie fast forwarded to last about a minute;

And all I am trying is to freeze this movie clip and explain to you the memories trapped with in them.

I guess we all go through those days where our parents were our protectors and our home our training grounds.
Heck we were potty trained here ,taught how to hold a spoon, taught discipline ,and also most importantly to love everything and everyone around us .
At that age we really do as we were told with all our hearts.

Every time I look at kids,I wonder

"How these funny looking little rascals, poop machines with mucous dripping from their noses manage to look like angels to their parents ?"

Trust me, "Even God would not know why"

Ever wondered about the first day of school?

Normally a gloomy day ,your mom dresses up and you probably thought you were going to a picnic or something.

But a few seconds later the bitter proposition is put forward by "yours truly Dad", the enemy supremo of the hour.

You start your initial bouts of hellish screams and tantrums, and wait for Mom’s reinforcements to come crush dad's atrocities.

But a few hours later you realize you are headed to pre-nursery.
As far as I was concerned I never went to pre-nursery for I was a hell raiser.

"A good example for a bad example" kind of a kid.

This attitude seemed to work-out the best after I had tried and tested the whiner, the squealer and the crybaby attitudes.

The school was called "The Angel’s Convent", but for me it looked like some Nazi concentration camps where little children were tortured with alphabets.

But, I on the other hand had a way out of even the most complex and well engineered parental mind games.

After the teacher realized my "attitude problem" she made me sit out on in the school park*.

Here I sat waiting for the sun to touch mid sky cuz that's when my grandpa rescued me from the clutches of the war I was fighting every damn single day.

From what I had seen, the war had already claimed its victims in the form of young minds.


(I must confess --> The Park*; was on a slab of stone on a storm drainage gutter, hey don't judge me :), I am not a liar, I just wanted my memories to sound & look classy).

I was raised in a small community, middle-class neighborhood which the average Indian is well acquainted with.

It was told to me in the later years that I used to terrorize the people walking below on the streets with a barrage of garbage and foot ware “missiles” on the unexpected people walking on the streets.

And,I did it from the comforts and safety of my vantage point(Balcony) ,And yes my dad had his share of fights too because of the obvious.

There is nothing a kid needs to worry at that age for there were no rules;
All we had then were our flimsy memories and our imaginary worlds.

I think hard sometimes to figure out the names of my friends, but all I can remember is the colors of their shirts.

As all kids, education was not the only reason I was put into this well oiled "educational system".

It was to win the rat race that was about to hit our unexpected minds.
We were forced to understand to stay synchronized with the societies clockworks and drill sirens.

Kids at that age were taught to win even before the rules of the games were explained and pre-nursery was our trailer before the big movie.


If I am asked to briefly describe my initial stages of my babyhood ,I would say it would be like the movie "Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas".

For those who haven't seen the movie,It's about these two photographers who are high on every possible narcotic known to man;And how they see the world via their Hallucinations and Brilliance.

Having said that ......
As a kid,I was only high on my careless memories and adventures.