Every kid somewhere in his life would have played God, and I did play my part too.
The month was April of 1994 and I was searching for new pets after my four fishes had suddenly died due to untraceable reasons.
(Mostly because of the food ,apparently the fishes hated fast food .............in fact it's turned out to be as dangerous as Aishwarya Rai dressed-up as the "The Grim Reaper")
So I found my next victims (earth worms), I dug them up from a wet place from my back-yard. I had initial doubts about their new home, after some research, I thought the Tulsi pot was a nice place as my grand mother kept the plant healthy, the plant did not mean any "Jack Poop" all that meant was the soil was wet 365 days a year, Which made it a zero maintenance venture, thanks to grandma. I placed them into the pot and saw them wriggle into the soil.
The next morning I wanted to see them so that I could do a status check on their health, so in process ended up emptying the pot and left the plant unattended in the hot sun, I found the worms alive and kicking, so I eventually put them back in the pot and replanted the Tulsi. However the whole incident had taken a good 1 hour and 30 minutes and the plant looked like "Woody Allen" after electrocution. I went back had my break-fast and left to explore my neighborhood, And when I came back Grandma had taken-up the "Rudhra Kali" avatar, she was fuming after Witnessing the "The Great Tulsi Tragedy of 1994", I asked grandma for forgiveness with my usual puppy eyes and innocence, To which she acknowledged in her very own choice of words, which were
"I'll break your hand if you touch the pot again"
After that I was like "Indiana Jones" looking out for the hidden treasures (pets). That year we had a mountain out of a mole kind of a problem brewing up (At least to my mom) it was a pregnant vermin (mouse) against our family. My Mom was aggressive when it came to guarding her turf like every other mother; her "Kitchen" was her fantasy theme park after a hard days work. For some reason she felt relaxed inside the safety and comforts of her "Spice kingdom". The constant fragrance of "Filter Coffee" (Freshly brewed South Indian Coffee) and the Sweet but yet burning fragrance of all the spices (esp. Pepper).
And then there was this mouse waging a war against my mother. Pillaging her grocery and sabotaging the rice sacks, day after day. Dad for some reason had a fear of rats as soon my mom said "damn mouse", dad would tactfully raised his leg from floor and place them on living room table and yell back "honey kill the damn pest!!!". The next week were like scenes from the movie Rambo-First Blood .Mom set up the rat trap and waited for victory ,the first week the rat had smelt "a rat" and never went for the dried coconut piece, nor for the little sugar cube. This mouse was no ordinary mouse, I guess if this mouse was a man, it would be "Rambo", carefully tip toeing the booby traps and land mines, avoid detection and successfully sabotaging the enemy supplies and getting back before the 9:00 P.M supper! But the mouse had a weakness and it was "The Masala Vada" . So the trap was set, the masala vada hanging out was like attracting women to the glass windows of 50% discounts stores. The rat fell for it after fighting its urges for 3 weeks.
I was handed the job of relocating the mouse to the near by "Sennappan Thota" (Sennappan Orchid), so I did as I was told. That night my mom heard the squeals of a mouse from the kitchen at around 11:00p.m ,Mom feared the most ,She thought the mouse had relocated back, but when we opened the cardboard box there was a surprise "Tiny pink mice ,may be 3 -4 days old(cute as hell). Mom felt miserable about the whole incident and put down her weapons, but dad wanted the tiny mice-lets out the next morning, That night I put them in a small box and pretended to throw them away but little did they realize that I would raise them in a secret location and they would grownup to be splinter from " The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" two days later they all died in the box, may be due to indigestion (Idlies this time!!!).
I felt I had no control at all, no control over life, death, luck or anything for that matter. I hated my self and needed some one to blame it all on .And right about then an ant bit me and then another and another...I was sitting on an ant colony ( Big black ants with scissor hooks as their teeth) and right about then I had found my arch rivals for the season. The primal man inside screamed out loud a battle cry and I had turned into an exterminator. I was Hitler and ants were going to see a genocide that the ant world had never seen before. My rage exploded manifold when I realized that my sister took care of these ants and feed them rice grains and sugar crystals, the ant bites hurt me even more.
I went straight into the bath room to get the bug spray (Baygon Spray) and was back to the frontlines to face the enemy ,There was no return ,eye to eye with my enemy ,I pointed the weapon and sprayed ,I had unloaded the entire can and felt relieved ,Like unloading 42 rounds of bullets from an AK 47 on a national terrorist. That night I went home and slept like a baby.
The next day ,after I came back from school went back to see the hell I had raised the previous day and all I saw was that the ants had built back their colony with never before determination and zeal with the help of my sister ofcourse, My sister had taken over the command and I had my new enemy.
That week I took a special interest in making her life miserable and would hide my self behind the door for hours just to pounce on her and hit her on the head; Of course this gave me a sense of achievement, salvation, and relief. After about a week of torturing my sister, I got back to the ants. I used to put all the captured ants into a bucket of water and placed a stick and the brainiest used the stick as an escape route.
I saw a reason in everything around me. I saw my friends running into the bushes to catch butterflies. They had a parthenium plant, For some reason they called it the CONGRESS plant (May be due to the reason that the plant was introduce to India via the world food program (Wheat) in the 80's) they would place the plant on the butterfly and trap it.
Later they would catch the insect by running their hands into the parthenium plant skillfully and would hold the insect between their index and thumb fingers and raise it above as a toast to the victory gods. Then my beautiful mind later figured out that the badminton racket my parents bought me could serve as better technology to catch butterflies and therefore I never used them to serve their original purpose.
I have a list of pets I've lost due to mishandling
(The way I lost them were Kid-dish but some were gruesome experiments)
1) Two Frog
2) Couple of Butterflies
3) Four Mice
4) Earth worms
5) Dragon Flies
6) A Pigeon
7) Some Fishes
8) A Crab
*The ones that did not make the list are survivors;
I now have a happy and healthy 4yr old Labrador (I am using this statement as an alibi).
I can give you a ball by ball account ....but I don't want my memories to sound cruel and violent to the average reader.
In my later years I read the list of Top 10 Evil scientists , I was happy to see my name 'Not Listed'.
Those long summer days seem like seconds now, these memories are like beacons helping me guide through my thoughts.
07 September, 2008
30 August, 2008
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.
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.
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.
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