When I Became Alexander the Great

When we were in fourth standard, we used to have extra-curricular activities happening in the shade of the old jackfruit trees(there were three of them but none exists today.) every once in a while. In fourth standard we had a lesson(it was a play I guess) on Alexander's encounter with the Indian king Porus and our teachers decided that we should enact it under the trees. I would've very much liked to be Porus because he was the real 'hero' but M was the teacher's favourite and so he became Porus and I was to be Alexander. I was disappointed but there was one solace, though. When I went home and told Pappa, he suggested that I modify my accent so as to sound like a foreigner(Imagine Alexander speaking Kannada!!!) so I adapted a wooden variety, like a robot I guess. So I became happy with the prospect of showing off my acting prowess but the happiness was short-lived. In the end of the play, when the two became friends, they hugged each other. But it was unimaginable for me and I'm sure M would agree with me that it was for him also(being shy and all that!!). Now I'm not sure if my horror stemmed from the fact that I had to hug a boy or that it was to be in front of everyone or that my friends would chide me about it forever after. May be it was all of these. So I refused flatly and teachers also could understand; they said we could shake hands at least. I don't know why we didn't agree to this but I know that was the case. So finally the friendship had to be indicated only by the touching of the swords which was quite funny right there actually. 

Sunset

A dark day indeed. Gattimaama passed away just like that. But the more I tell myself that he is no more, it is only sounding more unbelievable. He was a part of my entire life, the most beloved of my father's friends, and he loved us all so much. I wasn't asking him to live forever or anything. But for someone like him to go off in a flash is too much to take. Imagine not to be seeing him when I go to Modankap, not to be seeing him when I visit his house, not to have him as a part of our lives anymore...the thought is bizarre. Dear people like him when they go, they leave a compartment of vacuum in my heart never to be filled by thousands of people I may meet henceforth. So I just feel poorer today.

I don't know how Baby Auntie will get on. She will have to do that as quickly as she can may be, because they had a grandchild not even a month ago. Poor Gattimaama loved children so much and it is so cruel that he hardly spent any time with the baby. I don't know how his friends are taking it. Pappa won't tell me and I won't know what to tell him...

All I Want is a Room Somewhere....

...to lie in Anu's lap, to get patted by her little hands and listen to all the sweet nonsense that she utters...

Self Doubts

If people break into humming songs when you are near them, do you take it as a compliment or should you pay attention to what the lyrics really say?

Damned if You Do...

I had never spared much thought for death penalty till Afzal Guru's hanging. I had always believed it was necessary and had wrongly understood that as such we found it very difficult to hang someone anyway. In fact, I didn't even care to know anything about Afzal either, though he was supposed to have been involved in our Parliament attack. The attack had looked more like our failure than someone else's audacity to me. But after his death, suddenly I've realized that killing someone like that does not call for celebration; it is sad and sad only. And there is reasonable doubt in my mind as to whether he is the culprit at all and that is making me feel guilty everytime I see his eyes on the TV, in the newspaper. Of course, a pseudo-secular person like me can't do anything else about it. Tomorrow I will feel like asking Aslam, my lone Muslim teammate, how he feels about the whole thing and if any worse thoughts cross his mind. But no, I guess I will end up talking to someone else about it, not Aslam. And just to compensate for my guilty feeling, I will end up being a little extra nice to every other Muslim I come across, who I have no complaints against anyway. But today I'm unable to shake off that feeling of having done something wrong and I hope the guys who have been coming on TV saying it was better late than never also feel like me when they go to bed. 

Being Mobile

My mother went to her native today and gave my father some anxious moments by not picking her mobile phone even after more than an hour. It seems that the presence of mobilephones has made people more jittery as if they are dependent on the device for signs of security.

Two decades ago we didn't even have a landline in our house and father being involved in so many cultural activities, the time he returned home was never consistent. He also had many friends around and many times he would be talking to them till 8-9 in the night and I wonder if he had thought about his family waiting back home then. There was no way to inform either with no phone in any of the homes in the neighbourhood too. Anyway, I don't think we children worried about it much because we would be asleep by 8 and it was mother who used to complain occasionally but she had resigned herself to this routine.

I was 13 then and those were the days our own house was being constructed, about 200 meters away from the rented house, if you took an imaginary straight path. But we didn't have one in reality and the two routes were longer; the longer one taking the narrow path below Akkamma's house and then next to Machado Sir's house and hitting the tar road in front of the SC/ST hostel and the shorter route circling the paddy fields and then across Marianna's frontyard, risking his ferocious dog Prince which he always let lose. Those days father would typically come home straight from school, then go to the construction site after tea to water the house and then return home around 8. One night I was asleep as usual when my mother woke me up and from the silence around I could guess it was pretty late. She told me father hadn't come home yet and she wanted us to look for him. I had never really seen her alarmed about father before, so it got the sleep out of my eyes immediately. The plan was to lock the sleeping 8 year-old V at home and go out with a torch to the construction site. It didn't strike me to ask my mother why she thought father would be still there at that odd time. May be she didn't know where else to go and I don't know if she had any other thoughts running. Anyway, we set off silently and the night was dark and the mini-jungle around our house was looking darker. We decided to skip the shortcut because there would be snakes in the night and reached Akkamma's house only to be greeted by her dogs. We literally prayed to them not to bark too loudly to get the whole household awake and thankfully they answered. We hit the road hoping to meet father on the way but even till we reached the site there was nobody along the road. But it was obvious father wasn't there too and I even looked into the well! I still remember the relief first and next the embarrassment of even having looked there, when my torch just reflected the water below. We were clueless now and we didn't even exchange a word on our way back, this time risking both Prince and the snakes. My only hope was Mayya Maama, father's friend staying half a km away but thankfully my father saved us that journey. As we reached home, we saw the door was open and my father was standing there sheepishly telling us that he was in Mayya Maama's house all along talking and it got just a bit late. We were too exhausted with relief even to complain.

Swinging

A very engrossing Davis cup match between the Czech and the Swiss and no sight of an end so far. I have a soft corner for Berdych so I'm supporting the Czech but it's getting a bit on my nerves now, this match. I can only think that had it been the best of three, Czech would've won long ago! Of course imagine the level of stamina one needs to have to play on like that and that's an inspiration to lesser mortals like me. Score currently is 8-all in the fifth set.

Days are rapidly vanishing into the horizon and my daytime is filled with loan interest calculations, accruals and provisions and the nights with songs, various colours, flowers, stories and all other assorted stuff which have filled my children's imagination these days. So the walk to the office is all the dearer to me now because it gives me time to think about myself and imagine how my future will be and how I would want it to be. May be it's doing me some good otherwise too; in a world full of recurring and enduring coughs and colds, my nose has been a rolemodel so far. I caught cold after a long time and it subsided from the very-bad level to zero within three days! Or is it the fact that I reluctantly kept the books aside and slept in time and filled my eyes with all the lost sleep? Or is it my Chyavanprash which I gulp only when I catch cold? Anycase, I'm feeling very good about it right now.

Ever since I had read about a lady who grew very tall because of some hormonal imbalance, I was a bit worried about Rishi's height. He is only 8 and a half but already 4 feet and 10 inches tall and always people add at least 3 years when they guess his age! So when we went for Anu's immunization today, I asked the doctor about it. He said nothing to worry considering the fact that both P and I were tall and he also added that Anu was a tall girl too! Now I'll have to closely monitor her height also....