About A Thief, Me...

Forgive me father, for I have thieved.

Eons ago, when I was still a crazy coin collector, I did what is unthinkable for me today, I thieved.

I still remember the incident as clear as yesterday. We were in a moving school bus and there were a lot of kids around, in blue. I was all of nine while he, seven. We talked about everything under the earth and soon enough, talk turned to coins. That was when temptation struck.

It was he who threw me the bait and unashamedly I took it. He looked me in the eye and asked if I knew about the East India Company. I said I did and dramatically slowly, he took out his little black Kodak film roll case. He jingled it near my ear and sure enough, there was the rattle of coins.

I was dying with curiosity and the devil took his time to open the box. Slowly, very slowly, as if the djinn resided inside, he opened the box. There were seven copper coins in all, one huge while others varied from small to smallest. I remember the words I spoke, "May I look at them?"

He wouldn’t let me, at first. But soon he gave in to the look in his friends eyes and gave the box to me.

I took out the coins one by one and deliberately took my time in looking at each one of them carefully. I wasn’t interested in the beauty of the coins, far from it. I was deliberately timing my movements so that the stop where he had to get down was approaching fast. My friend sat lost looking at the glee on my face. I am sure he must have felt contended, at having made me happy.

Then in one sudden flash of realization, he understood that his stop was on him. He tried to snatch the coins from my hand. I deliberately stumbled and barring the view of the smallest coin behind the largest one, I slipped the little one quietly into my pocket. He just ran with the box.

I was truly unhappy that I could not steal the biggest coin. I never felt guilty; it took me many more years before that. But when it did, he was completely lost to me.

To this day, that little coin resides in a corner of my room. It is safely packed inside a little black Kodak film roll case. If I ever meet my friend again from so long ago, I shall take that box out and beg him for forgiveness.

Forgive me father, for I have thieved.

Black Is thicker Than Blood!

So Do I.

 

At Odds With The World...

but never will I lie on the ground, defeated...

...And Thus I Left My Heart Behind!

When memories come back unexpectedly, sometimes, I miss my school.

Would you study at a place where the ratio was 21 girls for over 600 boys? I studied there and if there ever was another chance, I gladly would do it all over again. I would study at my school, the Sainik School.

First memories first and those were the crew cuts. Hand held machines bit into half bent heads and at ten minutes end, the head felt a cleaner and better place to hold up. Pushing down the maroon beret around the fringes of a freshly partially shorn head, those were the times when I felt heaven came down to Trivandrum.

Wednesday was the day of the heavenly feast. We used to run to the mess-hall to be the first to grab the softest poori's with the biggest chunks of half cooked beef. Whoever said school was never fun?

Board exams came and seriousness left through the back door. The mango trees were our play grounds. Two stood on the ground while the third said hello to the tree tops. Ripe, heavy green mangoes fell down and were lovingly caught on towels. Sneaking it into the dormitory, it was covered with cloth and beaten against the wall.

The soft sound of the fleshy fruit breaking was music for our ears. Salt and chilly powder would have already appeared magically. The tip of the juicy green fruit would turn into white first and then into blood red. And then, it would drown in a sea of saliva. If that wasn’t innocent heaven, I shall never discover what it is.

That world ended for me doing my tenth. A part of me died and another was born. I never went back to school. It remains to this day my own sweet pain.

The day I go back, I will stand on stage, the way I wanted to for so many years. Looking once at the empty rows of seats, I would close my eyes and visualize it being filled with people. Closing my eyes and saying a silent prayer, I would explain to myself and the hollow world I see in front of me, why I left my life in school behind, why I used to wake up thinking I was late for P.T, why I thought the best years of my life would never come back…

…why I miss school so much, years after I finally tore myself away from it.

 

And God Painted The World!

What colors would god give the world if he was to do it all over again?

Thanks to the National Geographic, for showing the world for a century, the beauty of sight!

 

And Then The Land Took Me In…

Nostalgia for me is also when I look back at my Goa phase of life, a phase which lasted the longest two weeks of my life.

I landed up at beach country to make a movie in a day. I had a single piece of paper with a single name on it for company. And then there was the huge backpack which my mother hated and two days worth of train lag (I did not get a reserved ticket and general people kept me company. Sleeping and then not, I was afraid for everything except the sheer joy of uncertainty)

Four thirty was an obscene hour to make my landing. I took the night flight on two wheels. Delicious night air sliced through my hair. I made planes with my hands. They lifted by themselves as cool air struck their base. I was flying, latching on for dear life to the person in charge of my life, but barely his.

I put a face to the man who existed on my dirty piece of paper the next day. What would a stranger do for another? Anything under the sun, provided the stranger is a Goan.

Coming to a land for the first time in your life (not counting the family trip you had eons ago) to make a movie is not what any sane men would do. Insanity showed me my way. Happiness that my father had allowed me to be in Goa led me on. Ticking away one obstacle after the other, the stranger showed my way.

I location hunted. The places found me. As to the actors, the stranger was always there. I wanted transport, he found me his Vespa scooter. I wanted a four wheeler for shoot day, he gave me the key to his black Gypsy without a second thought, with petrol filled to the brim.

I did not burst the time frame given to me and I fathered the movie on time. I gave birth to my imagination. My baby never won an ward, but it did win minds. It was never the best of the lot of 40, but it gifted me a few of my bosom pals.

In fourteen days, a land transformed me. Goa was the place of wine and sun and sand to me, but then it became the land that bore my baby.

It became to me, simply, the holy ground.

 

Swami Greekerananda!

And then I thought, why not?

Courtesy – My beast (A.K.A Nokia 3230),
Picasa,
Silvester and…
One moment of madness or absurd creativity,
whichever way you see it…

 

I Walked, The Lady Of Sand Followed...

I always loved the prospect of getting lost. If it was in an alien territory where I knew not their language, it was all the more better. To me, it was a true test of my gesticulating skills. The sign language expert that I was, I always passed with flying colors. I never once lost my way, until the day France cried and Italy sighed in deliverance.

Where there is a will, there is a way, they say. I insist that it is not so. It should be ''Where there is a will and a human to ask the way, there is a way.'' Else, you are doomed, like I was that fateful day.

I was on an assignment to the other end of the world. Just as I finished, the Lady of Sand started her hunt. She hunted with fury, howling in glee, making sand her weapon. It blinded and it stung. It took away everything in its path.

And then, I lost my way, courtesy, The Lady of Sand. She passed the dunes and they never were the same again. Walking in the storm, I felt the pathos of the doomed nomad. I tasted bitter fear, and I shook.

Heat, Wind, Sand – The deadly trilogy that made many a man lie down and die. I lived fear, and then redemption came.

I reached a tarred road during a moment of respite for The Lady of Sand and I hailed the pleasing green on four wheels. Leaning back on the plush seat in controlled cool temperature was not an act of luxury. It was the joy of realization that after the Lady of Sand, there inevitably came the grace of god.

I, Dream Of Chocolat...

Chocolates overpowered me very early on.
Around me, they seemed to take a life of their own. They smiled at me from shop windows, begging to be taken away.
More often than not, I obliged, taking them delicately off the shelf and depositing them lightly in my shirt pocket, afraid to hurt my babies.
I preferred the deep fried brown hue to the whiteness of milk.
I loved the sensation of thick chocolate sticking to the roof of my mouth and my tongue’s toil to yank it free. When my battle was being won, I adored the heady feeling of diluted chocolate swirling around in my mouth.
I don’t remember the person who bought me my first chocolate- it should have been my mother. Another vivid image remains, though.
It was she who fed me the first chocolate of my life. I can still picture my mother breaking little pieces off the bigger chunk, mashing it with her fingers for my little mouth where teeth were just putting in its maiden appearance.
And I fell in love with the 12 brown pieces which came wrapped in golden foil paper and then in violet. They called it the ‘Dairy Milk.’
The love of my life remains so to this day. Twenty five years has done nothing to take away the charm of a piece of cocoa melted in sugar. They are the closest heaven can come down to earth.
I know it for sure, for when it comes to chocolates, I have been there and I have definitely done that.