Ouch, that hurt!

Yesterday, my Uncle's son, the five year old cousin who lives downstairs was showing me his wounded knee and was giving me a detailed description about how he fell down and hurt his knee. It was really adorable to look at the kid describing the incident very seriously to me. His eight year old sister was beside us, who was watching all along, patiently listening to her brother giving me a detailed account about the incident. She was waiting to take her turn, to explain about all the times that she had fallen down and hurt herself. Once he was done, she took over and started telling me about how she had once hurt her elbow while playing. At this time, my aunt entered the room and sat beside us. She was telling the kids "Look how strong Gautam is. He is very much elder to you. Think about how many times he might have hurt himself throughout his childhood. You need to eat well to grow up and become strong like him". By that last sentence, I wasn't sure if she was really telling that I am strong, or commenting that I was fat. Anyways, to add to her advice, I told the kids that I had got hurt a lot of times while I was a kid. The kids started asking me to narrate about all those incidents. So this is what I told them:

Incident 1: This happened outside my school, St. George's School, New Delhi, when I was probably in my 2nd or 3rd grade. There were many kids used to go the same school from the neighborhood, so we used to go to the school in an auto rickshaw. The auto driver used to collect the fare on a monthly basis, so he became our 'official' auto-wala. He couldn't carry many kids in an auto rickshaw, also there was a high demand for transport. He upgraded to a Maruti Omni and we now started commuting by the Omni car, but we still called him auto-wala. This upgrade from auto to Omni to a pitch battle being fought the kids in a competition for the window seats. One such 'battle' was fought between me and a guy named Kushagar who was much bigger in size as compared to me. It was a fine evening while the driver had gone inside the school campus to bring some kids to the car, Kushagar and I had begun a quarrel for the window seat in the meantime. Things soon got dirty and we took it to the next level. It soon became a mini street brawl on the footpath and in due course, he pushed me and I fell on the ground, and there were many pieces of broken tube light. My elbow took the maximum impact, perhaps the only impact, but it was very severe. The glass pieces pierced at several places in and around my right hand elbow and I had to pluck them out one by one. I became really furious and the guy became scared, just beginning to realize what he had actually done to me. All of a sudden, as if there was some superpower that got into me, I walked up to the guy and punched him on the stomach. He succumbed to the blow and bent down and I kicked him in the back. Just as he was about to fall, I caught his neck and dragged his forehead through the broken pieces of tube light. Right after this, the auto-wala came running and took out some cotton from the first-aid box and gave it to each of us. In all, it looked like a typical Tamil masala movie, where the police come just after the hero kills the villain. The auto-wala asked us to get inside the car and I was the first to get in. I had made a mistake by volunteering to get in first, as Kushagar got to sit beside the window. I was still angry at him. Neither of our parents went to each other's house to complain or fight, nor filed a complaint with the school, as they knew that there was fault on both the sides. The wound took nearly four months to heal. While my wound was hidden under my shirt, Kushagar looked like he was wearing a bandana for a month!

Incident 2: A friend is supposed to pull you up during hard times, but this is incident is an example of how that could go horribly wrong. This happened at New Delhi again, in my apartments. Those were the times of severe water scarcity in Delhi and my area was one of the most affected. Water was supplied only during specific timings and everyone needed to make sure that their individual overhead tanks were filled and used the water judiciously. There was this man who lived on the ground floor who used to steal water from everyone's tanks using a pipe and fill it onto his own. I know it sounds kinda crazy, but when there's scarcity of such essential commodities, shit happens. So one fine afternoon, my friend Rahul and I were sent to the terrace by our parents to check out if there was sufficient water in our respective tanks. The tank was supported on a cement slab, and as the cement had worn out over the years, the iron rods inside it projected outside the slab. Back then, I wasn't tall enough to climb the slab. I carefully placed my left knee up and I realized that the other knee was just touching one of the projecting iron rods. I tried to grab one end of the tank to climb, when Rahul had already climbed up. He thought that I stretched out my hand to ask for his help and he caught my hand and pulled me upwards, towards himself. The iron rod that was touching my right knee pierced the skin and as he had pulled me upwards, it horizontally tore about 3 inches of my skin. The impact was so severe that my knee was bleeding uncontrollably till we reached the hospital. My parents tried several tricks to arrest the bleeding, but it was to no avail. I cried in pain, but the doctor didn't seem to care and started stitching my skin together. I was told that the stitch and the scar would heal in a few months, but it's been well over thirteen years and the scar still stays.

Incident 3: I learnt a lesson very early in my life, that one should never trust girls, whatsoever. A girl of about my own age (whom I don't even remember now) and I were playing on the terrace of my apartments. I was about eight years of age then. She stood in front of me and we held each others' hands in a crisscross way. I held her left hand with my right and vice versa. Both of us started spinning round and round, initially slowly and then very fast. I really don't remember what happened or why she did it, she simply left my hand. At such a fast pace I almost flew for a meter or two and fell down with my forehead directly hitting the ground and I felt as though someone ripped apart my forehead. The pain was unbearable and I was bleeding. This time, I got my forehead stitched. Scar stays, you can still see it on my forehead. I sometimes wish the scar could have been more like that of Harry Potter's.

Incident 4: A brother in need is a brother indeed. My cousin Ganesh and I were playing in his house at Delhi. His apartments had this really long fight of stairs that it had about 50 steps at a stretch. Ganesh was standing at the bottom and I was probably on the 25th stair.  We were playing with a crazy ball (I hope you know what a crazy ball is). He threw the ball at me and it landed two steps below the one I was standing on. I bent down, trying hard to catch the ball, but instead lost my balance and fell down. I rolled down about twenty steps and Ganesh caught me at the last step. As the stairs directly opened to the road, had Ganesh not caught me, some vehicle would have definitely run me over. My right temple (on the forehead) was bleeding and a timely first aid made sure that I was alright within a week. 

Incident 5: This incident happened when I was probably in my 2nd grade in New Delhi. As both my parents went for work, I was sent to a creche where I stayed till late evening, under the care of a lady whom everyone used to address as 'Aunty'. This aunty used to pick me up from the bus stop and take me to the creche. On one fine day, I was returning from the school in my school bus and got up and started walking toward the exit door of the bus when a motorist in a two-wheeler overtook the bus in an unexpected manner. He driver thought that he might knock down the motorist and suddenly applied the brakes. I spun around and fell down and the back of my head hit the floor of the bus. What I did not notice was that there was a nail that was protruding out from the floor of the bus. When I fell, it pierced my head, about 1cm exactly at the bald spot I gathered myself and got up, while the bus conductor helped me get off the bus. The creche aunty was already present there as usual and we walked along to the creche. I was wearing my school bag on my shoulders and she took it from me to carry it. She then gently placed her hand on my back to walk me along but she immediately withdrew her as she felt something wet on my back. To her horror, she saw that her had was full of blood. She then spun me around and saw that the back side of my shirt was fully drenched in blood and it was almost till my hip. You can predict what happened afterwards - I was rushed to the hospital and got stitches on my head. One strange thing here was that I never felt that I had been hurt in my head. The piercing of the nail made my head (or at least the wounded region) go numb. My mom was called up and she came rushing to the hospital. The nurse complained to my mom - "What is it with your son? He was whistling tunes of some Bollywood film songs while we were stitching his head up".

You really should have seen the look on the face of my uncle's kids after I finished narrating the story. They seemed completely baffled and speechless. They were so immersed into it while I was narrating, that I wasn't interrupted even once!

The Crow Chase

I’m finally back with a post after about a year. Creative writing is something I am starting to lose touch with. Over the past year, I haven't got much time to think about the content for my next post and worse yet, I almost completely forgot that I have a blog to write. Internship, campus placements, extra curricular activities and exams have all taken their toll on me and I am left with very less time to spare for this. I derived the inspiration for this post while I was looking out through the window during my Visual Programming examination and I couldn't help but spend about twenty minutes watching two pigeons perching just outside the window next to me. As the window as a bit tinted, I guessed that the pigeons couldn't see me on the other side of it. I was wondering how I could do nothing but just sit and watch the two birds even for a whole day.

I have always had a special likeness for animals and aves right from my childhood, just because of my Dad. About fifteen years ago, when we used to live in Delhi, I was forced to wake up before 6 a.m. daily as I had to leave early for school. As soon as I would wake up, I would walk up to the door in my room that led to to the balcony and open it to find about a hundred sparrows perching there. None of them would fly away when I open the door as they weren't simply perching there, but waiting. Waiting for my dad to feed them with grains of rice. From one side of the balcony you could see the sunshade of the house underneath mine. My dad would put some pieces of bread on the sunshade and a few grains of rice right in our balcony itself. The crows would feed on the bread pieces while the pigeons and the sparrows would eat the rice grains. I would sometimes think of my dad as though he was following some sort of ritual by feeding the birds exactly at six in the morning. But what I figured out was that it was the birds who were following the ritual - even if my dad was late by ten or fifteen minutes, they would start chirping loudly, loud enough to make an impact in our minds that the birds were hungry.

It was about twelve years ago that we moved to Chennai, and my dad continued the same activity of feeding the birds every morning without fail. Around nine years ago, in 2003, we bought a flat in Anna Nagar and moved there. My dad found this house most comfortable for feeding the birds as there was a projection in our terrace and it had to portions, neatly separated by a divider. So my dad used this place to feed the crows and pigeons separately. I was surprised to see that there were no sparrows at all in Chennai whereas one could find sparrows everywhere in Delhi. My dad told me that the sparrow population was slowly declining by the time he left Delhi (I came to Chennai 2 years earlier). My dad made an observation at this time and realized that the crows loved to eat such stuff that would easily fit their claws and that could be torn or broken using their beaks. He was exactly right. He then switched over to feeding the crows with pieces of biscuits nearly broken into small pieces. I could see the crows enjoy the food rather than eating pieces of bread. He told me one ore thing - that one could still see sparrows in Chennai, but only at places like trees that are beside provision shops, ration shops, etc. This still holds good, you can still see sparrows in Chennai, but only at these locations. I wonder if anyone else would have observed these. The birds are so dear to my dad and he is equally dear to the birds that they would allow my dad to touch them. I have seen my dad cuddling them and the birds really seemed to love that. Now I am not kidding in this case, the birds would fear me and wouldn't let me go near them, even if I had some grains of rice in my hand. Now I understood that they could really distinguish among people! My dad also has a small earthen plate that he uses to pour water for the birds, and the birds really seem enjoy drinking the water and play on it as well. Very rarely, when my dad would not feel well, he wouldn't feed the birds on that day. This would make him very sad and complain throughout the day that he wasn't able to feed them.

Recently, my dad told me one interesting observation that he had made. I felt that I would have never observed that, had he not told that to me. It was a very simple stuff, he told me that one would hardly see pigeons perching on trees. Again, he was darn right, I haven't seen any pigeon perching on a tree after I heard that from my dad. Birds love trees, but pigeons don't seem like trees as much as the other birds do. They have their nests on buildings, preferably on high sunshades, inaccessible to humans or on exhaust holes, etc. You can try this one too, just try to spot a pigeon that perches on trees!

We recently spotted a male cuckoo on the huge tree that is right in front of my house. I took a while for us to figure out what bird it was as we had never seen it before. No, it does not look like the cuckoo we have in our mind, it looks really different, a bit bigger than a crow. So it gave us a hard time to conclude about what bird it was. One very distinct feature of this bird was the kind of sound it made - it was so disturbing and very weird to our ears. But we saw something that we had never seen before - the male cuckoo would make that sound that would alert the crows. This made the crow know that the cuckoo was around an it was hungry. The crow would then look around for food and then bring it to the cuckoo. And that wasn't all, it would put the food from its beak into the cuckoo's beak and the cuckoo would happily munch away its food. Also, if a crow had got some food for itself, the cuckoo would notice that and make its distinct sound. The crow would then share some of its food with the cuckoo. Man, what a harmony among the birds!

When you give too much of something to someone, they tend to become greedy and ask for more. I think this holds good universally, for animals and humans alike. My dad still continues his age old activity of feeding the birds every morning. If a crow were hungry during any time of the day, it would come to the balcony of my house, sit on the balcony and caw, as it would know that my dad lives here and would feed them. Yes, it happens very regularly, and crows seem to have a great IQ and you can distinctly identify it's caw when it is trying to draw your attention. Now this was taken to the next level, there was this really hungry crow that would become really furious when it was hungry. My dad would feed the crows every morning as usual and leave for office at 8 a.m. This crow (Which I think would lose out in a competition with other crows for the biscuits fed by my dad, or had a really huge appetite like me) had earmarked my dad. When my dad would leave for office, the specific crow would attack my dad! I call this incident The Crow Chase. Well, in this case, it was the crow who chased my dad. Yes, the crow would chase him till the end of our street, and would make desperate attempts to attack him with its beak. So for a few days, my dad would carefully look around before setting out for work and try to cover his head with his hand to save himself. Sometimes, he would take a different route just because he would have spotted the crow waiting for him! All of us in my family would have a great time in teasing my dad with this incident. But hey, I still somehow miss those days at Delhi and my dad's love towards the birds seems to have clung on to me too. I really miss the chirping of sparrows and the fresh morning air. But that is how it is going to be, let us hope that human expansion does save some birds for the future. I would request all those who read this article to at least have a bowl or a plate filled with water for the birds to drink every day, as many of them die due to scarcity of water during the summer. Well, at my house, it is madness. There are more biscuits bought for the crows than for me. Duh.


Edit (20/02/2013): I watched this video shared by someone on twitter and thought that this would really go with the theme of this post. So please do watch this after reading:

A little bit of Yodhakaa in my life

I'm writing this post quick-quick. Yesterday I happened to attend a live performance of the music band that I love the most - Yodhakaa. Their tagline is "Contemporary Indian music" and they live up to it. The band has seriously changed my life, and I mean it in the literal sense.

I had been to Satyam Cinemas at Chennai in June this year, to watch Kung Fu Panda 2. During the intermission, I saw the advert of Yodhakaa, a very simple ad, just a picture of their debut album's cover. Something told me that I must remember that name and must check out what it is about. So I pulled out my phone and opened up the Notes, where I saved the name, just in case I would forget. As soon as I got back home, I googled 'Yodhakaa' and found out what they were all about. I downloaded a few tracks from a file-hosting website illegally. After a week, I couldn't help myself listening to them over and over, again and again and realized that their music was really worth buying the CD. Honestly, there has been no band that has captivated me so much towards its music, be it Indian or international. I have never been interested in anything religious, be it songs or slokas. My parents have long branded me outcast in that sense, as I'm totally against such stuff, being born in a Hindu brahmin family who supposedly love such music and chants. Even my Facebook profile read my religious views as 'Agnostic'. When I first told my mom about the liking that I had taken towards this new band, it hardly meant anything to her. After I started humming the tunes of Yodhakaa at home, it made a difference. When they saw me saying words like 'Mudaakaratta Modakam' and 'Vasudeva Sutham', I guess they finally considered me to be a part of their family!

There is this incident that I want to share with everyone. I believe in coincidence, but this incident that I'm going to speak of, in my view, isn't a coincident at all. Well, you can compare it to 'Divine Intervention' from Pulp Fiction, which is what I think it is. This incident happened on the 1st of September this year. A day that is perhaps, too valuable to forget. I know, after I finish narrating this incident, it'll make no difference to you, or you may probably never understand why this has been so important to me. But let me tell you, it really meant a lot to me. I'll get started right away. This friend of mine, Vishnu Maya, my ex-classmate, now studies at Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT). She's one of the best friends I have ever had all my life, and I call her my pseudo-sibling. On this particular day, September 1st, we were talking over the phone at around 1:00 a.m. regarding some issues about Linux drivers for Dell laptops, after which we hung up. At around 1:30, I sent her a text, to check if she was awake, and she replied. I called her up again and asked her if she knew Sanskrit. I told her regarding the music of Yodhakaa I had been listening to lately. She said, "Let me guess, did you come across this band when you went to Express Avenue for a movie or something ?". She was quite close, I had found out about Yodhakaa at Satyam Cinemas. I asked her that how on earth could she guess that, as not everyone knew about this band. Her reply make my heart skip a beat. She said, "You know what, I had been to Escape at Express Avenue around the same time in June for a lame movie, where they had a Yodhakaa advert in the intermission with a background score. I immediately fell for that music but I never remembered the name of the band after that. Till today, I've been searching for them on the internet, on Google, searching for keywords like 'Indian traditional music' etc., but nothing has been even half as close to it. You won't believe, it's been three months now, and I was searching for them even this afternoon. You remembered the name, but I didn't. And that's all made the difference!". She told me that she had searched in leading music stores in Chennai for the album, but she couldn't find it, as she didn't remember the name. She even went to the extent of saying that when she would come to Chennai next time, she'd go to Escape to watch some lame movie again, just to see that advert during the intermission (Believe me, she said that). After the call, she put this status up on her Facebook wall :

"Never went so dumbstruck in life... It was just a music album, whose name I did not know, but was running as a background process in my mind... And thanks to Gautam Krishnan (Could he read my mind?or see through my head?) who led me to bump into it, in course of him flaunting his recent favorite. That was the album I was looking for.. Yodhakaa. Joy, I guess, streamed in along with the songs...."


She also sent me a text message, which read "You know what... I thought joy was got in nothing. Nothing gives joy. Now I know, it lies in finding what you are looking for. May it be a name, a pin, your love, whatever!". Over the next few days, we discussed about the various songs in the album, what they meant, wondering and realizing how much they meant to us. We would talk of the verses of other religious scriptures too, and I would often quote some verses from the songs amidst of our conversations, which I still do!

Ever since I first heard to the tracks of Yodhakaa, I feel there has really been a change in me. I feel I'm starting to get religiously inclined (at least a bit) and more conscious about our tradition. I've started appreciating traditional music and pay a close attention to the slokas I happen to listen these days. No day passes by when I don't sing a song or two from the album. Whenever I drive, or travel by bus, Yodhakaa accompanies me. The songs seem to give a new meaning each time I listen to them. I hum the songs, whistle the tunes, while walking, bathing and even before sleeping! Buying the Yodhakaa CD was perhaps the most valuable 150 Rupees that I've ever spent. I gifted my Aunt a CD for her birthday, which I ordered online, and it arrived promptly and exactly on her birthday. And thus, I've decided that it's the best birthday gift I could ever give to anyone. Also, my religious views on my Facebook profile now reads "Hindu"! Sometime ago, I sent friend requests to 'Darbuka' Siva, Pradeep Vijay and Subhiksha Rangarajan, the three lead artists of the band. I was very glad when I found out that all of them had accepted it! W00t !!

Yesterday, I was at the Yodhakaa thanks giving show was organized at Alliance Française, Nungambakkam, Chennai. I has been my dream to attend a live concert of Yodhakaa ever since I fell in love with their music. I realized that, to me, Yodhakaa has become something more than music. It has become a way of life. The combination of Pradeep Vijay's and Subhiksha's voices were simply magical. I got to hear a few songs that might be a part of the next album, and I must say that they are too good. The 'Jataa Kataa' song was performed in the end, and it filled the hall with so much divinity. That song really brought a tear in my eye. If there's another concert in the vicinity, I cannot afford to miss it, and so can't you. After the show got over, I shook hands with all those who performed, especially, Siva, Pradeep, and Susha, and told them what I felt regarding the show. I found it hard to believe that they were so simple and really interactive with everyone who had come down to congratulate them. I really want to be a part of the Yodhakaa family, and want to contribute to them in every way possible so that they become a huge favorite of everyone.


It was a few weeks after that incident that I've described above happened. Maya had called me and told me that she was scared as it was her practical exam that day. I sent her a text "Say Krishnam Vande Jagat Gurum and go write your exam". She replied, "Was listening to it!".

The overflowing bucket list !

Successive posts in a very short span of time - looks like I have a lot of time to spare. This time I'm back again with another post, with a never ending list of things I'd want to do before I die. So here goes my bucket list, scribbled in no particular order, except the first one ;)

• Marry. Obviously a girl, who is more beautiful on the inside than on the outside.
• Become a successful designer.
• Build and establish my own online empire.
• Write my own autobiography (idhu too much, it won't hurt when I turn 60)
• Become a successful entrepreneur by establishing a chain of coffee-shops and restaurants in collaboration with my cousins Ganesh and Vandhana.
• Buy back my Grandfather's old house, which I'm told that it was sold due to a financial crunch in the seventies.
•  Look around in my neighborhood and bring at least 10 businesses online, that currently work and depend on their offline income/strategies.
• Educate at least 10 underprivileged Indians about computers, internet and stuff.
• Provide job opportunities to unfortunate friends and relatives who aren't financially sound.
• Go abroad for a holiday, probably for honeymoon ! 
• Convince my mom to get herself a Facebook account !
• Act as a responsible social citizen and play my part in making India a better place to live.
• Write my own fiction novel(s).
• Open up a small playschool, for which my wife-to-be would make the cutest school principal.
• Revive the tradition of the joint family system and bring all my relatives together to live at one place.
• Visit Delhi and meet all my childhood friends.
• Visit all the schools that I've studied in and go to each of the classrooms in the respective schools and sit on the benches where I usually used to sit.
• Help at least 10 differently abled come up in life.
• Own a Royal Enfield and ride it all the way from Chennai to my University. 

It isn't easy to do all of this, but I'm pretty sure I can get most of this done. Furthermore, I'm already on my way to some of them (definitely not for the first one). Like, I have already developed/designed some web portals which have contributed towards my portfolio. As a responsible citizen, I make sure that I don't litter at public places and adhere to traffic rules, which I am really serious about. I turn off the ignition while waiting at traffic signals and at times, make a friendly gesture to anyone standing beside to turn off theirs too. 

Last, but not the least, add one more to the list, which sees quite impossible: 

• Find Jaisy K. (If you don't get who this person is, you probably need to read one of my previous posts)!

Will update this list very frequently, given the uber-crazy nature of my mind. And yes, I'll be back to trouble you to read it again once I update.

The hiatus between happiness and success

In the past, there's always been some event that has kindled the spirit in me to write my next blog post. As it turns out to be, there is one behind this one  too. The topic in question here is something that I've long debated in my mind - Happiness vs Success. Before diving into it, let me tell you what made me write this post - it was an incident that happened yesterday while I was travelling in a bus.

After spending some overjoyed moments at hostel as I had got the output verified in my Computer Networks lab examination, I set out for home for the 'study' holidays, a week's vacation that the University generously gives all the students to have fun before exam (I'd call it for koothu adichifying). I boarded the bus to Trichy from my college with Anurag Mathur, a friend of mine. Aboard and almost immediately, I heard a bunch of people were singing something in chorus. I could barely understand the lyrics of what they were singing, but I could definitely figure out that it was a Telugu song, a folk song to be precise. As I made my way through the crowd in the bus, struggling with my backpack and the stroller bag in my hand, I handed out the money to Mathur and made a gesture to get the tickets for both of us as I was extremely curious to see those people who were singing. Mathur got a place to sit, while I stood for almost the whole journey. They were a bunch of daily wage earners who were speaking Telugu, probably migrated to Thanjavur to earn a livelihood. They had occupied three continuous rows in the bus, around six of them, mostly women. There were three kids, a boy and two girls respectively, and all seemed to be around 7-10 years of age. The kids played the songs on a mobile phone and switched between songs, and all of them, including the adults were singing along. Some time later along the hour and a half journey, they switched over to Tamil film songs and the kids were still singing, while their parents had no clue about those songs. I took keen interest in noticing a girl among the kids who was translating each and every line of the lyrics of the song into Telugu and explained to her mother, who probably did not understand Tamil. I realized that the laborers might have come down to Tamil Nadu and maybe the kids were born here, that made the kids understand and speak Tamil fluently. Almost everyone in the bus was watching them sing, and all those laborers, along with their kids, neither felt embarrassed  no cared to notice that everyone was looking at them. Rather, they just gave vent to their feelings from their heart.

Just another scene while travelling in a bus, you might think. To me, this incident made an everlasting impact in my mind. It makes me think, if rich and successful people who possess luxurious cars and lavishly furnished houses, living abroad are actually happier than these daily wage earners. Parents put their kids in coaching classes right from their 6th grade so that their kids can make their way into IITs and get a good job and get settled in their life. When their kids are grow up and actually get 'settled' in their lives, and when they've lost all their childhood and youth in preparing for competitive exams and scoring high grades, do these 'kids' look back at all those days and repent for it ? What do such people feel when they witness an incident like I did ? Does it hit them that they live their life only once and such a life is meant to be happier than just being successful ? If so, how does one define success and happiness ? I mean, is being successful in life happier or is being happy in life more successful ? Or, is there any optimal solution to balance them ? Money cannot buy happiness, but in today's world, there is no happiness without money. So how does one have to evaluate his/her choices ? I can spawn thousands of questions like this, which haunt me when I try to sleep in the night, and I don't think it's a good idea to bother you with them. You will have a hard time pondering over these.

"Those kids are irritating", Mathur said, as he turned back to see me.
"No, they aren't", I replied while I was still looking at them in amazement.
"Why do you say so ?", Mathur demanded. He was curious to know why I hadn't agreed with him.
"Buddy, because they are happier than we are" I replied.

As we reached Trichy, Anurag, I and all the other passengers got down. We parted with those laborers, and blended with the crowd, to never see them again.

A Brother, like none other : Part I - Days at Delhi

Rewind. I'm trying to travel back in time. This post is all about one person, about whom I can write volumes but writing this post just in case I forget some of the past incidents, which is highly unlikely though. One of the first encounters with Ganesh that I can remember was at New Delhi, where we had some of the best days of our life.

As my memories drift back to our old house at Devli, a place in Delhi where Ganesh, his mom and dad lived with us for sometime as they had just got transferred from Chennai. This is perhaps the oldest incident I can recollect from my childhood. This story is about 16 years old, when I was like approx. 4 or 5 years of age. Here goes: We had a wooden sofa in our main hall (in fact, that's the same antique sofa we still have in our hall currently at Chennai). Ganesh and I had a quarrel, the reason now long forgotten, and the quarrel had turned nasty. I remember both of us hitting each other and in course of the fight, he caught my face and banged it onto the sofa. My mouth took the maximum impact and both my lips and jaw were swollen. This made me skip school for two whole weeks and was teased by guys all over in my apartments. I even remember looking at myself in the mirror and thought that my face resembled that of Lord Hanuman. Pretty bad incident for a start, but those incidents that followed changed my life, and changed it for good.

Both of us used to go to the St. Mary's Public School, which was located at a distance of twenty minutes on foot. Our granny used to take and bring both of us back from school. Golden days they were. After a few days, we learnt to go on our own, and Sumitha, a girl who lived on the floor above ours too accompanied us to the same school. Ganesh would cry in the morning, and hated to go to school, whereas I, on the other hand, used to get ready for school so early and happily, as though I were going on a picnic. He used to make a huge fuss, and the milkman and his wife (Whom I had named Blue-Pavadai, because of her constant wearing of blue gown) who lived in the adjacent apartment used to shout at us (Just for fun, to insist Ganesh to go to school). Ganesh had come to Delhi from Chennai only sometime ago then, and didn't quite know Hindi. So he had to converse with the kids at school only in English. He used to come back home and complain that the kids couldn't understand a word in English and constantly stared at him because he couldn't speak Hindi, but spoke English very fluently. In the evenings, we used to play in the terrace and I was fond of running naked (Don't mistake this, I was just five then!) all around and he used to run behind me to make me wear an underwear. I had this bad habit of biting my lips when they became dry, and Ganesh and Sumitha would apply Vaseline or just water to make it wet, and so that I couldn't bite it. Sumitha used to drag Ganesh to the school while he cried all through the way. I even remember Sumitha holding his hand and convincing him to come to school! He would protest to wake up in the morning for school and I, on the other hand, used to wake up with a smile on my face. Ganesh's dad would say "Look at Gautam, he wakes up in the morning with a smile .. Learn to be like him". I bet that gave him a hard time!

We had frequent power cuts and water shortage in our area. That would really piss him off .. I remember Ganesh once shouted from the balcony of our house "Devli should not be in this world !!".

As Ganesh's family settled down in Delhi, they found a house at Madangir, where they shifted to and I missed his company a lot. My parents and I used to visit them once in a while and they too would come over to our place. They lived on the second floor and I used to shout all the way climbing up the stairs informing them that I've come! I was a hyperactive kid back then (nothing less now) and Ganesh's mom used to call me "Rettai Vaal Rangudu" which can be fairly translated to a "Two-Tailed-Monkey". As soon as Ganesh would hear my voice and me coming home, in a jiffy he would pack up all his toys safely out of my reach. I remember he had a collection of toy cars similar to Hot-Wheels which I used to envy a lot.

At this time, both of us moved to St. George's School, located at Alakananda, New Delhi. This was the place, where probably we had the best days at Delhi. My family too moved to a new residence at Pushp Vihar, not too far from Ganesh's house. So Ganesh used to come to our house from school. A typical day at school would be like this : I would wake up at six in the morning and had bath in the biting cold water. I used to get ready and reach the bus stop where Ganesh used to join. In most cases, he would run back home because he'd have forgotten his ID card, belt or tie. I used to have a nice laugh watching him running back to fetch those. When the bus arrived, the driver used to honk, signalling that he was late. When we boarded, till we reached the school, various Bhajans would be played in the bus, including 'Om Jai Jagdish Hare', which was my favorite. As soon as we got down, we would part, saying goodbye to each other, as juniors and seniors and separate entrances in the main building. During the lunch breaks, we would meet and he would at times buy me food from the canteen. I still remember we used to eat Chole Bature in the canteen, seems to me it's been only like a year or two since it has all happened. In the evening, we would meet up again, to board the bus to get back home. As he was in 5th or 6th std, his classes used to get over only after half an hour or so after mine. I used to board the bus early and we wouldn't start until all the seniors have boarded too. Ganesh had assigned me a task of getting a window seat in the bus, which I, in most cases got it done. The times when I would lose the seat to someone else, he would pinch me, so that I would get the seat next time!

Many of my friends, even till I was in my 11th and 12th would have their own elder/younger siblings studying in the same school whom they would meet every day. I have really longed for my sibling too to be in my own school, for I have none. It was hardly four or five years that Ganesh and I were in the same school, and yet there have been some really cherished moments during my school days with him. One of the most famous incidents that steals the limelight is the "Jaisy K." incident. There was this girl in my upper kindergarten class (I think) whose name was Jaisy (Not Jessie, and please don't associate Vinnai Thandi Varuvaya with this !). Both of us used to meet at the main gate of our school. On a typical day, after I got down from my bus, I would wait for her, or if she was early, she would be waiting for me at the gate. Then, both of us used to hold our hands and walk to our class. This continued for many days, which made Ganesh raise his eyebrows. He would watch us doing this each day, and on one fine day, when we were walking along, he came up and asked her I she would marry me! She replied that she would definitely marry me! Now that incident has become a laughing stock. It has become really popular among my relatives and there are people who still tease me with it. This incident happened like 15 or 16 years ago,  and I guess last year, Ganesh and I spent about one hour on Facebook just to check if Jaisy K. was on Facebook! Unfortunately, our search query returned no productive results. *Sad*

Another incident worth mentioning here is about the ice creams we used to eat after the school hours. It was illegal for the students to eat ice creams or any roadside food that were sold outside the premises of the school. We had staff who monitored students who bought such stuff and made them throw away whatever they had bought. They used to get inside the school buses too to ensure that the students weren't eating anything that was bought on the roadside. One such staff was Kailash Sir, who had once happened to get inside our bus and inspect. There were many whose ice creams were snatched and thrown to ground which I saw from the window. Now he was coming for us. Ganesh's ice cream was snatched and thrown and I held mine near my knee. He didn't see it, but a guy in the front informed him that I still had the ice cream in my hand, which got it snatched and thrown off the window. Both Ganesh and I were furious at the staff and also at this guy. But we couldn't help it.

As mentioned earlier, Ganesh used to accompany me home from the school. We lived at Sector IV, Pushp Vihar, a huge colony of similar looking houses, which were divided into various sectors. Every other building looked similar and it was kinda difficult to locate an address within the sectors. We used to enter through the main gate, and had to pass the first three sectors to reach the fourth one, where my family lived. As mentioned earlier, Ganesh used to accompany me home and his house was just across the road from our colony, so he went home on his own. While we used to enter the colony through the gate that led us to the first sector. Now this led us to a long path through the other two remaining sectors, and I wouldn't remember which sector was ours, as everything was a look-alike. We used to hunt for a 'Chuski' seller in the first and the second sectors. 'Chuski' is a roadside specialty made in Delhi. It is grated and flavored ice, which is mounted on a small stick and served as an ice candy. The Chuski-wala roamed the streets to sell the Chuskis with a mobile stall and we used to chase him down to get ours! I loved it, and so did Ganesh, but we were strictly instructed not to consume roadside food. Who cares! We used to eat it almost daily. As we used to dwell deep into the first two sectors in search of the Chuski-wala, I wouldn't know the way to get back home. Ganesh knew this and used to leave me alone and hide somewhere. I would search for him for a minute or two, and would start crying. God! He used to love making me cry!!

As all the good things always come to an end, Ganesh's parents got their jobs transferred back to Chennai and so they left Delhi. I actually don't remember the day when they left or our last day together at Delhi, but I gradually realized that his absence created a void. The next year of my school, I was left alone. For the first time, no one would accompany me, or I couldn't tell anyone that my bro was in the same school too. May sound stupid now, but back then, it really meant a lot to the seven year old kid. For he never knew that he and his bro would never be in the same school again. The days at Delhi, the best of my childhood, perhaps the best days of my life so far, were over. And as I recollect and play these incidents in my head now, it feels like I've lived those moments again. Well, that's not all, this is perhaps a fraction of what I can tell you about my bro, which I'll surely do in the days to come.


(P.S.: Subject to further edits if I randomly recollect any of the incidents that I may have missed in this post!)

Awakening

Congratulations to me, I just screwed up my Computer Networks examination today. FYI, my 2nd mid-semester exams going on and I have no clue how this strange incident happened today. Almost every time I sleep I dream. But the dreams have never been strange or never looked real. They are always about some incident happened previously or regarding something I've spoken about to someone or thought about on the same day. It is never surprising that you have a dream that is about your day-to-day activities. I would like to go a step ahead and say, that when I have some free time during my class hours, or during the break, I sometimes sleep for about ten to fifteen minutes. Even in such short span of sleep, it's very common for me to dream. But the dream that I had today was very strange. It seemed so close to reality. And this is what exactly happened:

I was studying till 1.15 am this morning and felt really sleepy. I went to bed and played a game or two of Solitaire on my mobile phone. I remember I last checked the time before I fell asleep. It was 1.37 am. I am supposed to wake up and study for today's exam. How cool. I slept almost immediately and I had this weirdest dream.

It was like I spent about two to three months in the dream. No kidding, it went on this way: It started with me being at college and my usual college routine. I woke up every morning at 6.30 or 7 am and attended classes. Everything had so much detail in it. The people and things I interacted with, the way they interacted back, the things I saw, and everything else was so real. After spending many days at college, I even saw myself leaving for home for the holidays and spending my days at home. I even remember going out for shopping and spending days at my cousin Ganesh's house, the night show movies we went. I finally returned back to my college and even remember preparing for the exams. I don't remember if they were my mid-semester exams or the semester exams. I can even vaguely remember that my mom called me up for every exam and wished me all the best.

I suddenly woke up and checked the time. It was 3.42 am and I had thoughts that I had bunked the exam. I even thought that my semester exams were over and I'm gonna get severely screwed up. I felt panic trying to imagine how many times my parents would have called me in those two to three months and what my friends would think about me when I show up after two months of simply disappearing somewhere. Strange thoughts started flowing in my mind that there's a parallel world where I went to and I'm stuck between these two worlds. All these thoughts occupied my mind for the 20-30 seconds after waking up. Just later, I realized that it was only about two hours since I slept and the thoughts along with the dream started fading away. But believe me, for that momentary period of time, I remembered the dream in so much detail and the description that I've given in the above paragraph is not even a fraction of it. Now, my question is, how can anyone dream with so much detail in respect to the objects and events happening in the dream? I know people who've seen vampires, and other scary creatures. I even know people who have dreamed of being killed. It's really common that I've seen people who have had a dream that is even more strange and who have a habit of talking. But what I experienced today was nothing of this sort. It was just a perfectly normal dream, and I lived every second of that dream for more than two months. How could this ever happen? Has anything of this sort happened to you or anyone you know? If so, please let me know! I'm really puzzled over this and want to know if I possess any superpowers! :P