Window to the Past

Aah! I am feeling terrible, I can’t have the one thing I love the most...Pani puri. Yes! I can’t begin to tell you how much I love it and especially the ones on the thelas, sold by the road side. Dad strongly disapproves, but I just can’t get myself to stop. Every time I see the Bhaiya's cart on Park Lane, I am drawn towards it by some unseen divine force. But like always, I have been terribly disappointed with this affair too.
I have a terrible stomach upset and have been on khichdi and curd rice for the past two days. Aargh. I have been advised to be abstinent and avoid eating unless I am terribly hungry, and if and when I do eat, it better be in small dozes. Now this is something I don’t like, I am a die hard foodie and restricting myself to limited quantities of khichdi is terrible, and whats more I can’t even think about having Maggi! I don’t know how many of you have ever experienced this, but there are times when you are so damn hungry that even water hurts the bottom of your stomach.

It was my usual Sunday, I generally spend the entire morning cleaning and scrubbing the place. It's insane; I forget all about food and everything else until I am done. It’s this crazy obsession about having the place speckless. Ya, it’s exactly like Monica in FRIENDS. Anyway, while I was on my usual binge, I sat down for a while quenching my thirst when, it happened again and I was transported back in time, a long time back.
When we were kids, the only two places that would feature on our itinerary for the summer break were my Nani's and Dadi's place. We went no where else. While Nani lived in Calcutta, Dada and Dadi lived and still do in a village in Bihar, Kharenda. Now it's not like the villages in South India where you have proper roads, electricity, schools et al. In fact it’s exactly like the one portrayed in Swades. Kharenda definitely merits another post and it will feature on the blog soon. Anyway, I love that place and have had some wonderful moments there with cousins and family.

What I love most about country life is its serenity and purity, be it the food or the wind or the water, there is something that is beyond words, and so, I indulge, every time I go there I go crazy, all the rabri and mithai and what not. It was a time like this, I guess I must have been 8 and I can’t seem to remember what it was that time but I had my stomach all upset again, and had been on a diet control for some time. The memory has still not faded and I still can recapture it as vividly as ever.

It was pouring and we were all huddled up on the khatiya (cot) in the aangan(Veranda) and Dadi had just asked someone to get me a glass of lemon juice when I said, ‘No, pani se pet dukhta hai’, she looked at me as if I had lost it completely. And then suddenly the boy sitting next to us on the bench, the cook’s son, says “Humko pata hai, aisa hota hai, jab bahut der tak khana nai mile to aisa hota hai ki pani bhi pet me lagta hai” (I know, it happens when one has’nt had anything to eat for a long time, even water hurts).

I was taken aback, I remember looking at the boy for a long time, he was lean, must have been 11 or 12 and had curious big eyes.

I remember thinking about him for a long time, thinking about what must have made him say that, how many times must he have felt like that. At 8, I looked healthier than him, although he was stronger because of the physical exercises, or so I believed then. I felt sad and suddenly the difference between us was too obvious.

As I look back now, I realize the difference. The difference didn’t lie in our life styles but in the way we lived them. As I recollect, he had said it with a smile, his innocence reflected in it and the smile remains etched in my memory, the naivety in it stays with me as a symbol of an innocent and pure childhood.

There is a lot of unpleasantness that life inflicts upon us and we continuously try to look for ways to escape it. What if we just took a lesson from ourselves, a leaf out of our own childhood and learn to deal with it as it is, simply and naturally. Why curse and blame, why try to run and escape, when all you need to do is, face it, and accept the reality not as a deviation from normalcy but as natural as life can get.

The curious big eyes and guileless smile still remain, deep in the crevices of my memory and do seem to find their way to the top whenever I get bogged down by the ‘life sucks’ syndrome and need a reminding of how beautiful the experience of life can get.

Today was an absolutely ordinary day apart from the fact that India won the Tri-series. It was a close match and a good one, parts of which I saw in the office canteen. My folks at home are crazy about Cricket, my Dada (Grand-dad) for one watches it with a sort of feverish excitement and Dadi (Grand-mum) is not to be left behind, although she watches only if India is playing. Anyway, I didnt want to write about the game today, I had something else on my mind. This here was an Email sent to me some time back and I loved it. Well I am not putting it up over here just because its one of the funniest forwards sent to me but also because I genuinely want to thank Okhil Babu for standing up against the 'Dam Guard who not wait five minutes'. I cannot express how grateful I am to this man and I don't know what I'd do otherwise (I dare not imagine) :)

This apparently is a true story from Indian Railways.

Okhil Babu's letter to the Railway Department:

"I am arrive by passenger train Ahmedpur station and my belly is too much swelling with jackfruit. I am therefore went to privy. Just I doing the nuisance that guard making whistle blow for train to go off and I am running with 'lotah' in one hand and 'dhoti' in the next when I am fall over and expose all my shocking to man and female women on plateform. I am got leaved at Ahmedpur station. This too much bad, if passenger go to make dung that dam guard not wait train five minutes for him. I am therefore pray your honour to make big fine on that guard for public sake. Otherwise I am making big report! to papers."
Okhil Chandra Sen wrote this letter to the Sahibganj divisional railway office in 1909. It is on display at the Railway Museum in New Delhi. It was also reproduced under the caption "Travelers' Tales" in the Far Eastern Economic Review.
Any guesses why this letter was of historic value?
.
.
. It apparently led to the introduction of toilets on trains

I always wonder how time flies the fastest when I don’t want it to the most. It’s March already and here in Hyderabad the heat is already turning on, no not because of Deccan Chronicle buying out Andrew Symonds and Adam Gilchrist for the Hyderabad team, but literally so. I love March, it’s my favourite month. Now I can almost see my family and friends giggle on hearing statements like these. My dad thinks I say the strangest, the most absurd and the bizzarest of things and then come up with the weirdest ways of supporting my ideas while trying to convince him. Well he might not be wrong, coming to think of it, it is actually weird having a favourite month, day of the week etc. at 23(Yes, I do have a favourite day of the week!), but of course my weird ideas and choices merit not just a new post but a whole new blog so, for now I'll stick to what I started with.
Well, its the time of the year when you get your bonuses, your appraisals (good or bad is a different issue), when you are done with your exams and the prospects of the results matter less than the weeks of summer vacations ahead, its when we have Holi and lose our minds completely, its when spring sets in and wipes out the gloomy chill winter days, its when mango trees begin to flower and the smell of raw mangoes fills the air making you want to pluck them and eat till your teeth go sour, its when the earth seems like the most beautiful canvas painted with the brightest and the happiest shades of life. No matter what the circumstances are, the sight of new shoots of grass sprouting out of nowhere or the bright yellow marigolds staring at you defiantly with a promise of good times or the sound of birds chirping at the break of day as if to welcome new life, makes me forget all else except the sheer joy of living. And now as I close my eyes and sit back on my very uncomfortable chair here in office while 20 people shuffle about here and there with a purpose I fail to comprehend, all I see is a vast expanse of green landscape with small hills, lined with pine trees all along the boundary of my vision, maybe a forest beyond, yellow butterflies on white flowers and a little lake down the hill with tall green grass all along its border. Reminds me of the song "These are a few of my favourite things" from the movie "The sound of music". I seem to have forgotten most of the lines but it was one of the first songs that I learnt as a child and has since then always been one of my favourites.



I'm uploading the song here. I hope everyone who listens to it is transported back in time to the happiest and the best time of one's life, the days of careless wandering, innocent curiosity and guileless fun, childhood.

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