I thought Growing up would take longer.

Devkinandan

The kid was in my hand sitting happily on my forearm enjoying the excitement of visiting the place of “Holika-Dahan”. He was clueless trying to understand what all the noise was about that came roaring in a rhythm from every man walking on the dusty dark road of the village. The scenery was beautiful to behold. But the most beautiful was the expression on the kid’s face, in his eyes and on his tiny lips when he looked at my face in surprise when I shouted  “Ho Ho Horrey” for the first time and joined the crowd. They were all carrying castor sticks covered with dry mustard shrubs tied on the top. Young boys also carried “Lutta” made of jute which had been dipped in kerosene for hours. The Kid, still perplexed by the energy in the air tried to follow other voices that came echoing from random streets, rooftops, and courtyards. Other children mounted on the shoulders of the elders supplemented to the noise with their shrill voice. Then I shouted again and surprised the kid again. This time he seemed a little more disapproving as he gave me that why-are-you-shouting-like-a-hooligan look and placed his palm on my cheek. I kissed his palm and let out a slow shout to familiarise him with the exact words, “Hooooo….Hooooo….Horreyyyyyy”. I coaxed him to shout aloud like other children, villagers, and myself. I explained to him that this is how the society’s traditions were designed to keep the people united and blended. How the happiness of one expressed through the roar was complemented and endorsed by the same from others. I realised I had zoned out for a second.

I knew that the children are most excited when they are on your shoulders, because then they get to see other children mounted on different shoulders and get into a quick competition of “who has got the loudest voice?”. But I was still holding him in my forearm as this was his first walk to the place. Everything was a pleasant surprise for him and he was yet to get used to the energy.

After about fifty meters or so he couldn’t  take it anymore and screamed out “Ho ho horrey” for the first time. His voice was so fulfilling to the heart. It made me feel like an achiever. This is exactly what I had imagined while applying for the leave to my manager back in Pune.

It was time. He was ready to join the rhythm. I felt it. I kissed him on his forehead and threw him up on my shoulders while we both shouted in unison. Then he kept shouting on top of his voice, gaining attention from people around and handling the attention like a star.

I kept quiet for a while processing a flash of memory: when for the first time, my dad had taken me to that place on his shoulders overruling my mother’s concern about my safety. I had not stopped shouting for about an hour. That was some 20 years ago.

This kid is my Brother’s son, “Devkinandan”. He calls me Papa as he is not old enough to realise who his real father is and my family likes it that way. I feel like a grown up. I feel like a Dad. I wish to come back to my village every year for HOLI.

It’s my time?

I have been chasing the sight of this beautiful girl all the time, every time hoping for a look back from her. Using social websites for most sensuous chats or even looking at her best picture will never be great enough to meet the feelings of talking to her for a minute directly and looking at her with naked eyes even if she just woke up. So, on this random day I was looking at her, the serenity of movement was so soothing that I lost my self to Meta. After a while I realised she had been looking at me for quite some time trying to think my thoughts. The moment we saw each other, for that one moment, the whole world stood still. As if it stopped for a moment. There was Bhai! Literally! Nothing else happening in the whole damn world. People often confuse between ‘literally’ and ‘figuratively’.

Let me tell you how strong is my love for her.

Let us start by dropping two nice little shining metal balls on glittering metal table tops. Of course the metal and the shine are just for noise and aesthetic appeal so that you get a feeling of something real happening. Now let the two balls fall and hit the table with a clink. Everyone should agree that however synchronised the fall, the balls didn’t hit the floor exactly simultaneously. They had if not major a minor lapse between their collisions, may be of nano-seconds or pico or smaller, but they definitely had a gap in between. Are we ready to analyse this further?

Now let’s have a thousand little shining metal ball hovering over a thousand metallic table-tops suspended with most perfect robotic hands all synchronised. All of the thousand balls are dropped at once. They hit the floor. No two of them hit the table exactly simultaneously. If you get even slightly sceptic and think some random two might have, let’s choose the two most close and see them in ultra-slow motion. Even they didn’t hit their table together. So when ball no.211 was hitting its corresponding table no.211 there was no other ball doing the same. Every other ball hit their respective table only after 211 or before.

This if extended to a million balls, should hold true. Even for a billion or a trillion or more. Every event in the world can be a ball hitting a table. Which should abide by the rule that “every event has an exclusive moment for itself and at the time of its occurrence there are no other occurrences, none whatsoever.”

So, when she was looking at me and I at her, for that one special scintilla of time there was nothing else happening in the whole world “literally”. All other events were just waiting for our special moment to get over.

Thanks world! You make me feel so special.

It doesn’t make sense, does it? of course it does, doesn’t it?

Having a light discussion on “purpose of life” with some of the beautiful minds in (not “of”) our century, a few demeaning thoughts deluged our meagre-capacity neuron network. We came across a number of colourless green ideas which may very much fly away furiously.

We had a moment of realisation about what are we supposed to do with a human life given to us. Some men live and die for themselves or their family, if slightly emotional a being they are. Then, there are some who consider their country above their family. “Janu! Meri sau Jawani tere liye par ye Jawani desh ki.” Our brother soldiers who guard us from our cousin terrorists. Then there are a few who are only worried that our mother earth is not attacked by some disc-men who keep flying across the galaxy making friends and foes. How will the human race cope with such once-in-a-million-years mishaps? Why shouldn’t we carry on destructive tests on moon and mars? Why we shouldn’t throw our nuclear wastes outside earth in to the solar system; overall it’s our own solar system.

We, now a days, teach our children that we have five sense organs, but, it wasn’t so a few billion years ago. Early forms of life had no eyes and nose and ears. Even the well evolved human beings didn’t know how to talk among themselves. And that now if all the text available on cloud in digital form were converted into books and stacked over each other, it would build a connection from Earth to Pluto and back.

We have only five sense organs as far as we can sense, the way we are technically bound to only three dimensions. But that’s not all. We hear to only a certain range of frequencies, but that range is not all. We see only visible lights, but visible lights are not all. There are many other frequencies and wavelengths that exist beyond our technological capacities, let alone our physical senses. Similarly we only hear, see, feel, smell and taste, but these may not be all.  There may be many things beyond our senses. We may not have evolved enough. The humans will keep evolving millennium after millennium and turn into “Fumans-the future humans”. Then the Fuman would teach their children that some billion years ago their early forms of life had only five senses. They didn’t even know how to satisate and vivekate let alone the idea deependration. And the children would be surprised and ask their teachers whether those humans didn’t even know how to monuate. And the teacher would make them believe that those early fuman forms could only see, hear, smell, taste and feel clearly. And they in those days were called Humans.

P.S.- About the purpose of our own life! No idea dude (at-least for now), I am sorry.

Phew! We humans! How primitive?

Encounter with Nature

A morning run amidst cool breeze and chirping of birds can be joie de vivre until the chirping converts into a frightening cacophony and a flock of birds come out of the woods and start following you overhead.

All my intrepidity and stoicism went for six within a second. Birds, of course I could have handled had they, in the worst case, tried to attack me, but the thoughts of other possibilities that started creeping into my bones made me nervous and trapped on a lonely road far from the campus. I don’t want to project myself less optimistic but I was well! Very-very afraid because I was all alone. In case it happened to be one of the not-so-good days of my life, nobody would even come to know before the afternoon. My friends, the new breed of youths of the country do not even bother to wake up before 10 let alone the idea of going for a run at 5.

Were these birds trying to intimate me about a great danger around? This place has sited leopards with cubs many a times in last few years. Suddenly they saw something else and banked into the woods on the other side of the road. I went on. Then finally after some time I could hear the loud screams of the peacocks. That meant I was close to the temple, my finishing line. Their voice was loud enough to calm me down in assurance of some security. Then I saw a herd of deer. The beauty of the rain drops on the road and on the leaves of trees and the intimate tussle of the fawns being background-musiced by the calliphony of peacocks was soothing enough to energize me to sprint back to the campus. (The Sprint was out of routine and not fear). I can’t say there is no danger as such out in the woods, but definitely I am not afraid of the wild anymore. It was nature’s way of rephrasing “the call of nature”. Anyway there are hundreds of lamp-posts erected every hundred meter on both the sides of the road and I am quite sure I can climb them quick enough and high enough to save my life JUST IN CASE.

I went for a run again! the very next morning….and the world looked more beautiful.

THE THADI

I went to this holy place for the first time when i was three days in to the engineering. I saw my super seniors sitting there having a gala time. It felt little awkward for the first time. Having studied in a Sainik School (i.e. a school with discipline and standard of the highest order). Where drinking water without a glass was an offence, it could earn you 5 round of football ground or frog-jumping the whole perimeter of the basketball court. I had Maggie made by AUNTY for the first time. All my standards and principles fell to the ground. I saw it going down with each forkful chunk i engulfed with delight. We decided to come again the other day. Not many first-year scholars knew about it (probably Nimish, Deep and I were the only people). In those initials days visiting a canteen and bumping in to seniors was not our cup of coffee. We were much comfortable with super-senior at Auntie’s, since many of them played football with us and our introduction were already taken. So, we went back again the next day. After the Maggie-time we went on walking in no direction.

Going in to the jungles we felt like dead poet’s society kids.

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Now three long years have passed.

We are well versed with the surrounding and the jungles. Those adventurously explored spots are just peeing-spots for us now.

I don’t smoke. I don’t drink much either. But I am often seen at the Auntie’s.

This place, I don’t know why, I can’t afford doing away with. Sometimes I could choose THADI over KELLY’S or Clock Tower and I am pretty sure it’s not because of the COST.

I will try to search through my soul and find out what is it about the place that attracts me. Once I am there I am there and nowhere else. I am full of positivity. Till the time I am there I don’t think of anything normal or existing.

There I turn in to a scientist or a philosopher and I like being like that. It gives me illusions of me doing something for this society. May this dreams and illusions come true!