Retrospection

It was one of the moments where you think you rule the world and all your aides are going to kiss your arse for the accomplishment you have achieved, it was one of such weak moments for me, but the moments that followed were perhaps the most enlightening, in retrospection though. That’s one bad thing about the current moment ,it is seldom correct when you start thinking about it a few years ,months ,days ,minutes or even seconds later, beware I am speaking of average men, not the ones that these Hollywood movie producers and Indian viewers are currently addicted to ,where else in the world will you get to watch GI JOE. It was one such moment and now when I think of it, it makes me shudder.
I had called up a long and very close friend of mine ,till that point very close to me ,to tell him about a new relationship I picked up in my life, spat came the answer, what does her father do ?,I answered ,within the next moment came the next question does she know who you are? The answer came out of my mouth in an instant, but in that one instant I lived a thousand lives, a thousand frames from the past 12 years scrolling on my mind like a faded out kaleidoscope .The moment ,ok , let’s call it a second ,like that guy in the American beauty says ,it’s not a second actually ,it is much longer than that, I saw a guy accompanying one of my then friends come home ,I don’t really remember why , may be because those days guys in my class though I was really smart , you know how the school system works in India ,and that too in rural ( oh they tell me now that it was a town ,not that it makes any difference though) areas ,I had this rank badge and may be that was why that guy who was then a boy , as I was, strode home to pay the “ big brain “ (later the guy who accompanied my other friend conferred this to some other guy in my class ,should I say our class) a courtesy visit ,which would later help him ( as I said retrospection after years when you are wiser than you were at that time ,brings a beast in you out, I still hate what I said about that boy ,yeah he is still a boy in my memory because he ceased to exist after that moment in my life, maybe it is true , maybe it is not ).Pay attention to the content in brackets , that last one at the least ,because they are the crucial part of this story ,because that’s where I lost my identity ,that’s where I ceased to exist ,now that I think of it ,this thinking beware has started only few months back ,so I am still a ,what was I then ,12 ,13 sorry I do not remember my age when I lost me ,in this concrete jungle ( oh ! I loved that word ,whenever I read a English novel ,especially the ones written for Booker prizes ,in truth I was only in a ghetto ( I know the meaning of that word now ) , divided by a matrix of sewage pipes and oh I forgot three common toilets for a woven family of 5 rented houses ,was it six , I hate it ,I keep forgetting the number of rented houses our land lord had, but I do precisely remember mine ( my father’s I wasn’t earning at that time and that was a wrong phrase to use forgive ,me ) was the first from the toilets .
Okay where was I ,yeah , I re-read the words I had typed before the parenthesis , I lost myself courtesy that visit, I was amazed at the boy who accompanied the friend of mine. He was from a bigger school and had a bigger view of world; he spoke of things I have never listened before. Red Fort, for me then was farther than moon because I could see moon and I could not see Red Fort, you get the picture of me don’t you. I loved Sachin Tendulkar and this guy did, I hated (Opinion has changed after retrospection today ,as I said I have nothing more to say on retrospection ,thanks for reading the parenthesis , I guess now you know I have put some important pieces of Gyaan in parenthesis , I once lost my first rank because I missed out a word in that ,thinking that parenthesis are useless ,well let someone say that to me …..) Sourav Gangly and every time he scored higher than Sachin I cursed everyone around, even the poor commentator who was just telling us what was going on in the match. I took an instant liking to him , he lived in a house which had a separate bathroom ,goddamit a separate bathroom ,( lot of apologies to my father ,he did what he could do with his income ),but I accept ,peeing in your own bathroom ,with no one knocking on the door ,as nature urges him, is one of the best things that can happen in your child hood ,it gets better even better when it is in open when the other guy can join you in it, imparting what could be the best of the knowledge someone imparts in to you ( after all who are you and me ,Archimedes had come running out a bathroom shouting Eureka ).
Okay, I am taking it on the poor reader of this piece of ….. With my so called hatred towards parenthesis, well how many more can you read? With one more promise added to those millions I have made to myself, there won’t be many more parenthesis in this piece (I leave it you what you think this piece is). Oh Sorry!! You know what it is for.
Back to the center plot, so I got engrossed with this guy so much that I took lot of interest in him ,the way he speaks ,the way he walks, sorry but this is my blog ,even the way he satisfied his natural urges ,It was sooner I became him and he became my soul’s boss ,though he would not know until he reads this. Then something horrible happened to me, I fell ill with Typhoid and had to take my eight h exams private, the next step to my higher degree which would not happen, not until 8 years later. Then my dad shifted my school, he really thought that the dungeon I was in did not fit my brains. For me it meant a lot, now that I think of it, it was the first turning point in my life, Where would I have learnt about debonair and swathi, even while munching away my books till the regional news played out on the TV (I swear, I have near heard that completely, I would fall asleep .believe me this promise is not like the one I made on parenthesis).
I and this guy who came home became the best buddies, we did everything together, not the peeing you see, he had a separate bathroom and I went to the common one. He treated me well and I devoured him ,for all he was ,I never used to think what others would think of me if I did this ,I will quote for an instance this small event, me and this guys with some other boys were playing cricket and a girl ( oh !! I had this weakness for girls, specially the cute ones) next door came to us and asked us if we could buy her a chart and cardboard for the next day’s science .I gladly accepted ,I had forgotten the basic rule there ,you do not help opponents win a war against you ,the most basic rule a sane man (boy ) would think ,I was her competitor ,much later in that evening ,I was admonished by the boy I had started to admire a long ago, he said girls get you do this stuff ,when you ogle at them , they catch you by your throat and strangle you to their advantage, well that was one lesion I never learnt ,even today let a girl ask me a favor I don’t hesitate, well I guess it came with that common bathroom thing of mine, I need to wash it off as soon as possible.
There was this advertisement in the TV which said “Pyar hua ikaraar hua ….” ,you get it now don’t you what ad it was ,but then in those days ,with doordarshan ,I did not have that door darshan,I asked my family and received a moratorium on TV ,they sanctioned me only programs which did not contain this ad , alas the government in their bid to stop us ( not me then ) multiplying inserted that ad in to the programs I was allowed to watch and there was nothing my family could do about it. I think it was then I reached my adolescence, I guessed it years later. My thirst for knowledge ,common I was a badge holder in the school before that made me put this question to the guy who I had admired and was now my friend , it was one of the best answers I received and I swear that I remember each word of it till day and if you are lucky enough to have a couple of drinks with me you will get to know , I would not put it on my blog though ,”as it is “ .some profound fundamentalist or self appointed moral police of our great country ( aptly described by Lays packet of chips ,that is if you had that packet in your hands courtesy some of your friend was rich enough to buy it , six ,seven I keep forgetting the number years ago ,India is one country which in thousand years has not invaded any other country ,what they don’t say is that in that time we were ruled by 6 other tribes ,where was the chance to invade others, like all of this piece ,sorry rather long piece ,it is a Gyaan imparted by retrospection) will flag my blog as adult material ,which is a serious sin for me to commit.
So coming back to focal point of the story (to those who have read my parenthesis story) , returning back to that one phone call from the foreign country I made (yeah I have been to a foreign land you sick .. ),I aspired to become him in my school days ,but life has strange ways and we parted after school ,I mean physically ,do I see a raised brow , reader ,well not in that sense ,but we went on different paths ,and what did I do ,I searched and found another person I wanted to be for two more years of my life, I found one and dreamed of becoming him ,then the scene shifted to the college and then here I found too many I wanted to become and I lost way. Lot of my friends had this person whom they used to mysteriously hide from others ,and we being we, were always inquisitive ,we had to find this person , then after a year I understood that this one person was called a Girl Friend and you ought to have one for people to discuss about you even when you are not there with them ,he took her there ,he took her here ,they both did this together ,you know they both weren’t in class together blah blah …
In these six years I created a tag for myself ,I had a imaginary girl friend ( to be true to the readers a nice girl in the same college who happened to be beautiful ,I swear the latter was only a second thougt,I would have taken any one for real) . The guy whom I had met 12 years back was still the fulcrum which my entire world revolved around. I got myself a job and then it was then I realized that I had become someone, I earned and I spent , it was that simple, still the only thing that worries me most is that I do not have a bathroom of my own, anyone can tell me how much it costs for owning a bathroom,I hate it when someone knocks on my door ,it is like a sore face sticking out from the mirror I look in to every morning ,it reminds me of the thing of past ,the matrix of sewages and my childishness where I was always trying to become someone else, even till past few months where I was always imagining myself in those better shoes , I don’t know what is the best Reebok or Nike or Adidas ,but I always wanted to move out of my Action shoes into one of those ,until after 12 years I realized that I had the best shoes then and now and who knows I will have the best in the future too.
Honesty is the best policy and when I evaded that root ,ignoring who I am and what was my present I always ended on a losing side ,until now I cursed the result and did not dare to look at the path I had taken, I was too frightened to take the road less travelled ,or I am said is less travelled ,to cut short I was afraid to take the path my Dad travelled and it has landed me here ,looking at my past and picking up pieces of my life , stitch it together and see it as one landscape ( with gaping holes that needle makes while stitching crudely ).I no longer imagine myself flying with Spiderman when I watch that movie ( I watch it every Sunday mind you ) ,nor do I put myself in the shoes of that guy who has his own bathroom. Today I fly free and within my boundaries ,for I always remember to hate my thought of wanting to be another person ,I have realized that how far ever you go that route ,the stinking traits of your own would be strewn along the path for you to pick up later on a retrospective evening , no one else will know ,even the guy whom you had wanted to become wouldn’t ,but you and you alone will surely know and when you know ,that would be the end of all that you wanted to be , and you would not enjoy a moment of it ,even if you had ten of your own bathrooms . You would yearn for that one knock on the door, which would never come, better late than never.
PS: If you read through this, the author would not mind to alleviate the pain that the reader’s soul has endured thorough the length and breadth of this piece, without making out much for himself, by apologizing for the language used here-in-with.the bathroom analogy however fits best to what the author meant to say, though he may or may not have succeeded, but he knows what he wrote. If you want to be like him torturing souls which wander aimlessly and are foolish enough to read this, for your Q & A contact him at sundar.moorthy@gmail .com. No threats are tolerated and will be duly reported to cyber crimes of Indian govt.