child inside!
child inside!
I have a machine gun in my hand and all type of bombs & bullets are flying in the air. I jumped high to avoid one of them which was destined to kill me. Regaining my balance, I shot one from my own gun, and it hit the other men in his belly. He fell down. Just after that I realised the magnitude of the mistake I had done. I can’t go to school tomorrow, they will hang me. I started shouting for a doctor but I was stupefied to see the men disappeared after a few seconds…..
I am running on a floor which is made of big cubes and there are places where there is none. It seemed like the municipal department have managed to maintain their reputation of lax and slipshod ways. I wonder what will happen to a person if he fell into that hole. I can vaguely remember why I am here. After I racked my brain, I remembered I have to rescue some Princess peach who will be in the far corner of the city. I started moving forward and saw a short creature covered with thorns all around his body with full intention to collide with me. I was pretty sure of an irereparable damage when I managed to jump and avoid him. After moving a few paces forward I saw a big tower like structure in my path, more like a pipe to hell. I was standing there wondering how will I go to the other side when I saw the same creature returning back with a ghostly duck behind it. I had nowhere to go….
This is a dream of course. I made myself pretty clear. No one is going to hang me or kill me. I was revising similiar kind of dreams from the past one or two months. Then I smiled at the thought of me playing contra and mario on my own video game which my father had promised me next month. I could hardly see the calendar in dark, but could visualize all the cross marks which I had been putting on it since the last 13 days. As we say love is in the air, I was happy every moment of the day waiting for next month. I was a good son, a good brother. In school while standing in punishment outside the class with my friends, I discussed new tips and tricks to finish tetris and bomber man. In lunch time we pontificated about how we had achieved milestones in bike racer and F1. In short, “I ate, slept and drank video games”. Similiar things happened when there were talks about my new bicycle. I raced and won in my dreams. I could carry on 20 friends on my bicycle like the military guys show in the republic day ceremony. Those thoughts about “the things” preoccupied my mind day in and day out.
Coming back to present. Recently I bought my new laptop, for those pedantic guys/gals, it was a Dell Inspiron 1525 configured to suit my taste. But when I brought the package home and opened it, there was no excitement or happiness. Just a plain feeling, I have bought a laptop. I would say, love was not in the air. I would not say I never really dreamed working and watching movies on my laptop but the intensity of that feeling was far too low to be even compared with what it was when I was a child. I tried to find a reason but could not come to a conclusion. May be as I grew, I realised the futility of materialistic things. It can be due to the reason that I have to take my own decisions now, while earlier I used to rely on my parents to get me something. This whole decision making process of to buy or not to buy, or what else can I buy, steals all the excitement and happiness which “the thing” can bring in itself. The other reason could be the money spent on the laptop was from my own earnings. 
Whatever the reason might be, those childhood feelings were not ephemeral and I could not think of any event in the past few years which made me so much happy and excited for months.
“Lately what made you happy for months”, I asked this question to my friends.
“khatte” Lemon singh blurted out with his as usual uproarious laughter.
But Munnibai thought for a while and gave a long reply about his excursions to lalaland, this summer. He told us about how he had spent three days with a girl in there and how he dreamt about it months before that meeting. He told us about his dreams, with the wordings written here slightly manipulated and embellished to suit the readers…
How will he hold her hands, how will he lie in her lap in a garden bench and how will she wave his hair. How will he talk about different issues and not get bored. How will he crack a joke and feel her sweet giggling. How will they look into each other eyes to find a whole new world with only munnibai and reshma rani (his gf) to explore….
I could have continued with this romantic narrative, but this will only digress me from the main point. This was one event which made him happy and excited for months and yes he dreamt about it. I could feel the same excitement in his voice, same fervour about “the thing”. I am still not sure about what is that “thing” which can make me feel like the same child which I was long back. But I am pretty sure I desperately want the same feeling, same excitement, same happiness and I then I will point at my belly, sorry, no, heart and say
“child inside”.
To pay or not to pay
“I am going on a date tonight” chintulaal told me while we were coming back home in an auto.
“with a girl?” I asked him, surprised by his statement. The surprise expressed was not because we don’t like girls, but going for a date doesn’t come in our daily routine.
“yes, he replied. I met her while I did my intern in my 2nd year and today she buzzed me on gtalk to find me in bangalore, and we decided to meet”, he told me with happiness in his face.
“ohh cool! so best of luck, will wait for the stories” I gave my best wishes and in a few mintues we reached home.
He went to his room to get refreshed and came back a few minutes later demanding some money. I searched my wallet, there were 300 rs. in there. I gave him all as I felt there should be enough money in your pocket while you are with a girl to avoid any embarrassment or trouble. 
Mature thoughts do come to me sometimes. I asked him to cancel his tiffin for dinner as I thought he would be eating out. But he was pretty sure of coming home and have that tiffin. I again wished him luck and he thanked me with his as usual honey coated, sweet tone and expressions which I thought might be the reason for his going out today and my sitting in the room reading “how to win and influence friends”.
It was not until 10:30pm he came back when I was sitting with my other two friends, munnibai and lemon singh. They also showed their amazement when they heard of our chintulaal’s esacapades. Without wasting time further we took our places to share his stories like a bunch of 3 year old kids waiting for their dadimaa to start.
“How was your date?” my first question hit him.
“good” he said,
“haath pakda (my usual slang which means, did you hold her hand)” I asked
“no yaar, she is getting married”, now it was his chance to hit back.
“ohh… WTF” now all those questions about his romantic date which were so beautifully arranged in my mind tumbled like a house of cards.
“ok…who paid the bill?” I have an inquisitive mind in these discussions, I guess…
“I paid” chintulaal said with some wierd expression
“ok…good…good, so how much was the bill”…… inquisitive mind, I said…
“I won’t tell you…” he said but with a clear intent on his face to tell after a little pestering…
“common yaar…let us also have some experience about do’s and dont’s for date”.. I said with a plaintive face
“Ok…I will show it to you, only you” he told me…and with this he handed me the bill which he had placed so carefully in the side pocket of his wallet as a memento…I was shocked to see the bill not only because it was huge but because it was spent on a to be married woman which was not in conatct with him since 2 yrs.…
“Didn’t you see the menu before ordering” I asked…
“No, I handed it over to her, and asked her to order for me also…”
“brave chap you are, such a brave chap….we think about the budget, the mood, the food we want to eat, the friends who we are with, the place where we ate the day before….and so many things…. optimizing all of these before me make the best choice selecting a place to eat … and what you do…(some silent moments)… leave it….” lemon singh interrupted with a sarcastic touch and a burst of laughter….
and with this we left the discussion in there and I stood at the window of my first floor apartment staring at a bunch of dogs who were chasing another dog of some other territory…(For not so intellectual minds who did not understand the deeper meaning of this…. this expression was just to signify my dissatisfaction over the expected discussion) …to add let’s say that this time the dadimaa slept on waiting children…
Chintulaal was happy with the bill only because it would remind him of his lavish spending so that in future he can be more cautious. I also got to find the reason for his placing that bill so carefully.
After we had just finished, I gave a statement without much deliberation but everybody appreciated….
“Unless you are hitting on her, avoid paying the bill”
This also reminded me of some previous memories in which I was with one of my friends who is a girl in a restaurant and when she insisted on paying the bill, I allowed her to do so.
I would not have done so , but she gave me reasons for that. Reasons like “if we both are not earning then we should share the bill”. My part of the bill was infinitesimally small, as I only had one Appy Fizz to accompany her as I just had had my lunch before that meet. So I did not share.
So while I was jogging this morning, this discussion was circling my mind. I also felt that, usually it is considered a boy’s prerogative to pay the bill on a date, but as now we have heard enough of that women are leading in every field, they are no less than men, girls again proved better than boys in board results…..we should pay respect to those women activists….
I believe these statements and its true that girls have proved themselves so why should boys have all the fun. The male community should understand the importance of women, their rights, their feelings and should change this myth that they only have to pay the bill. I urge all the boys going for date tonight, tomorrow, this weekend…..in future…. that they should seriously ask themselves this question….
“to pay or not to pay”
Day before Presentation
Again its the same day, again those same thoughts, same feelings, same laziness, same eternal question “do I want to do this?”, “Am I doing what I really want to do ?”. I have my presentation for the B.Des project day after tomorrow, and I haven’t worked on it since 2 months. I was enjoying since the past 2 months when I really had to work, thinking I will do everything in the last 1 week, then 6 days, then 4 days , now 1 day… and I still have to start. Some of my batch mates have status messages like “phati padi hai”, and even after knowing the gravity of the situation, I don’t want to work on that. I just want to enjoy, play badminton or cricket or just sit along the sides of brahmaputra. I have read 3 or 4 blogs on how to get things done, GTD, or MIT’S(most important things) of your day. I get frustrated after sometime and I say to myself, “I just need to refresh my mood, then I will work”, due to which I have seen 3 movies in the day, “training day”, “accepted”, “knocked up”. Adding to the misery I went out to have food, and ate a lot, butter chicken, tandoori chicken….and now that is making me drowsy and the “devil” inside me questions “don’t I deserve a good night’s sleep, how this work is going to affect my life, will it affect me in some way, make me a better person”….answering that, the “moral” says “everybody will laugh at you, professors will ask questions, do it, work on it, you can get an F grade, common work….” but again…don’t I deserve to get rest….blah blah…
But there is a solution to this problem and everybody knows, that including me. Break your work into parts, do the smaller ones first, you get confidence after completing them, then go for the bigger ones. This way you can complete massive, piling work. But vague and futile questions, I say them “philosophical funde”, which are of no use pops up in between and ruin everything. I am fighting hard to overcome this bad habit since….since….since…my childhood, if i remember correctly. But then in those times, there were no philosophical funde, I simply did not want to do it. This “i do not want to do it”, have worn these philosophical clothes, recently when I started reading some books and attended some lectures on philosophy, sociology, existentialism, absurdism….etc. It is really cool to give the “moral” an explanation in these terms, because they seem something real, something of importance, but these important terms can’t provide me a day’s meal when I am on my own in this world. I can only think about them, when I have my parents money to spend and lot of free time to think. When I will have to fight for my square meals, I am sure I won’t think about them. These are expensive thoughts and a person who is busy with his assignments, deadlines, expectations of his parents for a new car, can’t afford that.
So here I am, writing all this, and feeling good I wrote my feelings away. This has rejuvenated me, and motivated me to my work. I think it would help me because now I am feeling good from inside, feeling to work on my presentation. I will write about the presentation in my next writing.
Lets see what happens….wish me luck
