1) To this date, every year I visit India, I buy an issue of Tinkle, usually at the Trichy railway station. Whether or not I remember all my baggage, I make it a point to sprint the entire length of the crowded platform, to the lonely bookstore tucked away at the very end of the station, to purchase said Tinkle. Needless to say, I usually get a lot of strange looks when I return, comic book in hand. Judging from my haste, I feel like people expect me to be running after a departing train, or in pursuit of a purse-snatcher, or at the very least, to the rescue of a toddler teetering precipitiously close to the edge of the platform as an incoming train comes uncomfortably close to crushing her to death. Imagine their disappointment when they discover that all of the fuss was just over a comic book.
2) Every year, despite the obvious set-back to my ever-increasing waistline, I make it a point to visit Seakings, a.k.a. God's gift to mankind [Can I get an Amen from all my Trichy peeps???] Not once, but at least several times a week. And yes, the chocolate sundae does kick the choco-chips butt, big-time. To all those choco-chips fans out there, you have no idea what you're missing out on.
3) Every year, I also make it a point to play a round of carom, despite my admitted ineptitude at the game. An older male cousin had a great time watching my most recent attempt. Apparently, I would be the world champion if points were awarded for most failed attempts at getting a single coin into a hole.
4) This is probably really going to date me, but "Chikku Bukku" from Gentlemen, the anthem of my early childhood, is the most played song on my Youtube searchlist. In a close second comes "Mukkala Mukkabala" from Kadhalan.
5) To date, whenever I pass by a park, I make it a point to head straight for the swings and swing blissfully away for hours on end. This is extremely difficult considering that my backside, considerably larger than the children for whom the swings are manufactured, usually becomes completely numb after a few minutes of being squeezed into a volume only a tenth of its actual size. Given that, and the fact that the parents of the other children usually give me the stink-eye for hogging the swings, as their disappointed little babies stand by, eyes welling up and lips quivering pitifully in a preview of the waterworks to ensue. [I swear, I don't do it on purpose. The swings are always empty when I first get on them, and before I've even had the chance to use it for 30 seconds, 20 wide-eyed kids are waiting expectantly for me to get off. It's definitely some sort of conspiracy.]
Most of the confessions I made above are of the little things I do, even as a twenty-something, to relive the exhilarating joy of my childhood. Most of them are just rituals now, like the annual carom game or the issue of Tinkle, a feeble but worthwhile attempt to recreate an event that had a positive emotional impact on my life.
Others are an attempt at connecting with my roots, like the visits to Seakings. As third-generation Trichy folk, many of my cousins have had the priviledge of graduating from the same schools my parents, aunts, uncles, and even grandparents studied at, having the same teachers in certain extreme cases, and even frequenting the same hangouts. Few places in America are invested with that kind of history for me. That's why Seakings holds such a special place in my heart; whenever I'm there I can just imagine my mom bunking college with her buddies to listen to the latest Michael Jackson tapes playing at the parlor, or I can visualize my dad and his entire extended family taking the two buses from their house to Main Guard Gate, every single Sunday, to gorge on multiple ice-creams. Imagine the size of the bill they worked up each week!!!
Still other rituals have died a peaceful death, like my childhood infatuation with playing dress-up, using blankets to re-create a sari. Back then, wearing a sari held an unmistakable attraction, a symbol of the forbidden fruit of maturity and of being "grown-up". Now, a sari is merely a symbol of acting my age, and in a way, this has had the opposite effect on its appeal. The three saris my mother has forced me to purchase sit gathering dust in my closet, while every day, my inexplicable urge to wear my hair in pigtails again grows stronger and stronger.
I guess the real confession I'm trying to make here is that no matter how old I get, or how many responsibilities I undertake in life, I have and will always continue to feed my inner child. Adults take themselves way too seriously, and I feel that taking the time out to be a kid every once in a while is the only thing that can help preserve our sanity in the crazy world we live in.
Showing posts with label Roots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roots. Show all posts
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Friday, June 12, 2009
Best Friends Forever, or How I Came to Know that Forever Doesn't Last That Long
We were the best of friends. We were inseparable- two faces of the same shiny coin, unblemished by life’s rusting ways of experience, hardship, and responsibility. Our lives entwined in a myriad different ways as we experienced each of life’s milestones in one another’s company- first days of school, summer haircuts at our grandmother’s hand, the first Christmases we would ever remember. And although we lived nearly 10, 000 miles away from one another, it was not the physical distance that would come to separate us in the end. No, in the end what separated us was the fact that we had become total strangers to one another, fumbling blindly in the dark to recover what we had lost between us.
He was the first and only boy I ever ran away from home with. We were two years old, a mischievous pair of brats who would steal medicine cups from cabinets and plant weeds in them, lining them up in tiny rows to rival my grandmother’s venerable garden. How we managed to get out of the sight of at least fourteen pairs of watchful eyes is beyond me, but we had managed it and off we were into the great, wide world. As the story goes, we had opened the latch of the front gate and walked hand in hand all the way to a busy intersection down the road, heavy with traffic in the mid-morning rush. The neighborhood vegetable seller was the one who caught us wandering in the end, holding us hostage by the garden wall, as my mother- finally catching sight of the widely gaping doors of the front gate- hurried to catch the escaped convicts before we were crushed to a chutney consistency by some passing lorry. Whether there were beatings or relieved hugs and kisses waiting for those delivered from the jaws of death is beyond the powers of my memory to recall, but what I do know to be certain is that this was to be the last such incident in both of our lives. A new chapter had dawned for both of us at nearly the same time. We were no longer the babies of the household as our ever-increasing families grew to welcome our younger sisters, and as is often the case, with the promotion came a heightened sense of responsibility.
As we grew older very few things changed between us. We continued to rule the roost of our increasingly populous pack of cousins, coming up with ridiculous and imaginative ways to entertain ourselves. Although we maintained the appearance of sparing equal attention to all of our cohorts, both we ourselves and all those who knew us closely knew that this was a well-maintained façade. I lived for his approval and he lived for mine. We were both the best of friends and the worst of enemies, standing up fiercely for one another when either one was attacked by the criticism of an outsider, and yet turning just as zealously on one another in contests to establish our superiority over the other. He was my closest confidante and I was his, and together we built our own world of understanding impenetrable to any outsider, including our respective parents.
The year when he was preparing for the dreaded 12th standard government examination, India’s vicious method of determining whether one goes on to college or not, was the start of the end of a beautiful relationship. I barely saw him that year when I went to visit as all the time he had those days was devoted to studying, eating and sleeping, with studying occupying a disproportionately large amount of that allotment. He was barely home that year, shuttling from school to tutoring to home on his ancient, though trusted, bicycle, only to repeat the cycle day after day, without rest. Although I was disappointed at missing the chance to see him after two long years, I sympathized as I knew the same process only awaited me when I returned to the States. I convinced myself to be patient- what could change between us between now and the next time I would get the chance to see him? He would still always be him and I would still always be me- school was just a minor roadblock. When we got the chance to meet again we would simply pick up the pieces and continue uninterrupted from where we left off.
In the end, it turned out that I was wrong. By the time we got to meet again, he was no longer himself and I was no longer myself. He had already spent a year in college- I was just about to begin collegiate life. We had changed a lot in the time since we last met and the childhood experiences that united us seemed ghostly specters we had left in the dust of the past for a very long time now. Our first and only meeting that trip to India was awkward- like that first middle school dance where the boys and girls are lined up on opposite walls, unsure of themselves and of each other. And now that I look back on it, even if we had gotten the chance to meet more often that trip, our subsequent meetings would still have been just as awkward. We had just missed too much of each other’s lives to remain relevant to each other any longer.
What happened between us? How could I have forgotten the boy who grabbed my hand and guided me to take my first steps into the real world? How could I have forgotten my best friend?
He was my closest confidante and I was his. And although we lived nearly 10, 000 miles away from one another, it was not the physical distance that would come to separate us in the end. No, in the end what separated us was the fact that we had become total strangers to one another, fumbling blindly in the dark to recover what we had lost between us.
He was the first and only boy I ever ran away from home with. We were two years old, a mischievous pair of brats who would steal medicine cups from cabinets and plant weeds in them, lining them up in tiny rows to rival my grandmother’s venerable garden. How we managed to get out of the sight of at least fourteen pairs of watchful eyes is beyond me, but we had managed it and off we were into the great, wide world. As the story goes, we had opened the latch of the front gate and walked hand in hand all the way to a busy intersection down the road, heavy with traffic in the mid-morning rush. The neighborhood vegetable seller was the one who caught us wandering in the end, holding us hostage by the garden wall, as my mother- finally catching sight of the widely gaping doors of the front gate- hurried to catch the escaped convicts before we were crushed to a chutney consistency by some passing lorry. Whether there were beatings or relieved hugs and kisses waiting for those delivered from the jaws of death is beyond the powers of my memory to recall, but what I do know to be certain is that this was to be the last such incident in both of our lives. A new chapter had dawned for both of us at nearly the same time. We were no longer the babies of the household as our ever-increasing families grew to welcome our younger sisters, and as is often the case, with the promotion came a heightened sense of responsibility.
As we grew older very few things changed between us. We continued to rule the roost of our increasingly populous pack of cousins, coming up with ridiculous and imaginative ways to entertain ourselves. Although we maintained the appearance of sparing equal attention to all of our cohorts, both we ourselves and all those who knew us closely knew that this was a well-maintained façade. I lived for his approval and he lived for mine. We were both the best of friends and the worst of enemies, standing up fiercely for one another when either one was attacked by the criticism of an outsider, and yet turning just as zealously on one another in contests to establish our superiority over the other. He was my closest confidante and I was his, and together we built our own world of understanding impenetrable to any outsider, including our respective parents.
The year when he was preparing for the dreaded 12th standard government examination, India’s vicious method of determining whether one goes on to college or not, was the start of the end of a beautiful relationship. I barely saw him that year when I went to visit as all the time he had those days was devoted to studying, eating and sleeping, with studying occupying a disproportionately large amount of that allotment. He was barely home that year, shuttling from school to tutoring to home on his ancient, though trusted, bicycle, only to repeat the cycle day after day, without rest. Although I was disappointed at missing the chance to see him after two long years, I sympathized as I knew the same process only awaited me when I returned to the States. I convinced myself to be patient- what could change between us between now and the next time I would get the chance to see him? He would still always be him and I would still always be me- school was just a minor roadblock. When we got the chance to meet again we would simply pick up the pieces and continue uninterrupted from where we left off.
In the end, it turned out that I was wrong. By the time we got to meet again, he was no longer himself and I was no longer myself. He had already spent a year in college- I was just about to begin collegiate life. We had changed a lot in the time since we last met and the childhood experiences that united us seemed ghostly specters we had left in the dust of the past for a very long time now. Our first and only meeting that trip to India was awkward- like that first middle school dance where the boys and girls are lined up on opposite walls, unsure of themselves and of each other. And now that I look back on it, even if we had gotten the chance to meet more often that trip, our subsequent meetings would still have been just as awkward. We had just missed too much of each other’s lives to remain relevant to each other any longer.
What happened between us? How could I have forgotten the boy who grabbed my hand and guided me to take my first steps into the real world? How could I have forgotten my best friend?
He was my closest confidante and I was his. And although we lived nearly 10, 000 miles away from one another, it was not the physical distance that would come to separate us in the end. No, in the end what separated us was the fact that we had become total strangers to one another, fumbling blindly in the dark to recover what we had lost between us.
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