LOVE

The one and only one feeling of

Losing

One’s
Veiled

Ego 
is love.

The Haunted House

Have you ever had a next door abandoned house encircling which there were thousands of fabricated stories that fed your childhood nightmares. Well then, I had one next to mine. It was a big house, quite big for its forlorn inhabitants, the tiny insects and the birds that perched its nest right beneath the over arched roofs. The outgrown vegetation added to its horrific splendour. But everything about it changed on the day when a bunch of people arrived in a white Scorpio car and started living in that haunted house. Like me everyone else in the village were curious to know about them as they had the extraordinary guts to live in that long-gossiped haunted house. But the more we awaited, the less we heard from them. Mostly they sticked to their house and if at all they had to leave the house they traveled around in the white Scorpio with raised windows. I badly regret these days that have put off the practice of visiting the neighbours for a chat over a cup of tea and have adopted the fancy business of texting each other. Half of the youngsters don't even dare to get out on their yards to feel the fresh blow of air against their skin, at least then there was a possibility of neighbours accidentally meeting each other. But like me, most of them in my locality loved to stick on to the cosy-comfort of their cramped-in rooms except for the 3 kids who lived 2 houses away from mine. They were actually forced by their parents to stay within the house though they loved playing outside. So one day, three of them walked into my house and summoned me to accompany them to this strange house. It was their secret mission to unearth the mystery entangling the house, but fear overdid them and so they wanted me for a support. I quietly followed them but was quite confused about the way the neighbours would receive us. Would they feel like the kids were playing a trick on them, after all it was fine being a kid and doing nasty things but I was the 'grown up'. I started knocking out my head thinking for an excuse. But the sudden 'shh' sound startled me from my train of thoughts. The kids were being creepy and began walking stealthily, I realised that they had no plans to walk into the house. Further I was reassured with the bolted doors and locked gate. There was also no possibility for a sneak attack as the fence was quite giant. I thanked God for deserting the place for the time being but later regretted for having missed my only chance. Time flew away like wind and the only acquaintance for my new-born neighbour in our village turned out to be the tea-cum-groceries shop owner, half a mile down the street where the father figure of the haunted house frequented to buy some household goods. Taking credits of befriending the man of the mysterious house, the shop keeper enunciated the details of the family members which included, the man, his wife and their 2 daughters. They have come from abroad and the kids have been studying in some boarding school far away. Everything seemed quite normal about the family that people lost interest in them. Things went on as usual except for the mid of July that had welcomed barrels and barrels of rain. It rained cats and dogs for a couple of days that the streets were on water. The kids had no school and their cries could be heard aloud. Life became quite stagnant on the economic side but the streets were filled with it. When the rain reduced its pace, people gathered together to watch the flood, or to chop the fallen trees that blocked their way or to fix  the electric lines. A bunch of adventurous people began swimming in the overflown lake and I was on the street watching the water flow across me, knee length. Suddenly a huge man in shorts walked towards me with a smile on his face. I could hardly recognise him as my acquaintance and that's when my father spoke from behind, "you might be our next door neighbour ". With a nod he introduced himself and with a few minutes talk he invited us home. He was on his way to the groceries store. The flood had prevented him from driving and has drained him off the household necessities. Thus a flood helped me befriend my neighbour. So, sometimes I think of flood as a good connector of people. At least this episode has made me rethink about cursing it for all the vicious things it has done so far.

TRUST

Trust is when you are put in an extremely dangerous situation and you choose to Believe.

When my 8 year old cousin was learning to ride bicycle she would only let my Papa balance her from behind. Rest of us, she simply distrusted and wouldn't even let near her cycle. So, one day her envious brother screamed out loud,"Hey look, even Reji uncle is not holding you but just running behind you". Those words banged in our ears  like thunder and we all stood dumbstruck as it was quite enough to flinch her off the cycle. But riding down the lane for the first time she yelled back, "But I know he wouldn't let me get hurt".

My "Sisbling"

Today, I shall introduce you to my “sisbling”, I call her so because if you have a sis like her you’ll go bling bling. She is a big fat book of stories that could colour each and every shade of love, care, happiness, peace, sturdiness and anger. Right from my childhood days she used to hook me up with her tales and at times pissed me off with her advisory moralistic tales. But in here, I shall scribble some of her unique ways.
• She is a high spirited girl who is madly into Greek and Roman mythology that these mythic stories decorated my childhood imagination. Every story she read and every movie watched was my chance of listening and watching to her way of narrating it. The best times were when we strolled to church together, a one hour long journey to and fro that would be packed with stories, our likes, dislikes, people and what not. To add to it both of us were good at fabricating stories. I even remember the incident that took place when I was in the 1st grade and she in 2nd. Both of us watched a ghost movie when left alone at home and was pretty scared after watching it that we stayed glued together even when we went to the washroom. All of a sudden, a cockroach, an insect that both of us had so far only happened to see in our kindergarten textbooks, appeared out of the thin air and flew past us. None of us knew that a cockroach could actually “fly” and we cooked up tales that the ghost in the movie had entered into the insect to kill us for watching the movie and not studying as advised by our parents. We screamed the hell out of us and cuddled to each other while trembling to dial Papa’s number so as to narrate the entire episode. Finally, the phone call cleared all the misunderstandings and even invited fresh set of scoldings for watching the movie. Well, that was it and now back to my sisbling.
• She is this person who uploads a post in a social media and likes her own post first and foremost. 
• A girl who sits in the front bench purposefully so as to doze off arguing that the teacher’s eye won’t get you there.
• A person who always carries an encyclopaedia with her and won’t call it a day unless she has gone through the prescribed portion for the day. 
• She is a gypsy who has mugged up the world map with the aid of assigning different countries to each of our cousins. I shall tell you how she works it out, she would initially jot down the names of our family members and then assign each one of them a nation as a vacation tour plan and then learn about it in detail. And it’s her leisure to explain about the nation to the respective cousin as soon as a get-together is arranged at home.
• Another of her hobbies is to try out different cuisines and this passion has even kindled her to eat fried worms which is quite unbelievable and unthinkable for me.
• Further, she is pretty into animated movies and has an ability of connecting with people through movies. For instance, she has reserved the movie Croods to cherish Papa, Brave for Amma, How to train your Dragon for our Rooney (our pussy cat) and Frozen to depict the chemistry between us. So, every time she watches any these movies, either we would be burdened by her emotion being by her side or the respective person commemorated would receive a phone call if far away.  
• Moreover she is the most noisy person at home and without her it’s hard for me to turn the house topsy-turvy.
• She boosts the confidence in all of us and instills a new spirit.
• She could screw me up with her curly hair pulled down mocking at mine saying that hers is longer and if I manage to grow, she would plot with Papa to cut my hair. 
• And the one thing that makes her special and me hate her the most is that she would give up on things I love the most, pretending not to like it even though it would be her favourite. 
So, my noisy naughty Sisbling, Do you wanna build a Snowman?

Me - in a Nutshell

I am a typical hometown-nostalgic rustic woman and if you ask me to move abroad I would be like the "Kuttetan" in Anjali Menon's movie Bangalore Days, always nagging around about the loss of the countryside. Little things like tapioca and fish curry excites me rather than a bucket chicken or pizza from KFC. A good talk, a beautiful book, a smile, a piece of chocolate, a sip of tea, the smell of a book, a handwritten letter etc., could make my day. I love owning books, to travel occassionally with my people, spending time with family, gifting people with hand made things, scribbling a mail, writing letters and finally public speaking. I can be annoyingly patient when someone gets angry. I am quite a lazy cook and prefer bread and jam over self prepared meal. I could easily be an owl but never a skylark, actually it is an arduos task to wake me up in the morning, yet these little things pin me up.

The Plight of a Front Bencher

Every new space is a platform to put up a novel identity of oneself, pruning all the characteristics one wishes to change and polishing the positives that you wish to cherish. Yup, likewise I was all set for my college days. And the picture I have planned to execute among my new fellow classmates was that of a studious, obedient and well disciplined student even though there was  a lion and tiger conflict taking place within myself in accepting and working out this identity. Unfortunately all these resolutions clang by my side for a very short period of time and like a trapped rat, my true colours recurrently sought for a chance to sneak out. But to my dismay, my classroom had a specific seating pattern for the students in line with their interests which soon came to be permanently sealed on the individual. I see to it as a geometrical arrangement silently passed down generations over and over. The first two rows were strictly dedicated to the nerds, to be followed by the rows of ‘hifi’ community i.e, those who are high at celebrating life and fine with their academics, while the last bench was neatly reserved for *thug life (*the ‘yoyo’ people). Knowingly or Unknowingly, I know not now I choose the second row burdened by my resolutions though my heart longed for the last bench. And so here are some of the plights that a front bencher has to confront:
• A sudden backward rotation  of seat would be looked upon by everyone especially the teachers as a heinous task that they would raise their voices and ask, "So are you planning to be careless with your studies, ah?" And I always had to nod my ‘No’ very sternly, as if I have never even heard of the word “careless” before, inwardly damning my initial resolutions. And so, blessed are the last benchers as they score points for each step forward and even if they continued to maintain their own seats, the teachers would simply let go of  their ‘live and let live’ attitude. 
• Or else there would be some other teachers who blame the front benchers for sticking on to their niches without allowing the back benchers to come forward while the truth is that these seats would always remain vacant in the absence of these poor chaps. Thus every nerd longs for a rotation I guess, at least a day of freedom. Because as Sigmund Freud puts it after-all every soul is a blend of Id, Ego and Superego. 
• Further, they should resist the knock of the ‘sleeping fairy’ at their doorstep and pretend as if robots tuned to the frequency of the teachers' likes and dislikes.
• They have to mug up portions after portions and always be updated with current knowledge because a  question to them is for sure.
• Adding to this, it is even more awful to say that every college-based movie or the so called inspiring quotes would decor the Back Benchers as their cynosures leaving out the Front Benchers to seek inspiration from their own lives. So, today I have decided to stand up for all the Front Benchers, who have been willingly or accidentally adorned with this title. 
Dear Front Bencher,
All throughout your life you have struggled to maintain your seat and so the personality tagged with it against all the odds. Thus you have mastered in the skill of persistence. So tomorrow even if you have to face great challenges in life you could easily beat it with your "not gonna give up" spirit. 
Always Fighting.

A Crush that Ignited Me

Love is a special spurring of the mind that does not require the aid of letters to spread its wings into the horizons of human heart. And so does the initial gentle strike of the Cupid’s arrow which we commonly hail as ‘crush’. Never have we ever been taught about it in any text books but have always felt it in our veins. And from my experience so far I reckon it to be an outflow of the love that we have received from our loved ones, be it parents, siblings, friends, teachers etc. An urge to share with others what you have in plenty. And in my case, I guess, I was brimming with it that I felt like pouring it out from my heart at the very age of 11. That was my first crush. Be it today, 11 years since,  when I narrate this story to my parents overcoming all my shyness they get stuck at the word ‘crush’. Amma is like,” what’s this crush? Is it like a crash?”, and I had to admit that it is a crash of one soul to that of the other, oops no, in my case it was the crash  of one soul on the foot of the other soul-bearer, begging him to put me right up in his heart. Because we were poles apart. He ran the topper of our class and also enjoyed the privileges of being an athlete, a singer and many more while I was solely adorned with the title of the 35th rank holder in  a class of 39. But looking through my eyes I had definite scope because after all, I was not the last person and it was  wrong to say that ‘a thing of beauty is a joy’ only  to a high strung elite community, I mean the studious, talented elite in the class. So, I made various attempts to foster a better image of mine in front of him which I presently recall as ridiculous and futile attempts that didn’t even lure his attention. I even befriended all his friends hopefully awaiting for a chance to mingle with him, as I was draining with guts to speak up to him directly. And to my dismay, his demeanour like that of any gentleman’s was to talk to only those who initiated to him except for his friends. After incessant rounds of failure, I made up my mind to give up on him and to my surprise even my  inner conscience sanctioned it, advising me over-maturely that "if I had put so and so much effort on self-development I would have yielded wonders". Finally I managed to adhere to my inner voice, focusing on my only strength which was quite a little competence in English language. Gradually I became the English vigilance monitor of my class and he my co-monitor, thus we became friends. But this time I never gave up on myself, like the game of  gambling that entices  the victim to play harder, so did  the initial results heightened my spirits to play tougher. The result was that I became the topper of my class at 8th grade, quite a good public speaker bagging inter-school prizes as I was a sophomore and eventually the Head Girl of my school. Looking back I would never say that the journey was an easy one but was a path of thorns. Each thorn made me a  stronger person and taught me to pull myself up like a bird that flutters its wings off the water or dirt that has drenched it, so as to fly higher. But the highlight of all these developments was that it was aptly acknowledged by my first crush. On our last school day, he said that he was glad to have a friend like me which fluttered my heart like no way before. I was happy, and I felt this emotion to the very core of my being. Because the secret was, he, my first crush, triggered the change!
P.S: Find your strengths and work on it, everything else would fall in its place eventually.