Brat's Weave Of Madness

Home...
Thursday, April 24, 2008

Okay... so Home... I got thinking about this in class today (class is that magical time of day when I get to do absolutely nothing)... Anyway... So I got thinking about how London is starting to feel more like home... and then I started to think about every place I've called home for the 17 years I've been alive... and how every place I've ever lived in was a home, and not a house... even though it was a home for a terribly short period of time and it's someone else's home now...

I've never ever really had a constant "home" like you hear about in the movies, books and normal person lives... Homes that people can't bear to leave because they have memories woven into the thread of their house... of growing up... where they have a special feeling for every little bit of the house and home is always a place that is constant... that exists always at that one spot.. and where you will always be welcome...

So home for me has been everywhere on that map you see... all the red dots...
The earliest memory I had of a Home was in Kanpur, UP, India... UP stands for Uttar Pradesh, which means Northern State in Hindi.... Which is fine because it it a northern state. I remember we had this huge house (or maybe I was just tiny)... and it was all on one floor and we had an apple tree or something in the garden and I used to just lie under it and watch clouds go by... I don't even remember how old I was then (1st grade or less)... but it's this one memory that stands out... And this other one about when my dad was teaching me how to ride a bicycle... He would never allow me trainer wheels.. so yeah.. I finally got the hang of it and I started going.. but no one ever told me where the brakes were... No... I wasn't dumb enough to go crashing into cars or brick walls... I just jumped off the bike... with very Spiderman like agility... Although I wouldn't hear about spiderman for several years...

See, you might not understand how I was able to do all of this, but the reason I could also has to do with the reason I never stay at one place for more than two years... My dad's a pilot in the Air Force... and that's the reason I am how I am... A defense base is a very... secluded trusty sort of place... I love that I've lived inside Air force bases or colonies all my life... There's something so different about it...

You'll never know unless you're an Defense Officer's Child.. notice the capitals... There's a difference to such an upbringing.. I'm not saying I'm better than you or anything.. I just happen to take pride in where I'm coming from... all that I've learnt... the fact that I have to hold my head up high, keep my back straight and my shoulders wide... The fact that respecting women is second nature and the woman is always first... How everything is so organised and people are being people to each other... The parties at the officer's mess and the visits to the Officer's library where any self respecting kid always took out an Asterix or a Tintin... Respecting my parents no matter what, and always considering their word as the last word... Service is a pleasure rather than a pain and respect defines what I do every step of the way...

I don't think any of you will get this... Anyway... this has gone on quite long... To be continued... :)

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The Pleasure of their Company
Saturday, March 29, 2008

Humanity. I just don’t understand what it is with humanity. So here I was just about to call humanity an idea, but nothing that’s truly ever there… And then I met my taxi driver.

Like I said in my last blog, I was in Tumkur because of an exam… Well, the truth is, I flunked it on the first attempt, and the second time, I wasn’t allowed into the examination centre (long story) because I was late because I forgot my admission ticket at home. So right now, nobody really trusts me… Really not fair since it’s only happened once… but there it is… I’ve gotten used to it now… So that brings me to tuition for my examination and how I MUST have a taxi to get there and back because otherwise I’ll just fall into a gutter or something…

But I’m not complaining… The driver was a really nice person, and we talked about everything from the mileage that he get from his bike to how people who don’t know how to drive should just stay the hell off the road. What really surprised me that he invited me to his house, when I’d known him for just about five days or so and we couldn’t really talk about everything under the sun considering the fact that I couldn’t really speak his native language, and he couldn’t speak mine… I surprise you don’t I?

So I accepted his invitation, and I told him we’d go after tuitions one day, and I did… I met his family, and they turned out to be just marvellous. There’s this feeling that you get when you are actually welcome in somebody’s company, and then there’s this feeling of… closed doors. Their doors were wide open for someone they barely knew, and they were speaking to me as though I was a long lost friend of theirs. I’ll admit I was slightly taken back at this because, well, because how many times in a year does something like this happen to you eh? Well, basically I had an amazing time.

Why though? This has happened to me before as well (some of you might remember). Here I was walking along the road, going home from tuition, and this completely random dude on a moped stops, tells me to “Get on, I’ll drop you!” and off we went, weaving through streets that would’ve taken me another half an hour to walk. He dropped me off safe and sound close to home, and accelerated away before I could finish thanking him profusely. And to date I don’t know his name, although I will never forget his face. The thing is, he was riding a moped, and people who ride mopeds in India aren’t usually anywhere near the upper or upper middle class. They are usually people with not a lot of money. He didn’t need to pick me up, yet he did. Why? Why is it that every time the people who have the time to help never do, and the people who are hard pressed for anything in life are the ones who are always willing to go that extra mile, completely out of their way, just to be humane.

And the funny thing about both these incidents is that both of them have happened when I was feeling really down in the dumps about stuff. Humanity… I really wish I got it…

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Digital Memories
Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Sort through your email. Honestly, sort through all of your old email and that is enough to start making you feel nostalgic. Then maybe you'll write that old friend the letter you've been meaning to, and maybe you'll rebuild a bridge...


My email inbox is always 1% full.. 1% of my life on the internet... It's that one percent that matters here on the vast web... Because that one percent is filled with hope, desire, trust, experience and most importantly, truth, love and heartbreak. I can't help but think about how far I've come since I opened my email inbox. And it really wasn't that long ago either.

I have hurriedly dashed off one line messages, angry one line messages, sad one line messages... Then I have paragraphs... And finally, I come to incredibly large ten paragraph emails, and a paragraph in my book is seven lines or something. And in every one of those emails is something that is a part of me... Be it a secret crush that never came to much, a not so secret crush that was, well... the best nightmare of my life, letters to friends whining, seeking help and celebrating, letters to family wishing them Happy all-sorts-of-things, and nagging them for advice on not so many... I came across emails with feeling in them, as opposed to a wall post that won't make a tiny bit of difference to you tomorrow. I would not have found a pillar of support and a best friend had it not been for that inbox, and tons of email traffic back and forth... And everytime that bond starts to fade, A simple email will do... no questions asked about where and why the absence... An email is all it takes...

Honestly speaking, that email inbox forged me friendships that I will never forget, and it documents every smile and every tear that was ever cried by me or a Super Awesome People (don't ask :) ). That email inbox holds more worth than any number of "social networking sites" that you throw at me... It really puts stuff in perspective... How I've changed over the years, how I've grown and how I can now say that I have a brain... It's a timeline of sorts for your soul...

So yeah, If you've been on the internet long enough, take my advice, and if you're not incredibly busy, just sift through your inbox... Find a window to you :)

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Leggo my Lego!
Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Okay, so that title is a bit old...

So is Lego. And old things are sometimes the best. It's just been there all these years, serving to give expression to the imaginations of everyone from 5 to about a 100 years old. I don't know anything about Lego apart from the fact that it is plastic, it is sometimes decorated (although my first Lego wasn't, I was left to decorate it with a black marker) and if you have any talent, you can create projects that would put the Petronas Towers to shame.

I remember my first ever Lego set. Sadly it never gave me the "just out of the box" feeling that is the reason most companies make so much money off parents of little children. There is no way I will ever allow any future children or grandchildren to waste their time with the all new "Shrek Magical (erm... shiny) Card and Button set". How can anyone not see that that is an utter waste of time?


So anyway, my first Lego set... It was supposed to be some sort of a helicopter and its base set. I'm still a little confused as to what happened to the cockpit. It was my brother's and he had it before I was born (I THINK... I might have just been at that age where little babies are fascinated by little things that can fit down their oesophagus without hindrance). We (Me and my brother) used to convert the floor of my room into a city by drawing chalk lines (which I had to clean up most of the time) across the floor to mark out the roads, junctions, pavements and an air base (I dunno if you get what I'm talking about, an airbase in India is usually a complete complex, with it's own shops, houses, economy, association, runway, hangars and airplanes). Then there'd be the building the walls and gates with Lego. I botched up the gate decoration everytime with things like, "Do Not Enter, You Will be SHOT"... But anyway, that's a different story. I would have put a picture, but the Lego is locked away in a box. Yes, I plan on keeping it forever.

Then there'd be the toy cars that would always be responding to some emergency call or the other. We didn't have any terrorists back then (Well, okay, I didn't know about them), so the only people who could attack us was the Cobra team. Sadly I didn't get my Skystriker until a few years later, and then it was too late. Hot wheels was a luxury in those days, actually anything Mattel was a luxury. So even though I never had one complete set of toys, and the gate to the airbase was a stick compared to the car, I couldn't have asked for a happier childhood. I wish children now could discover some of the things that I discovered and actually imagine instead of waiting for a Nintendo Wii to imagine it for them. Entire worlds can be created and destroyed at will.

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