GOOD MORNINGS.

Prithvy, my son wakes me up daily morning with his pleasant hugs and wet licky kisses and sometimes,razor sharp tooth bites. He makes monosyllabic sounds which sound like music to my ears. He is an early riser but lazes around in the bed with me till 8am as Mansi goes to the gym at 7am.
Chaitra has become big and sleeps in her own room. She is becoming independent now.
As soon as Mansi comes, I rush to dress up for my tennis sessions. During this period, Prithvy watches me with a keen eye but quietly.When I wear my cap, Prithvy goes berserk. he quits his feeds and just starts bawling and shrieking. He wants to come with me.He crawls up to me and pleads with his eyes to take him along. I give in and take him in my arms.
He becomes pacified and starts smiling waving his arms in joy. He plants an extra kiss on my ever ready cheeks. He fidgets with my cap as I take him down the elevator. He bangs his small arms against the steel doors of the elevator as he is not able to contain his joy.
We have a small play park in our campus, I promptly sit on the swing, taking him in my lap and swing slowly. All the time, he watches me smiling and in amazement. His day is made. I also make him sit on the mini slide and see him scared, not letting go of the side railings. We literally slide him manually on the slide. After some time, his care taker maid comes down with the pram and takes over from me.
I wave him good bye.
He does not cry this time.
He is satiated now.
I can see a twinkle in his eyes.
Maybe, he knows, that daddy may come home at unpredictable times when he is sleeping.
He has started getting acclimatized to his daddy's work schedule.
The morning is his rightful share of time.
This morning bonding will be the platform of a symbiotic father son relationship in the years to come.
So,when my tennis coach asks me the reason for my late arrival to the court, I smile and don't say a word.
I adjust my fidgeted cap and play along.

SORE BOTTOMS.

The serpentine queue was stretching outside the gates of the theatre. The people were jostling to get a foot hold in the ticket line. There was a separate line for the ladies who had swarmed upon the theatre with their kids in tow. Their lips were glossy with outrageous shades of lipstick. A scuffle soon broke out in the front as soon as the houseful board was put at the window. The crowd was livid but left grumbling to try their luck another day. Some had come to see the movie for the second time while most of them had lost count. This was the block buster of the century and people did not mind seeing this spectacle over and over again. The hanky tied black marketeers would rub their itchy fingers in glee. Their pockets would swell then.
It was the late 70s and movies ruled the roost then. The television and the computers were yet to enter our uncomplicated lives.
The theatre was a decrepit one, paan stains dominated the lobby outside. The seats were of hard leather which used to hurt our small bums. Springs used to jut out of the seats and Bugs used to lurk in every crevice,waiting to suck our blood. There were a couple of fans in the balcony which used to blow sweat filled winds at us. We were lucky to get fan seats. The poor viewers in the stall would sweat it out often using vernacular newspapers to fan them. The balcony crowd used to throw the litter at the stall crowds, fights would ensue then. The ones with the choicest abuses won. The fight would sometimes spill outside the theatre too.
The foyer outside the screen used to attract our attention more than the movie. Soggy wafers and Crisp wadas-samosas used to be displayed in a dirty glass shelf illuminated under a powerful halogen yellow lamp. There were no micro waves back then. A small box of ice cream candies elicited the maximum rush. The parents would buy for their nagging children and the lover would buy a solitary candy which would be licked by him and his female friend in the dark confines. Some people would smoke in the corridors, blowing rings in the stale humid air.
I could not understand the mystery of the corner seats. The couples would be so cooing busy in themselves and would hardly watch the movie. I would stare them at frequent intervals, much to my parents' disapproval.
But as soon as the hit song would start playing, We would stand on our seats, remove our shirts and dance with joy. Our appreciative parents would clap then. Few would dance in the aisles spraying 25 paise coins in the air which would jingle on the hard non carpet laid hard cement floor. It was real fun then. Catcalls and Whistles would accompany every hit song.
The tickets were priced at 1.1 Rupees for the stall and 2.2 Rupees for the elite balcony. It was a princely sum those days. A 5 rupee note would suffice for a small family. As soon as the movie would end, people would walk out slowly to their homes. Some would yawn. The elite would hail a rickshaw and their fat family would barely fit in the small vehicle. The sputtering rickshaw reluctantly, took them home.
We would go home and scratch our itchy bottoms. A soothing lotion would be applied to treat the bug bites.
As soon as the next movie hit our theatre, we all would be excited and raring to go again.
The movies were our only escape from bitter middle class reality lives.

Yesterday, I went to see a movie with my family in a state of the art multiplex. The entire bill came out to nearly 2000 Rupees !!. I was shell shocked and my mind flash backed to my childhood days.
When I came home, My bottom did not itch this time.
It hurt.
No lotion could sooth it.

TERMINAL THOUGHTS.

A sense of emptiness grips the soul.
You feel lonely, despite the crowds gathered around you.
Yet, you feel a sense of loss and unbelonging.
Your stifled voice has no energy left.
Your mind is racing but the thoughts are blank.
You realise the futility of life.
Your entire life flashes before your eyes in a fast forward manner.
You wish for some more time.
Just a little more to do the undone things, to undo the done things.
How you wish, you could have spent more time with your family.
You feel the lights hurting your eyes.
You feel sympathy for your now exhausted care takers.
You silently curse the doctors for prolonging your agony, artificially.
You no longer feel the pain of the needles and tubes puncturing your fragile body.
You see the winged angels coming towards you.
A flash of light. The terminal gasp for breath. The doctors try in vain, to revive you.
Your soul is liberated, You are free now.
The light soul carries nothing, except memories.
You embrace the Almighty God.
Welcome to Heaven.
Good Bye Mother Earth.

A SAD PATIENT.

Doctor !! Doctor !! "Please don't give me an injection".
It was a loud wail which resonated and reverberated in my consulting room every month when the young boy named Nimesh used to come for his monthly androgen shots. My able bodied ward boys along with myself used to hold him and the nurse would jab him on his plump buttocks. The cries would shatter our window panes. After the jab, he would still cry for a couple of minutes outside the room. The crowd of outdoor patients would sympathise with the poor boy, some offering him chocolates.
Nimesh weighed over a ton despite only being 17 years old. His ears were shaped like a wrestler and slightly deformed since birth but not too evident. His acoustic acuity was hampered since birth, hence his conversations were very loud. His cries too, were amplified. He was a mentally retarded child as a result of hypoxic birth injury. He went to a special school and did pretty well out there. although his body was like that of an adult, his mind was like the one of a small baby. He had a huge head with crew cut hair with big bead like eyes. But, He was a cute boy. Consistently he had removed various hearing aids from his ears, pleading ear ache and tinnitus. He was a fidgety kid who played around with whatever object he could lay hands on. My torch and the stethoscope were also not spared by him.
He used to be accompanied all the time by an ageing frail lady whom he used to call Ammi. I was perplexed by the tremendous age gap between the two and one day I asked Ammi about it all.
Ammi told me that she was the maternal granny of Nimesh. His parents had left him with her when he was just a year old. They had simply given up on him and deserted him as they did not want an abnormal baby. They moved out of town, had a healthy child, a couple of years later. Soon, his mother too stopped enquiring about Nimesh. Such depravity was unbelievable and shocking. I silently muttered the choicest abuses for such parents. Their act was shameful and unpardonable. The poor Ammi had no choice but to rear Nimesh as her own son. Life moved on monthly pension.
It was a sad tale.
I look at his sad face.
He does not know the whereabouts about his evil parents.
One day, I asked him about them.
He laughed out loudly without a care in the world, ignoring the uncomfortable question. He believed Ammi to be his sole parent.
Ammi would go one day, Who would take care of him?
God alone knows.
I cried silently and prayed for him.
I hope, it works.
I ring the call bell and usher in the next patient.

DISTRICT 9.

It was the dark era of the late 70s. The clouds of recession were hovering around the small sleepy town. People had no real big money then.

Gandhi Nagar was a hutment colony which was overlooked by our buildings in childhood. You could see the steel grey rusty aluminium sheets and brown asbestos tiles in uniformity shading the poor population. God had hand picked all the unwanted beings in our town and placed them there. It was a place, shunned by all the higher strata of our small town. Yet, everybody had to encounter them as the main road ran through the colony.

The long queue of unshaven guys standing patiently with plastic tumblers in their hands and a small beedi in their slender fingers dominated the morning scene. The impatient kids used the road freely,often sitting in rows like school children, littering and desanitising our town. It was not a pleasant sight. The poor ladies had timed their bowels for the afternoon sessions when they would chat with black tobacco powder in their mouths.

Brawls were frequent and vociferous. Gandhi Nagar was a loud place. Water queues elicited the most decibels where the ladies would fight tooth and nail to gain vantage in the queue. Hair tearing and choicest abuses never escaped our attention. They used to fight for no reason whatsoever. They had nothing else to do. Evenings used to see the return of the frustrated drunken husbands who would vent their fury out on the hapless wives. Shrieks and Wailing cries dominated our otherwise quiet evenings. One day a drunkard was set alight with kerosene by his rebellious wife. She walked tall in the colony since then.

During marriages and naming ceremonies, The noise levels used to cross our tolerance threshold. Huge loud speakers blared out unheard of songs. We would shut all our windows tight. The revellers were hardly bothered and continued their celebrations. Even the police had given up, on this colony a long time back. They pleaded helplessness. The people were beyond salvage. They did not want to taint their hands or displease the local politician who fed on this vote bank.

Salma was a half mad girl who roamed our streets in tattered clothes collecting rags, paper and plastic bags in our civic town. She stayed in the hutment colony. One day she got pregnant and was beaten black and blue by her livid parents. We did not see her for few months.

The big well was located on the outskirts of our town. It was unused but people used to immerse the used flowers and garlands over there.One day, we saw a small still born baby floating in the well. The identity was never pursued but everyone kept quiet. Salma emerged from her home bound incarceration and merrily began her scavenging work. Such was Gandhi Nagar.

It was a DISTRICT 9 of our times. The socially out casted unwanted people made a haven over there. They lived their own independent anarchic life. The Mother Ship had abandoned them, right since birth. They were stuck in this mess and only ever wished to come out.

Last year, I went to see to my old town and was pleasantly surprised to see the new redeveloped Gandhi Nagar. The hutments were demolished and all the dwellers were accommodated in self contained rooms. The times had changed. Each house boasted of cable TV, fridge and a colour TV set. The entire look of the population had changed, for the better. Each and everyone had a job. The Gandhi Nagar looked so quiet and dignified that day. I had gone to visit my old ailing maid, was warmly greeted by her school going grand children.

I walked down from the building in a happy state.

I saw Salma, she was no longer half mad,

She had become fully insane like us.

She in her grey matted hair and an arching back continued her scavenging work.

The Mother Ship had conveniently left her all alone.

FUNKY TOWN- NOSTALGIA.

We all have music in our blood, it pulsates in every beat of our dull dreary lives.
It was a rainy afternoon in late 70s when we saw my dad come home with a khaki coloured box in his hand, 2 people were accompanying him with even larger boxes on their shoulders. We were eagerly awaiting this day.
Our new Philips LP stereo player had arrived in a grand style. The HiQ wooden speakers were mounted on the shelves in the top corners of our hall. The customary pooja was done and an aarti was played to inaugurate the system. Later, Our dad put on a song 'FunkyTown', which was a big raging disco song in our time. We swayed to the hypnotic beats and our neighbour's kids too joined the frenzy. We were all dancing without any care in our small world. This song would be played whenever we had party guests in our house.
This song became an anthem of our childhood. We never understood the lyrics, but it never mattered to us. The music and the rhythmic beats propelled us to dance, unabashed. We as kids would play at full volume and stand at our balcony proudly to observe the reactions of the neighbours of our small building. Special attention was directed at the cute, same aged girls who would giggle at us. We would blush, then.
Sometimes, Our dad, if in high spirits, used to shake a leg or two in his own inimitable style with striped pyjama shorts. Life was fun then.
My dad was attached to this LP player and used to take good care of it. The LP records were regularly cleaned by him.We never dared to open his records cabinet.
As time passed, Audio tapes and CDs made entry in our lives and LP records started dying a slow painful death. The music also changed and the melody just disappeared from the scene.
The youth embraced this shift but our elders sensibly stayed away from this new music. They labelled it as cacophony of destruction. Our non playing, now defunct LP player was eventually sold off to a scrap dealer. My dad was a sad man, that day.
My brother's family had recently flown in from the States. We had a feast that night and we were in pretty high spirits. My new Wharfedale music system had just arrived from UK, it came in a mid sized van. The speakers were as high as my 4 feet daughter. It was manna for the ears. A 7.1 surround Dolby system. It had all the works. The installation itself, had taken half a day ! There was the CD player,Woofer,Speakers, Amplifier and a big network of wires running around the system. My dad was keenly observing the whole set up. As we played the music,he silently observed us dancing merrily. He was reluctant to join us. Age was catching up on him.
My brother had a small surprise for my dad.
He took out a CD from his bag and played it on the system.
'FunkyTown' started emanating from the speakers in all directions of our house. The song was lapped up by our daughters and my small son, they just loved the beats and rhythm. My dad got up from his chair and joined his grand children to have a blast. The kids were happy to see their grand dad dance.
I stood staring outside my balcony, as I used to do before, in my childhood.
I was fighting hard to suppress my tears.

SANTA CLAUS AND TOOTH FAIRIES.

The Christmas tree was being decorated with bells and shiny silver trinkets by Chaitra last year. She was all excited and overfull with happiness. It was after all a Merry Christmas. She adored the cake brought by us. She planned to decorate it with Gems and Nutties of different colours and shapes. She was eagerly awaiting the stocking filled with goodies, so we thought.
As every year, I went to the mall to buy the stockings and started to fill it with the goodies,one by one. The latest Disney movie DVD, an oft listened carol audio CD, a red Santa cap, soft toys and chocolates usually filled up the stocking. A cartoon t shirt would squeeze in too. I would secure the stocking with a ribbon and keep it in the boot of my car.
In the night time, I would slowly tip toe out of my bed and rush to my car. I used to tie the stockings to my balcony grill and early morning Chaitra would wake up and rush to the balcony to grab hold of the goodies. Her sleepy eyes used to open wide with amazement and she would proudly show us all the goodies. "Mummy! Papa! " I have been a good girl this year, hence Santa has blessed us with the goodies.
I was the usual story teller and used to tell her about sighting the Santa with Rudolph the red nosed rein deer, galloping and flying the sled up in the skies. He could not meet us as he was in a hurry as he had to deliver goodies to all the good children in this world. Chaitra generally used to be content with this version of mine. Her friends used to come in the evening and dance to Christmas carols in the fun filled merry evening.
Last year, she unenthusiastically woke up from her slumber and slowly went to the balcony grill to retrieve the stockings which we had filled so lovingly on the eve. She opened up all the gifts and we were shocked to see the lack of happiness on her face.
Something was wrong this year. We were indeed worried.
We asked her the reason for sad non reactive demeanour. She just shrugged her shoulders and slept off again.
Later in the evening, She told us, " Santa is a myth and does not exist" !! Why you fooled me all these years?
She further justified her reasoning by showing the mall labels and price tags on the goodies.
Realisation dawned on us.
Our daughter had grown up. We could not fool her any longer.
Our spinning fairy tales' session with her listening with attentive ears and amazed eyes would end soon.
We had a relatively quiet dinner that day.
She lost her last milk tooth the next day,
We did not dare to keep it under the pillow in the night as we used to do in the past.
We missed our 'Tooth Fairy' world.
This Christmas, You won't see the goodie filled stocking, hanging at my home.
Next Year, I went with Chaitra to the mall to fill up the stockings with the goodies. My 2 year old son, Prithvy would wake up next morning.
Our fairy tale world had begun again.