2 3 a r b i t t h i n g s a b o u t m e.

1. I always feel people have a better impression of me than is true.
2. A lot of people say I am stubborn. I know that’s true, but I don’t agree. I guess that’s proof enough of my stubbornness.
3. I enjoy the company of a few people.
4. I love being alone.
5. I bought myself chocolate truffle on the eve of my birthday - and ate it in solitude at midnight – in my Hyderabad apartment.
6. I believe something is inherently wrong with people who dislike me.
7. As a child, I was frightened terribly by the moon, because I thought it followed me wherever I went.
8. I once made a paper boat with a hundred-rupee note that an aunt gave me, instructing me hand it over to someone, and left it on the Store Room shelf, till it was discovered by my aunt herself.
9. When I was in Class IV, I wore three badges with great pride – one that was given as part of the Best Behaviour Award, one for being among the top rankers in class and a third for being the House Leader. I even went down the stairs with an extra gait, so that the metal badges would produce a tinkling sound.
10. In Class IX, when I was supposed to wear a House Leader badge, I always tried to avoid it – I felt that I had risen above such simple honours!
11. I hate crowds.
12. I wrote Sri Ramajayam as I sat in the Industrial Organisation class – Prof. Siddharthan must’ve been under the notion that I was taking down notes.
13. I have three strands of white hair.
14. I can’t quite resist the colour green. I find it pretty difficult to take my eyes off anything that colour. I wore green to college everyday of one week – until my friends pleaded with me to stop. I even had a pair of green jeans.
15. If I am very hungry and lazy, I drink milk straight out the Aavin pack – without boiling it.
16. I completely trust only God. No one else.
17. I acted as a bed-bug in a school play. The story was about two bed-bugs – one good and one bad. Apparently I was given the role of the good bed-bug.
18. My feet still tremble when I have to get onto an escalator.
19. I have devoured tins of milkmaid. Licked up the nectar as it dribbled down my chin.
20. I sit quietly during Group Discussions conducted as part of the admission/recruitment process.
21. As an eight-year-old, I fooled my kid cousin of four into believing that I was a magician. I made a camera out of paper and secretly inserted some bits of paper that I had drawn on. I would give it to her without the drawings and ask her to click. Obviously, nothing would happen and there would be no pictures. Then I would take over; flash the silver magic wand which I had handy, slipping the pictures discreetly into the camera and then click. And hey! The paper drawing would pop out. My cousin used to look at the mastermind with such awe!
22. Another cousin of mine challenged me to a bicycle race. I must have been 12 and he 9. He was a gymnast, a swimmer, a cricketer and a good athlete for someone his age. I lacked on all counts. Despite that I readily agreed to the race. In my earnestness to somehow win over him, I pedaled furiously. So furiously, that I lost all control of the handle bar. The bar kept turning this way and that – a full 180 degrees, non-stop. I realized it was beyond my command and took my hands off it. The cycle skidded madly and crashed next to a parked, white ambassador car. The inertia dragged me under the car and I lay there like a mechanic until my victorious cousin scrambled in to retrieve me.
23. I am unable to blog on subjects that don’t centre around me.

r e w i n d w e s h a l l

There are certain people I know only through their blogs. They have no clue that I exist, leave alone the fact that I read their writing. One of them conducts writing contests. I do not participate in them, but I decided to pick one of her topics and write on it for a post.

The topic reads: Write a letter to your teenage self.

Dear Devanai

You must be fourteen now.

Letting the world judge you and believing that that judgment is indeed the truth.

In class nine.

Writing out one page of Sanskrit each day for your handwriting practice. Then one day you decide that one page a day is too much of a bother and fill the rest of your notebook with as many sentences as you can, completing the homework for the next several weeks at one shot. You are happy. The next day you expect the teacher to look at just the page that is scheduled for that day. She however flips the pages to the end and has quite a bit to tell you about how handwriting is meant to be developed slowly, over time, letting the script soak in. It is not without reason that they ask you to do just one page at a time, you know? Just as you are getting an earful, a senior walks in and asks for you, prompting the rest of the class to burst into amused laughter. She lets you go. You feel like a hero.

Ten years down the line, you wouldn’t have changed much. You will continue eating the sparse two meals a day, resting your fingers between every two bites, preferring to live off juices, frowning at the idea of lunch time having arrived too quickly. You will make good friends, friends for life. Barring one or two they will mostly be girls. Make a conscious effort to keep in touch with them.

And yes, if ever an astrologer tells you that you will be married off in 2003 do not ruin the rest of your week tormenting yourself about an imagined terrible marriage. You will be blissfully single at least for another ten years. At that point you may be curious to know who you will marry, if at all you do. But right now I am not in a position to offer you greater insight on this matter.

Don’t worry too much about not being able to stay away from home. Yes, you will be made fun of for letting go the opportunities that came your way merely because you chose to stay in Madras. But neither that nor homesickness should make you feel defenseless. Maintain that composed demeanour at all times. It’s a passing phase – you will soon get over it and find comfort in the fact that you did stay away from home for almost a year, and will be ready to do it again if need be.

Also, do not believe it when people tell you that tears are the easiest resort of the cowardly. It’s not true at all. One day you may feel on top of the world. The very next day, you will be ready to convince the human race that there isn’t a bigger loser than you. And so you will cry much in the years to come; not because your life will be traumatic, but because that is the way you cope with your little hurdles. Plus there’s the added advantage of looking at a sparkling clear face in the mirror once the tears freshen you up. You will feel much better once you’ve had your share of crying, as your tired eyes put you to sleep more easily than if you’d bottled up your feelings resisting the urge to get it over with.

Write and draw more often. Unless you keep at it you won’t know how good you are. It will fill you with a sense of satisfaction that can be matched by little else. While we discuss satisfaction, another thing that I want you to do is visit an orphanage or a school for special children. Spend time interacting with them. They will love your company. And you will feel great being loved. It may sound selfish that you are doing it for your own happiness, but then again, it’s not just yours.

Another thing that I’ve discovered is that you come across as a partial reflection of the people you meet. What I’m trying to say is that if people are talkative and sociable, they will be able to draw you out, force you out of your inhibitions and encourage you to talk a good deal. But if they are themselves highly withdrawn, that’s pretty much what they’ll have to say about you as well. Get it?

Finally, don’t ever doubt the fact that you are a nice person. Because, for one, each person in the universe is nice to a certain extent. I know that doesn’t pamper your ego enough. But make a heartfelt attempt to be a better person every day. I trust your discretion completely. You will too someday.

d r e a m y m e

I love day-dreaming. And I’m sure that the people who know me well will vouch for it. I start the moment I wake up. But it’s not a conscious effort you know... It just happens. Even as a kid when I was in school, I rarely listened to what the teacher was saying. I had no idea that you were supposed to pay attention to the teacher, if I recall right. Since I had so much time to just dream, I’d re-dream too sometimes. In the sense, I would re-run the dream again in my mind. Somehow over the years I’d also developed the habit of acknowledging the teacher occasionally. So, was hardly accused of being ‘physically present and mentally absent’. I don’t understand why teachers across schools adore that phrase. Never quite liked it.

Getting back to the subject... There have been days when I’ve put down my pen in the middle of an exam and let my mind wander. Invariably, I’d end up dreaming most during English exams and submit incomplete answer scripts. There’d be a crow in the tree outside the classroom, clutching something rather interesting in its beak. That would more than suffice. I’d watch the crow; observe its anatomy, its struggle with its prey, the withered leaf settling down on the sand, the frightened squirrel gliding across the adjoining branches, another squirrel giving it the chase... Oh what bliss it is to just sit back and be a silent witness to such harmless happenings instead of having to draft a notice for a lost swim-suit.

When I say dream, it does not stop with just watching things around me. Based on what I’ve seen I’d effortlessly conjure up a sequence of entertaining proceedings. By then the crow would have long been gone. But I’d make him the protagonist of my dreams for the next few minutes.
If school gave me so much room to dream, college with its huge lush campus and aesthetic buildings offered even more prospects. During the rainy season, you’d spot these tall white birds pecking at the grass. Storks or their distant cousins perhaps. That’s how I graduated from crows to more exotic species. A Financial Management class was in progress. As had been my regular practice, I switched to dream mode for that hour and had no idea what was being said. The class passed off uneventfully. A couple of hours later my HOD saw me stroll down the corridor and enquired about the class. She wasn’t spying or anything. She just wanted to know how much of the syllabus had been completed so she could allocate time or some such thing. Since I didn’t react, she patiently rephrased the question for me. Which unit was handled in class today? I continued to look blankly at her wondering how to make it clear that I understood the question perfectly well and it was just that I did not have a satisfactory answer. I tried recalling what was done last class, but was clueless. “I’ll just find out and let you know ma’am”, I said sounding as intellectual as I could. “But weren’t you in class?” “Yes, I was. But I’d like to confirm”, and I rushed back to class to figure out the status even as my HOD continued to direct a confused gaze at me.

When someone asks me what I do in my free time, I grope around for answers. Because I can’t tell them I dream in my free time. The fact is I dream even when I don’t have free time. And the few people who know that I have a tendency to slip into this make-believe world have been asking me what I dream about. If I told them I was watching a crow and that it has been the inspiration of my dreams, do I need to tell you how they would react? That’s why I usually don’t disclose the themes of my dreams. But they don’t understand. They insist on knowing the intricacies and torture me no end to reveal the details. The more I refuse, the more hyped the focus becomes. May be I should just give them the precise particulars from now on.
You know what; I just got a forward that said ‘Dream more when you are awake’ for it keeps the mind healthy. And was I happy!