Looking Back - Part 5

There is lots more to life than the normal pleasures that you get in the course of life. But many of us fail to recognize it and sometimes go behind all the artificial pleasures of life. I had a chance to talk with a psychology grad who told me about what happens when a person gets addicted to something and how he loses even the basic perceptions in life and how the withdrawal is painful. Believe me people, You would not want to be part of any of that. Its actually very painful than it sounds to be. It sounded a heck of painful.

As I am going through my early life now, I am feeling very nostalgic at times, but it feels good to have grown up and crossed certain points of life without much ado. I used to think about what I am going to be in life when I was in my middle school. I had this constant worry about what I would become in my life. Frankly, I did not know what to do. I wanted to be an engineer but didn't know how to become one and as I was shy and didn't talk I didn't know if it was a good idea. No one was there to validate it. But in a two years time, I had my first crush, I became talkative almost over night. But there was a problem, I never talked before that and when I started talking it was my baby talks. Still it is my baby talks only, but it was a lot worse. Imagine a big kid chatting away but all you can hear it some random gibberish.

It was sort of funny, but hey you have to give the kid his due. I have been silent for the most of my life because of all the other people. Some of my relatives made fun of me when I was baby talking when i was a child, so I shut up and when I started talking in school, some of my class mates started teasing, so I again shut up. But finally I opened up and talked non stop. I didn't care about anyone teasing me. I wish I had did it earlier, I would be out of my baby talks by now.

There was a voice from my college friend that I should be writing about college soon. But I have lots to write about my school that I have to come to my college a while later and nothing to write about there as it would only make some feel really bad. But, I want to thank my college friends for giving me a real birthday party. That's right, It was in college that I cut my second cake, the first being for my first birthday party.

My birthday usually fell in the window of a local temple festival in Salem, my hometown. So, my birthday usually fell in a local holiday. I never went to school on that day and would usually stay home and my dad got this idea that if you blow candles out on your birthday its not a good sign from somewhere and so there was a candle blowing ban that day. But if you want a cake you still got those pieces of cake for your birthday.

And besides, I didn't have to embarrass myself going to school in a colored pair of pants and shirts while other kids wear uniform and hand out pieces of candies to everyone in the class. But, there was atleast 2 or more times I had to do it, but that was ok. When I went to high school, no one cared when my birthday is and I didn't tell them either. So, it kinda went past in that time too. But only when I went to college and only in the second year and the third year I had some real birthday celebrations with my friends.

Yeah, and it is a great feeling. Coming to the college wearing your new clothes without being embarassed of looking like a sore thumb sticking out. The cake cutting candle blowing et all. That qualifies as some of the best moments of my life, however the situation has changed since. That was the second golden age of my life and will remain such for the rest of my life.

Looking Back - Part 4

Looking back, I come across so many memories, some I wish had never happened. Some I want to last, but it won't as it happened a long time before and is over. People have changed and moved on. Some people have taken additional responsibilities like heading up their career path. So they have kind of moved away from me. The more I think about it, I find it hard to digest it. But If you love something or someone, you have to let it go when time comes. If any of the person who loves you takes a decision to move away from you, it means that the thing they are pursuing means a lot to them. You should never take it in wrong sense and just let them go as anything else will only spoil the relationship and push it to the worse. This I would learn in a hard way later in my life.

But I am not gonna talk about it right now or later too. I want to talk about my childhood, the time where I grew up abnormally for my age, both my height and my width. I was the largest kid in the class but ironically I was the smallest kid in my class. I was put into school, approximately two months earlier. It is hard, I could never remember a day in school in my LKG where I didn't cry. There was nothing that could stop me. But now after all these years, I want that school life back. Irony and more irony.

There was this time of the life, where I had transitioned from a small boy to a large kid and that was the worst time to move, but we had to and we moved to a new neighborhood. New neighborhood brought more challenges as I was moving away from my friends and my best friend in school just vanished without trace. I was in for a spin. But there was this effect which put even me in awe. I grew more aggressive. My parents put me into this Karate class in school and it only fueled my aggression more.

I got into pointless fights with the school bullies who used to harass me before 5th were in for a surprise as I showed resistance. I was growing up. But one more thing that was not with me at this time was shame. I used to go out into the streets in just my undies and it was normal for a little kid to do, but people used to give me a frown as I was a little too big for a kid. The people in my house knew this, but not all others. But it will not last for long as soon I got it and stopped the habit.

This was also the time I met my best friend whom I am in touch even today. He was a source of inspiration and I looked towards him as an role model for my non academic part of life. He was also my most loyal companion until I moved to college 6 years later. His name was half of my name, that is one of the reasons why I liked him. We sort of formed an alliance against an common bully and he was the first one I knew who opposed the other guy. I joined him in as an we started ignoring the other guy for like 2 years.

But at the end of the second year, without me being present, those two guys joined together citing our last two years in the school as the reason. I would also accept the reason later. But, we used to have so much fun together. His family used to be a caretaker of this big house in Fairlands. And the bungalow was empty and we used to play in that bungalow or just speak about our crushes and things. And used to have all the fun. This place was used by all the guys after we all got together. This place is no more and has been teared down to make way for a complex as it was in the main road. Sad as I was planning to buy it when I started to make money later.

The life got pretty much easier at the end of the boycott I should say. Now all of us boys had only one thing to dread about. That was farewell day. So we used to have so much fun. The thing about being the shy little kid for so many years is that all the teachers are so used to you being a shy kid that even when you do stuff that normal people do, people tend to single you out as being the good kid and pull you out of trouble. That was fun, doing everything but when the time for punishment came, I would be out of trouble. I used to do it to the agony of others quite a few times. Oh gullible people!!!

I could also state this period as a period of immense competition as some other people walked in who managed to score top of the class and I was pushed further down the rank ladder. But by this time, I had another reputation built up in my house as a conniving liar. Apparently, the reputation you build up at school does not hold true in house. Even after I switched out to the honesty mode, My mom refused to believe me for quite sometime. But I have to accept it as it is. I used to steal from my house, used to lie a lot, do things that I regret now for doing it. But, if there was one thing I learnt from this whole experience was that lying and stealing does not help. It is not even worth doing it. Some of these core principles I use as a foundation to what I am following today.

Never lie. Don't desire for what is not yours. Money that does not come as a result of hard work will never stay as you don't know the value of it. In the course of time, I found out if everybody followed these, the world will be a lot better place than what we see today.

Looking Back - Part 3

I get this question from many of my friends, "How are you taking life's failures easily and moving on so quickly?". When you had a childhood where disappointments were the way of life and you had a life ahead, you kinda get that ability with you not doing anything. I just move on in my life within a short time, I have did it repeatedly as a boy.

I have the world's greatest parents who toil and work hard to make their kid's dreams come together, but when they have a huge dreamer like me as their kid, it kinda makes it hard for them to keep up. I was pampered as a small child by my loving father as it was a golden period but then our finances declined continually so does the privileges that comes with money, but as a child I refused to move on. I regret this even now. But, it was a cause of total disappointment for me in the coming years.

My problems were not only this but later came in different forms as my life progressed. That made me adapt to a absorb pain and quickly move on type of mode. This was in every aspect of my life and would come to criticism and sarcasm from some of my friends. But, I move on quickly whatever people say, sometimes in a matter of minutes and sometimes in a matter of weeks. Even when I had to face a problem, every teenager faces in his life. I moved on in a matter of months. It was so quick that even my friends refused to believe that I did the thing correctly. Its been my unique quality ever since, I bounce off a failure in record time.

Now to pick up from where I left in my last post, There was this time when I broke my arms and it was due to a girl. I still remember the incident as it happened yesterday, there was this construction yard nearby my house with sand and bricks lined. The favorite past time of kids was to get on the bricks and then dive into the sand. So as this was happening, there was this new girl with a boy who was familiar in the area. So as we were playing, it was my turn to jump and I was standing there preparing for an stylish dive when someone pushed me from behind, as luck would have it I fell sideways into a pile of black rocks in the side. Poof!!! I landed on one arm and there was no pain and I was actually smiling but could not use my right arm.

Soon, someone went to my house with the news and my family came running out. News went to my father who came from our factory 20 Kms away. I still had no clue what was going on except the fact that my right had was not working anymore. It was kind of cool at that time as I was getting all the attention.People swamping over me giving all kinds of advises, but my arm just won't work. Later that day we went to a doctor nearby and on that doctor's advise went to a ortho specialist who put my arm in sling for two months.

Can you believe it, two months. After rest of two weeks at home, I went to school and since i missed whole two weeks there was lots of things to write, but with my right hand out of service I had ppl doing it for me. But I remember and I remember this because of the hate I got because of my broken arms. One teacher apparently didn't believe that my arm was broken even though my parents took the extra step to come to my school and explain my situation and believe it or not, my mother coming a hour before to school and writing down the class work in the notebook. She made me write the class work myself. Lame, but I can now only laugh at that teacher's apparent 'don't give him sympathy' method. She had the reputation of being the toughest teacher on block and wanted to keep up the reputation.

I am ending it on a note of wondering. I can remember this incident because I was in pain or something that cause pain. I also remember that girl well because of the situation she caused. As a foot note, After two months I searched for the girl, but seems she had left and the boy who she was with had no idea where the girl went. But I do believe I came across the girl in college, but I could not confirm it though. I still have my doubts. But I remember faces and names better than anyone else. Since I don't have much to remember in that department.

I also think that friends, particularly those you get in childhood are really important. They stay with you for a long time than you can think of. I wish I could have had someone like that, but had to sacrifice them due to family reasons. But, it does not stop there, I had to change the neighborhood frequently until I moved to college. The neighborhood varied from posh to normal neighborhoods. People I have moved with from different wakes of life.

Even now, it takes me an incredibly long time to choose my friends. But once there, I really want my friends to have all the things they desire in their life and ready to sacrifice even my life for them. I am happy because my friends are happy and if they are sad, I try to cheer them up. Some of my friends call this behavior, very passionate and sometimes unacceptable. But, hey, that's the way I am.

Looking Back - Part 2

As my school life before my 5th standard is not much interesting. But I had this whole other life that made my life go on. School was just 8 hours of pain I had to endure after that my world quite opened up. I was with people who I know could trust and would blindly follow me and look up to me for inspiration. As every coin as two sides, I had too. But before I go into my gang, there is a little bit of story to follow up.

My great grand father was a visionary. He had done lots to the community and widely respected man. Our house was supposedly the only tiled house of the time and it was considered a luxurious house, so my father was a hero to every other boy in the neighborhood. Therefore he had a huge group and they would organize festivals and stuff within our street and he was their leader. Therefore when it came to the next generation, I, as the son of the leader was the natural choice and it was my duty to take on the responsibility.

My gang was not much, there was only one other boy who was my same age. All others were small kids who were obedient in doing everything we bid. The other boy was my lieutenant. It was the time when we made money, so I got all the toys I wanted. I mostly wanted only cars(hot wheels, my father used to get me every time we went to this shopping plaza called Chamundi super market, the only one in our town at that time, built on the concept of spencer plaza. I would get at least 2 a week and had this huge track set and a small car track set with batteries. Believe it people, it would cause awe to everyone at that time) and machine guns(toy guns, which make a sound). This further enhanced my status as the leader. The leader had everything when the others didn't.

I was also a snob. I never shared my toys with others. I was selfish. But hey come on, show me one kid who will want to share toys to everyone. Besides these toys made up my whole other world which nobody except me lived in. Anyway with the whole history and the facts established, let me proceed. I can remember playing Military where you had to shoot down the enemies. And we would run down the street with gun trying to kill imaginary enemy soldiers. We would play in the mud, build sand towers.

The boy, who was my same age, was also my best friend. We used to play all together. But he had this respect for me, which sometime made it a little awkward. But, I kinda enjoyed it. I would get an overdose of that in my coming years. But, I think it was he who started the trend. There was also this two boys from a 2 story house opposite to ours. Theirs was a big family and close to my grandfather. So they would come to our house or I would go to theirs to play.

One interesting story I remember about those two boys is how we used to play hide and seek in their big house. Once we were playing hide and seek and one guy, he was the smallest and me were hiding in their grand mother's bedroom. There was this big plate of mutton briyani and that boy and me ate almost half with pickles before we got caught. I was a non briyani eater before the incident, but my mom used this opportunity to make me eat briyani. It may not sound funny but it is just another thing that changed in my life, however small it maybe.

I wish I could have stayed in that neighborhood for a couple more years as I would have got a chance to organize festival and stuff and do all that big boys did. But family situation forced us to sell the house and we had to move to a different neighborhood and I missed the chance to lead as my father had. This has been my hidden side for years now. Nobody is willing to trust my leadership at first, but I strongly believe that I can lead any team to victory and have proved it in a vast number of occasions. But there are people who believe that if you are to lead some one or some thing you have to be tough. But you do not have to be. My father, for example, is very good friends with his employees but gets the job done at the same time. He is not a tough person. He is actually very nice to be around and all his employees with agree with me.

It does not stop here. There is a lots of things that I remember about this neighborhood, including my first hate feelings for a girl. But, that has to wait for another day. That was a pretty interesting incident and I would love to talk lots about it.

Looking back - Part 1

Ok. So now I am in the city of angels like a week now. I have gone out only to the nearby Cerritos mall and nowhere else and my plans for today's museum row visit gets canceled by incessant drizzling and to make matters worse, it was hot and sunny in the evening. So much for the rains. So this is when I thought I could write something about it. As obviously, I have been nostalgic for some time now. I thought I could write about some persons from the past who have helped me cross the obstacles I faced and who have changed me for good. This is not about family. Because family is going to be there whatever you are. This is just about the people who shaped me for good.

Whenever I think about school, the first person who comes to my mind is my first real friend and caretaker. It was in my fifth standard or grade, whatever you may call it. But, I still remember the fair girl who just walked suddenly into class one day. And who with no friends and a reputation as a foreigner got into the hearts of all the people in my class. I can still remember her for she was my first competitor in school and was the niece of my aunt's best friend.

I was a really shy young fellow and was bullied by the bullies in my class. So I really had no friends at all in school. I was either bullied in the free time or was too shy to really have friends. I did have another side though. I was the leader of the group of children in my street, where we used to play and do stuff together. I still have a mental picture of me running the streets in the name of reading for a P.E. exam and playing in the mud of a nearby construction site with my gang.

But of course this was my second life and the school bullies won't have this qualification to stop bullying me. Then came a star in my life. As I was too shy to talk with even people I know, I didn't even look at her direction. School went on as usual but soon, I can't remember how, but I learnt that she was the niece of my aunt's friend. I also have a faint recollection of she coming to my house or me going over to her aunt's house and seeing her there with her brother. But it is so faint. But the thing with such connections outside school is what makes one feel comfortable with the other person around.

She used to get 2nd rank or 3rd rank depending on mine. Yup, we were neck to neck when it came to studies. Either I got the 2nd rank or she got it. so we kinda kept juggling the second and third position in class. I think one time she reached the 1st rank with me on the second rank ( the only time I got the first rank was in my tenth standard in a midterm in a really ugly battle for the first place). And this was enough to just break my shell. So I let her inside my very closed circle(I was not a loser, I had a whole lot of friends, but they simply weren't in my school). I have a recollection of us studying together for exam and she fighting for me with a bully to keep me from harm's way. She took care of me and thus becoming my very best and close friend.

But wait, I have this jinx cast upon me. I don't know whether it is a blessing or curse, but whenever I get a girl as a friend, the maximum period the friendship is going to last is 2 years. After that, lots change quickly that either they disappear without any trace from my life or they have their life to live so they kinda become disconnected however close they had been or as recently I found out, they fight and become your 'un-friends'. This girl was the start of the jinx. After breaking into my closed world, She disappeared one day without a trace. Poof!!!! She was gone. I did not know about it and was expecting her for nearly a week after the school opened as I assumed she has left the country and since overseas travel took a lots of time she will come, but weeks became a month and that was when I had to accept that she is not coming back. But I wouldn't accept it for 3 more years until I got into a different activity time.

It was very hard to accept. Just look at this at the point of view of a 6th standard boy. You wait the whole 2 months of summer, impatient to get to your one and only new best friend, to show her your new uniform, your new shoes, your new pencil and pencil boxes. You get there and find she is not there at class. You wait impatiently until the first period hoping she is just late. But she does not turn up and the school that day turns into nightmare. You have the same thing happening for a week. then you get the same the next week. Each week making you hope more that she will be there the next week, until your expectations does not work and you are hugely disappointed. The fall was really hard, but hey life has to go on even for a sixth grade boy.

I never moved on from my buddy. After her, my other friends who were girls were unfairly compared to her by me. So she kinda set the bar for all the other girls I was to meet in my life. But that is not the only thing she did. She kinda opened my world for others to enter. If you are alone, you can stay alone forever as you are used to it, but when you have had company and now want to be alone again, it is not easy to be. So now I had to open my world for others to come and that's what I did. And I found some friends after this incident. But my world will never be the same again.

footnote :- I found her again nearly 11 years of searching through various channels. Finally, it was orkut and two or three girls of her same name later, I found her through one of my school friends. I got a chance to meet her a year after I found her. When I was going to meet her I almost expected her to be the small girl that I met in my life, but turns out she too has grown with me and is no more a small girl. She still remembered me and is my friend again, thought not like old times. We are occasionally chatting, but she does not know the impact of her presence in my life. She once wore a 'Angel' dress to a fancy dress competition. it was very symbolic. She was the angel sent by god to bring some life to my life and she most certainly did.