chapter 5 books and my brother

and thus my stay at my mom's house adhava my mom's sister's place started.... and i was 13 years old. in my 8th standard. my sister in 12th so i was in my teens and my sis in tens.. i mean tension wid d demands of 12... i was having a great tym....i mean it was not as strict as my home in the case of studies and all and i started spotting a loot of changes in me. i started being selective about the movies i watch. earlier i use to watch any kinda movie. but i started being selective in this respect much to the surprise of myself!!! the next change was i started watching news... asianet news... everyday... my grandmother will come to my aunt's place everyday in the evening and watch news and i started joining her. and to my utter disbelif i started to take an interest in politics. the names of those people who were uptil then unimportant old people were becoming familiar(i mean the politicians) and then there were a looot of books around me... at home too i had a loooot of books and i was often criticised for not reading them... i use to read yes!!! but when someone asked me if i had read a particular book my answer was invariably no... and i felt bad when i had to say no... so i didnt love the books at home... it seemedf to shout at me !!! READ READ READ READ!!!! and i DIDNT read!!!


but these books were differnt.. all of them were my brother's... and surprisingly those books never screamed at me! nor did the brother...


he didnt know to tell a story but he did! i mean he said stories in a way it should not be told... parts and bit of it simply to amuse me and i liked those books in the shelf because stories from those amused me.... i use to get startled to hear him laughing out loud reading a book and many a times i have removed those specs from his face when he fell asleep with a book in his hand and i have often stared at those book which made him laugh out...was he pretendfing it.. definitely not...for later in my life ... i mean even now i read those same books and laugh out loud.... that was not pretention... that was the magic of Mr P G Wodehouse.... thus my bro and his books were beginning to have a great impact on me... his books beckoned me which the books in my shelf simply refuses to doeven now. that is why i started buying books and have a shelf separately....

thus the brother though very different from conventional brothers and strictly not what i would have liked to have as a brother changed my life, though he was and is unaware of it.

i started reading ... from enid blyton it started and it sprouted wings and it flew far and wide and all of these affected me a loot.. not as in teaching me one one moral or good thinking in me... what i mean is it literally affected me. i dreamt about it, day dreamed about it and i started thinking about my characters only... i lives there life at times, taking the role of the hero sometimes, villain at other times and re enacted the whole story, changed its shape structure plot and changed all there lives.

one day, not exactly day it was an evening... i was having a notebook in my hand, pretending to study by walking the length of the courtyard.. i found many stalks of the flower bunch of the teak in the yard... i bend down and pickked one and simply carried it in myone hand.(the other hand obviously had the notebook if u guys forgot about it as i did) my brother was sitting in the sit out reading something perhaps a news paper... he cast a look at me and laughed.. he always did so... laughter first and then the reason(this is anotgher stry will tell you).. i asked what!? whis was a majpor fight that went on between us.... he always laughed at anything and everuthiong i said or did... i would ask him what and he always said he will tell me after he is done with his laugh, which infuruated me on evey such occasion without fail......i often resort to physical abuse.... i hit him punched him and always mimiked the police style kicked though never actually did it!!! then he would give his reason which would obviously make me more angry if that is possible and will again make me hit him... so that is that story, will elaborate on it if i remember more of it...

so where was i?


Ah yes... i was walking with a notebook and the stalk of teak flower and my brother laughed at me.

i asked what.. he said ' you remind me of young ladies of Russian novels who are impatiently waiting for the lover'

though there was not much reason to get angry i got angry as it was the right thing to do i suppose.. and we set of talking about russian novels then novels, novels i have read and i strted speaking about the hero of a malayalam novel i had last read. the name of the novel is Mayyazhi puzhayude theerangalil (മയ്യഴി പുഴയുടെ തീരങ്ങളില്‍)by M Mukundan and the hero - dasan... he had been in my minds for some time now and it irritated me to think about his deeds.. th way he let go of his life... and so on and so forth... my brother was looking quiet serious and he was silent throughout my monologue... then he said 'thulsi you dont have to take everything into your heart.....' he went on..... but i did not listen... that one sentence struck me...that was exactly i was doing all the time, every day , every minute, every second and even that very moment... and i had realised it for the first tym... i was not living my life... i was drinking in ignorance of reality blissfully and living that life which was nobody's