Chapter 26 - The last one about you...

Having said a lot about you I would like to tell you one last thing.

You changed my life... for good or for bad... I dont know.

You taught me what life is and you taught me to be cautious...

You taught me to trust no one and you taught me to be skeptical, you taught me to hate friendship and you taught me to be indifferent.

You gave me bad experiences and made me believe 'that is the way it is'

You taught me life is bad and taught me to be harsh...

The damages you did were irreparable... you killed the me in me and the new me is unknown to me.

Result?

I hurt people without wanting to hurt them and I struggle with myself when I find me behaving in way most unlike me.

You changed me...

I wouldn't ask you why you did it because that wouldn't help me.

I don't like anyone i dont trust anyone I dont want to be friendly to any one

I don't expect anything from people... and I tell this on their face...

I hurt them, I hurt myself and I hope (I am sorry) I had never met you at all...

Why did I think I could trust you?

Why did you prove me wrong?

chapter 12 the lost childhood

Some changes around us happen so quietly and gradually that we barely take note of them. It might take us a really long time to notice such changes. They wouldn’t be matters that concern us everyday. But still we would have got so used to them unknowingly that one fine day when you notice finally that the irreversible change has occurred already it would be too late to do something about it. We will start blaming ourselves for the neglect, for taking it for granted for allowing it to take place without even a slight protest from our side. But some other times it will simply leave a scar on our hearts to remain raw throughout our lives.

When I was a kid I never enjoyed studying and always looked for a reason to get up from my study table. I always came up with good number of excuses to shirk. It used to range from something interesting that happened in my class which I want to share with my mother, to drink water or to ask a doubt or mosquitoes biting me or even pains and aches all over my body. One friend of mine who use to give me an excellent excuse every year without fail was fireflies. After summer when we are awaiting rainfalls, this friend of mine would come in thousands and help me escape my text books. Many a time I have looked out of a window and seen brown coloured something rising up in the air and coming out of the earth and felt a surging happiness inside me. I knew exactly what is to be done. It was the fire flies coming out of the earth to live the few seconds of life they are destined to live. All of us would rush around the house closing the windows and doors to avoid the insects coming in. but it would find its way invariably through air holes and start haunting all the lights in our house. then we would switch off all the lights in the house and switch on the lights outside our house so that they would all fly out of my house. and once we switch off the lights i need not study right? but as short lived as they are it would take only minutes for all of them to die leaving us in a eerie silence, for they have a characteristic sound of their own when they come in search of lights. how many times, as a little kid, i have wondered where it is coming from wondering whether they live in underground homes and even searching for them in the mud by digging soil with little twigs, and in the process discovering doodle bug but never the house of fireflies. it is all part of my childhood that i never really bothered about but gives me immense pleasure to simply think about now. the innocent me, the little me, the child in me...

but where are the fire flies now? i havent seen them for years now. is it extinct/ have the changes in soil, environment and even climate made it impossible for them to live in this place? are thay extinct? has a part of my childhood become a distant memory that i would never experienceit again to relive the innocence of a lost chilhood?

chapter 10 -the likes and dislikes

It all started when i asked my mom on one fine Sunday morning,' what is for breakfast'. isnt that a perfectly innocent question, allowed in all parts of the world. may be 'all over the world' is a bit too much... wat if hitler had placed some restrictions during the holocaust! u never know, well my mom was a little Hitler herself and she completely forbid me frm doing it not in simple words but the following way:

me(sitting sloppily on a couch watching tv on a sunday morning): mom wat is for breakfast?

mom(from the kitchen shouting to be heard above the song being played in a channel): 'idly' and 'sambar'

my mom comes out of the kitchen, which is behind me, to see the song now on TV which is one of her favorites

me(without knowing she is right next to me begins to say): oh every sunday!... (now i notice my mom and most importantly the look on her face which meant if i utter a single word more the entire day would be dedicated to 'dealing' with me and i thought quick and said) afternoon 12.30 there is smrithilayam, my favourite program.

i sat innocently without daring to look at her... the sudden change in the sentence had made my heart to stop and brain, to work hard and i was feeling very tired. sudenly i heard laughter around me. my dad and my sis who where near me had heard me and were laughing at my quick wit to change it that way. and i tell u my mom went back to the kitchen defeated. that was one of my victory days after all!

even now seeing 'idly' early in the morning spoils my day. somehow i dont like idly when it is der in my house...but my mom's idlies are pretty famous... it so soft and smooth that i know people who have already had breakfast having a second one when they realise it is idly for breakfast at my home... but i love to eat idly during occasions... like on the day of marriage, for breakfast they would always make idly and i love to it... it would be as hard as stone and the sambar would be like water and the chutny 2nd rate still i like to have it there. there is a cook near our place. his name is soman. he is called for almost all marriages in our village... he also does the small feasts like the sadya for birthday, 'sanjayanam'(after death ceremony), the sapthaham(bhagavatham read and explained in 7 days) in our temple etc. one particular occasion is the 41. that is during the sabarimala season there are 41 days during which the sabarimala temple remains open. those days even in our temple we have special prayers, bhajana and all that. each day would be sponsored by a particular person. there are some specific days which is the right of certain families. my family is the one who takes care of the 41st day. my father's elder brother take care of it. on that day he would have arranged soman to make idlies for the people who come to sing bhajans. we would all gather in my dad's elder sister's house which is right opposite to the temple and all of us would have idlies even b4 the bhajans. my mom would scold soman saying 'if i throw it at u and it hits u, u will die for sure, it is harder than stone...' and will then turn to me devouring the idlies and stare at me angrily.... she would be reminded of my responses whenever she makes idlies. but soman in his characteristic way, smile and say 'if i make it soft those bhajana people would eat tons and tons, that is why... i know to make it soft but i dont'
my mom would retaliate saying 'we are making this for them to have so y do u have to think that way' but soman chettan will only smile.

the likes and dislikes are so difficult to find out. i wouldnt know wat i would want for myself. i would think for months if i have to give someone a gift. i am sometimes at a loss to find out if people simply dislike me or like me a lot. likes and dislikes change in two seconds. for example when i thought of this post i liked it a lot, but now i think i dont like it at all and that i have not been able to successfully convey my thoughts. well i t happens i suppose

chapter 6

That last one was a very large posts entirely for my brother… He is lucky to have got that much space in my blog. As I told he is not at all like typical brothers and i would have certainly preferred more of the typical types. Very lucky I must call him… or is it because of my yearning for a brother…
I have always wanted to have brothers. I don’t have one…how much I would have liked to have one!!! I cant explain how much I want one. It is beyond words and the jealousy I feel when I see a brother and sister has always given me pain. I have always envied the love, sense of belongingness, possessiveness, protectiveness, rebukes quarrels, kicks, and everyother thing that comes with a brother. I don’t even know what exactly a brother is… I have never experienced it… haven’t I?
It is funny it happened today. My brother (not the one I talked about earlier, this one is from my father’s side- cousin of course) was telling me this morning, an incident. When I was interning in a news channel I had to go out a lot in the city(obviously) and everyday I could be found on the roads with a mic. There was no chance of meeting any one I know because this was very far away from my home and almost all my relatives and friends are in the same area. But it happened that so many people who knew me saw me and I didn’t even saw one of them, and none of them were close relatives or friends.

It so happened that during that time my brother got a call from an unknown number saying a girl from his family was seen running around the city with a mic of a channel and asking if she still worked there and many more things about her.( meaning me obviously! If you were the brilliant lot who understand things in a few seconds you would have realized as much in those few seconds and if you are the other lot who doesn’t realize the effective use of he/she/her/his then you would have welcomed this explanation with a hearty smile, an Ah! So that is who she is etc. And that explanation was exactly for the second lot) the call got cut then. My brother got so angry, he called the guy back and shouted abuses at him. The guy didn’t reveal himself. My brother knew a vigilance inspector and he told the inspector the guy was asking about me. The inspector told him he will take care of the guy, that he just had to give him the number. Luckily the guy called again and he happened to be a relative of my brother from the other side. He was simply playing a prank having spotted me with the channel crew.

My overwhelming happiness is unimaginable to all. What would my sister have done if she had got the call. She would have panicked and got so tensed and in the end I myself would have had to pacify her down. Nobody had ever done such things for me. I had tackled calls of unknown numbers alone and I had tackled all such nuisances alone and I believe I have done all that effectively. But I felt so proud to have known that a brother did a similar kind of thing for me. I have seen my friends giving the numbers of those guys who troubled them to their friends who are boys and I have often wondered why do they do it when they can easily tackle it themselves. But I was touched by the protectiveness my brother showed and though I wouldn’t have in the least bothered about the caller if I had known about it I somehow felt wonderful when he told me about it. I wouldn’t have wanted it from a friend. But I loved it from a brother. Even if I am sounding a bit like bollywood movies I don’t care because that’s how I felt. I am feeling a bit defensive may be because I wouldn’t have liked to accept that I had such emotions in me. And I felt so wonderful to be a sister of a brother today!!!

This is the post I had prepared yesterday night… I was so emotional yesterday… why? Is it because I quarreled with my dad yesterday…why is that I am losing control these days? I was alright when I was away from home . even when I had to face the most adverse of the situations I was calm, I was unbelievably calm and I have heard my friends complimenting me for that. But there is something in me that is unknown to me… I have never seen it before… some additions and subtractions in life… do I like it? NO I don’t like it… I want my old self to be back with me. Which is normal, me losing control at the slightest provocation or me dealing with adversities with calm… me speaking out loud about whatever I feel or me being reserved thinking twice before I speak. I don’t know… who can tell me? No one? Does that outburst in front of my dad mean I am going to my old self? Do I welcome that or not? I don’t know… because when I was in control of myself I felt strangely not myself. I was not being me… the control on my temper made me control all other emotions as well, my love my grief my empathy my sympathy everything. How did I forget to love. The number of crushes I had in my life is uncountable… nothing now… dry arid land….it had always given me happiness to think about my stupidity later on… once a model, sometimes a class mate, a neighbour, distant relatives, chance acquaintances, once even the smiling face on a calendar and even sreeshanth!!! Where are they all? That pain that excitement that foolishness and telling about it to others and laughing at myself… where did I loose it?
എന്റെ കരളില് വേദന എല്ലാ!!!
What have I lost? Why am I so infifferent? Why doesn’t I am being so so so not myself!!!

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