The death of magic

It was a balmy afternoon in 1993. School had come to an abrupt end at around quarter to two, and everyone was herded into the assembly hall. This was highly unusual, but the break was a welcome one for the bored kids of all sizes occupying twelve classrooms. As they walked into the hall, they noticed with interest that the curtains had been put up. Normal business was conducted in the hall without curtains; they were brought out only on special occasions. They also noted with dismay that there were no carpets or chairs laid out, as is usual for special occasions, and this meant sitting on the uncomfortable and dusty concrete floor. Some of the elder ones had figured that whatever this was, it seemed short notice. They were soon seated, and after some squirming about, were all settled in. 


A little boy of about seven or eight was sitting with eyes fixed on the curtains, about two or three rows from the front. He had to take his eyes off the stage when classmates seated nearby interrupted with chatter, but soon all eyes were on stage since they had seen some interesting looking people enter stage from the corridor. The curtains went up, and joy of joys, it was a magic show. It was the first ever magic show the boy had ever seen, and since it magically killed the remaining three periods of class, it was even better. The magician was a portly man with a mustache that looked fake, and he was clothed in flowing robes and a cape. He took centrestage with ease, and soon the kids were all in rapt attention. At least the younger ones were. 


The boy looked on transfixed as the magician performed one trick after another. An assistant disappeared inside a box and reappeared, cards were picked out with unerring accuracy, and a dove was pulled out of a hat. The man was seemingly a god, there was nothing he couldnt do. The cheers grew louder with each successful trick, but the boy was unaware of the noise. This was the first time he had seen anything like it, and he was mesmerized. The magician lifted his wand and waved at the audience indicating that he required silence. The noise fell and the kids paid attention. He required a couple of volunteers, and he asked the audience who among them would help him out. The boy enthusiastically lifted his hand, but a look around told him that pretty much every hand in the auditorium had gone up. 


Just as enthusiasm was turning into mild dismay, the magician pointed to the boy and said "you, young man. why dont you come up here and give me a hand?" Elated, the boy got up and made for the stage. They were seated in the hall according to height with the shortest up front, and if there was another perk to being short, he couldn't quite think of it at that moment. As he climbed the four or five steps up to the stage, he wondered where he would be if the magician were to make him disappear. Would he float through space? Would he become invisible? He saw the second volunteer, a boy younger than him but equally wide eyed, making his way up the stairs on the side of the stage. If they both disappeared, would they meet somewhere in the middle? What if he can't bring them back? What will they tell their moms? 


Trembling with nervousness, the two boys made it to the stage. The magician looked at them and declared to the audience that they were unfit to be his assistants. As elation and nervousness threatened to turn into dismay once more, the portly man produced two capes, and all was well again. The boys were fitted out with capes, the elder one in a fiery orange-red cape and the younger one got a leopard print cape, and the magician turned to the audience and declared them fit to be his assistants. Our boy returned to nervousness and awe. Magic was happening around him, and he was part of it. Better than a ringside seat, he was in the ring. He held out tubes for the audience to verify that they were empty, and watched stunned as the magician produced flower after flower from it. He handed him a white handkerchief and the magician folded it and then unfolded it and turned it red. Finally, after a multitude of tricks, the boy was asked to stand in the centre of the stage. 


Shy and nervous, he took the three steps necessary to propel him to the required location and stood facing the audience. There was a bit of pride in being the assistant, and he wasn't doing too good a job of hiding it as he looked at envious friends in the rows beneath. From the magicians voice over the loudspeakers, he figured that a glass of milk was being placed on his head. He felt the bottom of the glass on his hair as the magician held it above him without placing it on him. He wondered if the glass would in fact be placed on him, since he wasn't too sure he would do a good job of balancing it. He didn't want to mess up the trick and embarrass the great man. The other boy brought a straw that went into his mouth, with the other end sticking out in the air in front of him. The magician announced that the assistant was going to drink milk in this fashion. He was asked to suck in with the straw, and he did for all he was worth. 


The audience cheered in front of him, but something was amiss. There was no milk coming in through the straw, and he had been worried he messed up somewhere. Yet the audience was cheering, and when the magician stepped in front of him to show the crowd the empty glass was when he realized the milk had indeed disappeared. A strange disappointment grew within him. He wasn't as enthused as before when the magician put the glass under his armpit, covered it with the cape, and returned it full with milk again. He was asked to drink again, three or four times, with the same result. He began to suspect this was all some sort of trickery. Why was there no milk in the straw? As he stepped down the stage at the end of the show, classmates gathered around and patted him on the back and asked a hundred questions. He gave a blank smile. He saw the other boy telling stories to his classmates who had gathered around. All he could think of was to go to the playground. 


The announcement came that even though there was forty minutes left till the end of school, there would be no more class and they could all play outside until the school vans came at three thirty. He made his way to the playground and sat on one of the swings, staring blankly ahead as he filtered out the noisy kids on the merry-go-round and the slide. If it wasn't really magic, what was it? He was certainly tricking us, and there certainly had to be a how and a why. How? was there a secret pipe in his sleeve? Why? perhaps he didn't have real magical powers? Over the course of that afternoon, he had lost blind belief and was questioning everything. Three kids a coupla classes elder to him made their way to his swing. They had questions. "Tell me something," the girl who seemed to be their leader said, "did you really get milk in the straw when you sucked in?" 


"Yes", he said, looking at their slightly disbelieving faces, momentarily setting aside his struggle with magic and logic. "It was real magic." 














PS - this blog has been ignored for too long, and I intend to rectify that soon, (hopefully). the flying course is over, but unfinished posts remain to be published. I hope to do that over the course of this year believing late is better than never. This was a story written a while back, one I'm not entirely happy with, but I have nothing else to post for now. 

Bike and seek..

This might get lost in between the flight training posts, but it's been kicking around for a while, so i thought i'd post it anyway..

Afternoons were a source of trouble and stories when we were children, but this one is from the evening. Given that we had a year-round capability to get into trouble, it was hardly surprising that every now and then there was a rush to the hospital even during school days when we had a mere two hours to get into trouble. Efficient that we were, these two hour playtimes led to stitches, fractures, casts.. all trophies of our heydays. This particular story is about a fracture.

My brother was lucky, he once broke his arm. He was trying something on the gymnastic high bar at school and fell down on his hand, fracturing his wrist (if i remember correctly). This established two things : my brother was a lousy gymnast, and our physician was a lousy doctor. The doc sent him off after checking his xray, saying that he had no fracture. That weekend, my brother fell from a tree and the doctor who checked him this time round, looked at his old xray and said there was a clear fracture. History is witness that my brother then broke the same wrist a few more times just as it was about to heal, and each time in increasingly bizarre ways. Everyone scribbled on his cast, and he used the cast as a weapon against me when we fought. I wanted a cast, but unfortunately never broke any bones, at least when those things mattered.

Hide and seek was a favourite pastime of ours, and we played hide and seek way beyond the age when it was supposed to become embarrassing. The gang in the colony were isolated from other kids for the most part, and we all went to different schools. It wasn't embarrassing to us, though i doubt few ever told people outside that we played hide and seek every evening after an hour of football or cricket at school. There were very strict rules regarding where we could hide and couldnt, owing mostly to irate neighbours who didn't want us running about looking for hiding places on their property. So the hiding zones were restricted to our yard, a neighbours yard, and a few roads nearby. Wooded areas were vetoed thanks to safety concerns from parents, and that left us with very few options. Yet we continued to innovate on where we could hide, so that the game wouldn't get reduced to a running race where the fastest to get back to base would win.

One such innovation involved the use of bicycles, and was played for a grand total of one day. And I'll tell you why. One of the limitations on the size of our hiding zones was the fact that we were kids of varying ages. The smaller ones wouldn't be able to keep up if we were allowed to hide in vast areas, so there were self imposed area regulations. You could go down the road to Rosey auntie's house for instance, but only as far as the tree opposite, not all the way to the end of her property. Some wise guy came up with the brilliant idea that we should play hide and seek on bicycles. The rules were simple, since we had bicycles, we could hide all over the colony, but had to hide the bicycles too. The guy who came to seek us out would also be on a bicycle, and when spotted, we had to try and beat him back to the gate of my house (which was the base) in order to win. Everyone agreed excitedly, and wondered why we hadn't thought of this before. The game was on.

I found a rather nice place to hide, and since it was a fairly big place, i soon had everyone piling up their bicycles next to mine. We sat there waiting for the seeker to come, and after twenty minutes or so, he finally came and spotted us. The hiding place was in one of the farther reaches of the colony, and what followed next was an epic cycle race, with the seeker in front and all of us trying to catch up so we wont lose. Since everyone had piled their bicycles on to mine, I was the last to leave since extricating my Hercules MTB from the pile took time and effort. But I wasn't unduly worried; the rest were all on small BSA champ type bikes, and i could easily overhaul them with my large set of wheels. The ride back would take about three to four minutes, and i slowly started getting to the front of the pack. Soon enough, my trusty Hercules overtook pretty much everyone, and only my brother and the seeker were ahead. As I pulled alongside to overtake my brother with about twenty yards left to go, he did the sort of dumb thing that younger siblings are prone to do. He popped a wheelie.

I have tried many times since to rationalize his thought process. At a moment when he's ahead of the pack, with only one guy to overtake, and with time running out, when all he should be thinking about was overtaking and winning, what the hell would prompt him to pop a wheelie? And that wasn't the worst part, he didn't even know how to pop a wheelie. The front wheel rose in the air, tilted to the right, and fell down in front of me as I was passing him at high speed. I was thrown forward, and I'm told the cycle did a beautiful airborne spin before landing behind me. The number of spins it did grew each time the story was told, reaching as high as 3 or 4 before we realized it was ridiculous. It took a coupla seconds for the pain to kick in, and I realized something was wrong with my tooth. It wasn't the first time, and it certainly wasn't the last time, my tooth had taken the brunt of impact. Top left incisor partially ground off by asphalt. We never played this brand of hide and seek again.

There was a rush to a dentist, some vague talk of surgery, medications, and finally a cap was fitted to cover up the gap in my smile. An Xray of my tooth was taken, and I was given the tiny postal stamp size film of it which showed two fractures. For me, that was the silver lining. This was no wrist or leg, but two fractures in something that tiny oughta count! Despite the pain, I was elated by the whole Xray affair, and walked into school next day with the postage stamp film that carried precious evidence of glory.

Five minutes later, I was deflated when someone pointed out to those poring over the xray that the fractures on my tooth formed the shape of an underwear.

Bah.

Summer story..

Long-winded childhood story again, kindly adjust :)

A walk around the house is customary every time I visit the ancestral home. As I pass the western side, I always look over at the small cottages across the road, in my uncle's property. They used to be tourist accommodation in our little beach town. The tourists never came in the numbers my uncle had hoped for, possibly because our land was a good three quarters of a kilometre from the beach. They have been rented out as one bedroom dwellings for not-so-well-off families. My uncle, like many others, left for the Middle East, and that was that. As I walk, a story from long ago pops up without fail, every time.

For purposes of this story, we'll call him Mark.

I don't remember his name anymore, except that it began with the letter m, and was short. Could have been Mike, but that's not important. Mark was the first white person I had ever met. Sure, tourism brought lots of white folk to our beaches, and I'd seen many of them before, but Mark was the first one I got to know. It was another of those afternoons when grandad, often for no seemingly apparent reason, would get in the car and head to our ancestral home far away from the city. During the vacations, I would pile on, perhaps my brother and a cousin or two as well. This was not a particularly satisfactory arrangement for my mom and aunt, who knew that their father required more supervision than us kids to stay out of trouble. But the peace and quiet of a day without us during summer vacation, when we were otherwise wreaking havoc on their nerves, won the battle in the end and we were all packed off in the car.

This particular time, though, I was alone. Instead of bringing something sensible along to while away time, like a book or some toy cars, I brought a chess set. Who exactly I was going to play with was a question that would cross my mind only after I reached my destination. Our driver didn't know how to play chess, and refused to learn giving the logic that I was going to win all the games today if i played with a beginner like him, and I couldn't refute that. Grandad had some work, so I didn't even bother asking. But all I had for the whole day was a chess set, and finding a partner to play with was my immediate concern. Our driver, Deepu (chettan -omitted hereafter due to laziness and not disrespect), and I set off to find someone to play with. And that took us to my uncle's tourist cottages.

They were newly built then, and had a weird smell to them. The faint smell of cement and paint, mixed with that generic antiseptic smell a lot of hotels have. We heard he had managed to rent out a coupla cottages to tourists, and we were hoping the tourists brought their kids along, and maybe one of the kids would want to play chess. Not having done advanced mathematics back then, I did not know what long, long odds I was shooting for. The cottages seemed deserted, ostensibly because the tourists had all gone to the beach. Looking around, we spotted Mark.

He had one of those faces with character, the sort you remember for a long time. I remember more of his face than his name today. I asked Deepu if he would go ask him if he wants to play chess. He went over and talked to Mark, while I watched from the distance. I was too shy a kid to approach someone as strange as he was. Deepu came back a while later, and I eagerly asked him if a game was on. He had forgotten to mention chess, and I was quite annoyed. Deepu egged me on and said I should go ask him, he seemed a very friendly guy. After much prodding, and a coupla false starts, I was on my way to ask a mystifying creature, a white man, if he wanted to play a game of chess.

I held out my pride and joy, a small magnetic chess set that would also let you play five other games of which i knew only Ludo and Snakes and Ladders, and asked him if he wanted to play chess in a voice that diminished quickly as i realized how much of a giant he was. "Sure," he responded, "but on one condition. We'll play it on my board." Out came an exquisitely carved wooden chess set, and I was smart enough a kid to realize that if he travelled with such a good chess set, he must be really into the game. As the game started, I worried about this misadventure. As kids, there are specific rules on not talking to strangers, rules the kids in my family flagrantly flouted. But this was different, he was a foreigner. Not everyone in a tourist town likes foreigners, and the average attitude of the populace is that they're a necessary evil. Most people not directly involved in the tourism industry would just mind their own business, and avoid interacting with the tourists. The tourists who came to beaches to party had a particularly bad rep, and we would be told about their drinking, drug usage and generally loose morals, and that we should stay clear of them. I wondered for a second what amma would think about me playing chess with a complete stranger from Australia, which I had managed to find out about him by then.

We played chess and traded stories all afternoon. It wasn't a fair trade, I suppose, I had really lame stories back then. But his story changed my life a little bit. It was his second visit to our town. When he came the first time, he had fallen off the beach facing cliffs our town is famous for, after having had too much to drink one night. As I was processing the moral implications of him drinking enough to fall off a cliff, he continued. He lay there dying, in pitch dark, until a local drug dealer found him and took him to the hospital, thereby saving his life. My mind was trying to wrap itself around the concept of a drug dealer, since I had no idea how drugs were dealt. He returned to Australia, and sent his saviour a large and undisclosed sum of money in gratitude. The dealer quit his trade, and started something decent though i forget what, and was getting along fine until the cops caught him. He was accused of getting the money through selling drugs, and was jailed. Getting him out was Mark's mission, and he had come back to stay and fight his case for as long as it took.

For a child's black and white concepts of right and wrong, this was a major revelation. I could not immediately process this new information, and indeed it took me years before I fully understood it. Over one afternoon of chess, where I was fascinated by his stories and elated over my game victories, I was introduced to the concept of grey. I knew the guy was good, only a good guy would fly all the way back to save someone from going to jail, even if that someone did happen to save his life. I knew from being told that drinking and taking drugs was bad, and even though he didnt mention taking drugs, I somehow assumed he did. Having only met people who were easily sorted into 'good' and 'bad' bins until then, I went home stumped, and years later, was grateful.

Almost a decade after he'd gone, and never having amounted to much at chess and thereby having given up the game long ago, I realized he was probably letting me win that day. I put him in the 'good' bin.

Suffering Catfish..

There were many such afternoons before this, and many after. While the adults were either asleep or watching TV, us kids had all descended on the little bridge over the canal just outside of our colony. I guess the grown-ups were rather happy to have us off their backs for a few hours. We were engaged in one of our favourite post-monsoon activities - fishing. The rains would bring water into the canal, which would first wash away all the bushes that had filled its waterless bed over summer, and then, once the rains had gone, there would be fishes. And we would go fishing.

There were many ways to do this, none of which we were really all that good at. Mammoonju, the local grocer, would keep fishing hooks and twine, which we acquired for a buck and fifty paise. A shrub in the neighbourhood would lose a long-ish branch, and we were in business. Worms would be dug and speared on the hook, a bit of thermocol for a bobber, and all we had to do was wait. We never caught much fish this way, maybe less than a dozen in all the years combined. On the few occasions we did catch one, we never knew what to do with it. The first time we caught one, bigger boys from the colony nearby told us we should put fevicol on its lip over the hook wound so that it would heal and we could keep it as a pet. The only reason that fish lived was because amma's suspicions were aroused when she saw us heading towards the garage with a bottle of fevicol and a bottle with the fish in it.

As we grew older, and dare I say braver, we began to get into the water. We would take old towels from home, stand at a suitable place downstream with the towel stretched across the flow, and someone would chase the fishes from upstream. We would catch many, and were suitably gladdened. But of course, soon we wanted to catch bigger fish. Catfish were the holy grail, because they hid in cracks between rocks. The same cracks also housed water snakes, and that was the main reason why fishing in the canal was a clandestine activity. The adults should never know.

Which brings me back to the afternoon. We had seen the boys from the other colony catch huge catfish by ferreting them out of their cracks and chopping them with long knifes while they were still in the water. They took home their prize to cook. We wanted one for a pet, a catfish would've made a very cool pet. We had spotted one in the cracks beneath a little bridge that ran over the canal, and for the first time, we were venturing under it. The fact that it was almost pitch dark under the low bridge made it even more of an adventure. For at least an hour we searched, and even the kids who normally wouldn't get into the water were braving the possibility of water snakes in search of the holy grail in juvenile ichthyology. Since there was only one towel, the others were carrying plastic covers in desperation.

After an hour, spirits were flagging, and I was looking a bit worried as my brother went further under the bridge than all of us had dared so far. Even that intrepid move did not produce the catfish we were after. Just as we were beating retreat and coming out from under the bridge one by one, I looked at Jeffrey. Jeffrey did not particularly like getting wet in the dirty water of the canal, and rarely shared our enthusiasm for such hands-on fishing. He was standing there in the water, his arms drooping, looking as dejected as the rest of us, when a small fish jumped into the air in front of him. I saw his hand move quick as a flash, and the next thing I know is that the fish was flapping about in the plastic cover he was holding. He had snatched a fish out of thin air! The ecstatic scene that followed was not dissimilar to a football team who had just scored a goal. We had just seen the single most amazing thing in our short lives that far. We did not get the damn catfish, but we went home with grins plastered to our faces. No grown up could be told the story. No one would've believed us anyway.

Cheburashka ♥

In Soviet Russia, nostalgia feels you! that didnt quite come out right, but yeah the question isn't too far off. is it possible to feel nostalgia for something you've never known, from somewhere you've never been?

I have been a huge Russophile from probably the age of five. I grew up in a family chock-full of believers in the communist ideology, not least of whom being my mother and my grandfather. We had a subscription for Misha magazine from where i learnt the Russian alphabet. My mother herself took Russian in college, that language being one amongst the many she went on to learn. I had penpals from the soviet union, and the prized stamp in the collection that we inherited was one from the communist East Germany. Thinking back, i owe a lot to my love for all things russian, since it was a boyhood fanaticism for their aircraft that got me started on the aviation road. or airway, rather.

One of the things i do is spot airplanes. And when it comes to that, the rarer the better. If it flies and is weird, i probably know a thing or two about it. I have cherished memories of a long list of strange aircraft sightings, from an Antonov 124 at delhi to an Ilyushin 18 in trivandrum, and all the way back to delhi for a cargo 707 which is a rare thing these days. I would travel miles if i could get to see the An-225, and i would travel back in time if i could to see the Air India Il-62 and L-1011. To be frank, the regular Airbuses and Boeings are kinda boring, to the point that even the paramount Embraers are a relief for me.

Antonov An-74

Cheburashka - Can you see how the nickname came to be?

And what i haven't had the chance to see, I read up about. I have a sizeable database on the weird planes of the world, and keep adding to it on almost a daily basis. Which brought me, a couple of years ago, to a most interesting aircraft, the Antonov-74. I had been looking for an aircraft the russians nicknamed the 747ski (which is actually the Antonov 30), dont ask me why i needed to know that, and i stumbled on this airplane instead. And this, in turn, was nicknamed 'Cheburashka', apparently after the Soviet animated character it resembled.

So, wiki-fan that i am, i immediately went on the Cheburashka page, to look it up. Airplanes were soon forgotten (i remembered the 747ski again only months later), and i couldn't get enough of this little chap. Pictures were downloaded, links were opened, youtube videos were watched, and torrents were downloaded. it didnt even disappoint me that i had gotten japanese dubbed versions on torrent, there were very few good torrents in any case. I've watched the video at the top of this post dozens of times now.

And strangely, it felt nostalgic. It felt like i had seen it before, a long long time ago. I know for a fact that i haven't, yet it seemed to fit so seamlessly with my memories from childhood that i was amazed.. i'd say yeah, it IS possible to feel nostalgia for something you've never known. It took me two whole years, but i finally got around to writing this and sharing it here.. Take a look at the video, and if you couldn't love Cheburashka, your friendship contract is probably up for renewal :P

PS - if you do like it, especially the song, i can send it over. or come over myself and sing it. and then hit you on the head non-lethally but severely enough that you wont remember my bad singing. whichever.

Red blues..

So i was sitting in this lecture today that was varying between interesting and boring. I was near asleep thanks to the lack of sleep due to last night's party, and the lecture began at 9 o clock, a time i'm not really accustomed to. what was i doing in a lecture? well, i have to undergo something called avionics domain training as part of work, and it is actually more interesting than it sounds, except when the teachers get carried away and move into hard core physics and engineering. when that happens, all i can do is note down terms and learn at my own pace on the internet.

so, anyway, i was in this lecture when i realized i've run out of space on the sheaf of papers i had been using to jot down notes. i walked over to a table at the side of the room where stationery supplies were kept, and picked up a notebook. since i was using a pencil until then, i decided to pick up a pen as well. i took a look around, and then started walking back without taking a pen because all the pens there were red. i took two steps and the thought struck me, 'what's wrong with using a red pen?' nothing, apparently, as i found out after taking one and using it for the rest of the lecture.

i don't know about you, but in my school, the red pen was authority. we had to wait until about fifth standard before we were allowed to start writing with pens, and then we had a choice only between black and blue. under no circumstances were we to use red ink. the effect it has had on us kids is profound, i guess. i'll attempt an explanation. in my line of work, when designing cockpit displays, there are some pretty darn strict rules on when to use red. even so, red is an option i often explore liberally despite knowing the rules that govern it. yet, in all my life, i never seem to have used a red pen. i guess somewhere subconsciously i never got rid of the idea that red ink is only for teachers to correct homework and exam papers.

well, all that changed today.. :)

On Context..

So I met my cousin after ages last week. I noted with happiness that he's grown up now since the last time i saw him, turning 13 this year. I also noted with concern that unless my uncle and aunt were planning on having another kid, I'm gonna soon earn the unenviable position of being the shortest amongst the cousins on my mom's side of the family. But of course, thats not the reason I'm writing this, the reason is that for the first time in my life, perhaps, i felt a generation gap with someone younger than me. yes, you may proudly sniffle and wipe away a tear of joy since i might just be showing signs of growing up there.

Since we met at a funeral which was a rather traumatic experience for the both of us, we stuck together spending time avoiding the adults and generally spending quality time together. for purposes of this blog post, the cut-off age for adulthood was set at one year above my age. Now, at some point in my conversations with young cousins and nephews and nieces, they ask me about my job, and i tell them. Usually this is followed by a facial expression generally involving widened eyes to indicate that they are suitably impressed. this cousin, though, did not bat an eyelid. what he did, instead, was to launch into a detailed conversation on cockpits and aircraft in general. He had seen all the episodes of 'Air Crash Investigation' and knew by heart the subtleties of various crashes. It was my turn to adopt the expression i mentioned before, as our conversation drifted on to a discussion on the sioux city air crash.

Turns out, the kid is a storehouse of knowledge. He seems to know far more than any kid i knew when i was his age. And then when i thought about it, the other kids i know now who are as old as him all seem a lot smarter on average. Of course, the prima facie suspect would be the internet, which is pretty much the single largest difference between what his generation and mine had. Sure, once i grew up and saw fancy toys like r/c helicopters and stuff in the store, i kinda wished that they were around in my childhood. but that seems to be a constant difference, for i've heard my mom remark about a lack of choice in toys when she was a kid. But the internet is a sort of game changer in that sense i suppose, since libraries were around forever, and tv has benefited (or is that harmed?) at least a coupla generations before his, including mine.

But there was one little problem. He lacked context. I noticed this when we were taking a walk down some woods on our way to an old pond. He was interested in nature like a lot of kids his age, but knew nothing about the insects or plants around him. He did not know various kinds of ants, was irrationally afraid of all species of millipedes even though he was fascinated by them and knew they were harmless for the most part, and he could not grasp how a 'vellaka' (which is the malayalam name for small coconuts that usually fall prematurely from the tree) was essentially a miniature coconut. Yet he knew vast amounts of facts about stag beetles and rattle snakes on continents far far away, and i'd never even heard about the former until he mentioned it. i did google it later, though, and it seems like a fascinating creature. In any case, my point is this. All the information in the world, without the proper context and background which gives it perspective, is essentially useless i guess, except for winning quiz competitions maybe. Having a fact-sheet about jungles in your head without ever having seen even a thicket, does not necessarily make you a useful guy to have on an amazon expedition. You need empirical knowledge to counterbalance theoretical knowledge i guess.

So, I counted myself lucky that the internet came at a time when i could appreciate it, and not before. And therefore i spent the time before the internet playing in the mud, building toy trains and ships, and going on bicycle rides far far longer than mom wouldve permitted if she'd known. I counted myself lucky that i know a cobra from a krait from a rat snake from a water snake which made all the difference when searching for lost cricket balls in marshes near paddy fields.

And in the little time i had left with my cousin before we headed back to our respective cities, i taught him how to spot and catch antlions, how vellakas of a certain size made good projectiles that would carry far enough and sting but rarely hurt someone, how to use the stem of a papaya leaf as a snorkel, how to jump off walls without getting hurt, and most importantly, how to skip stones on the surface of a pond. For a kid trapped in a ninth story apartment in the thick of bombay, i hope it made some kind of difference.

papad john paul II

an old old man used to deliver papads to our house when i was a kid. he's one of those characters from childhood that you remember. he had a face like pope john paul II, and was a stooped, weather-beaten old fella who seemed like he could barely walk. yet he would walk kilometres barefoot selling papad. he spoke very little, and what little he did speak was unintelligible, and i used to wonder why. maybe he was from a different place? we would buy hundreds of homemade papads from him at a time, to stock up till his next visit. i'd always suspected that mom shared my thoughts in wondering if we'll see him again. yet we did, from the time we built our house to the time i started driving a scooter. he would always politely decline a lift and flash his radiant smile with missing teeth (i used to think of the gaps in his teeth as sunspots on the sun) if i met him on the way, choosing to walk carrying his heavy bag full of different types of papad. and looking at him walk barefoot, i always used to wonder whether there were more cracks on his feet than there are wrinkles on his face. and watching his stooped thin frame walk away in a manner that seemed to defy odds, id always be left with mixed thoughts in mind.

the funny thing is, i remembered him yesterday after ages. i was on a chai break where a couple of colleagues were discussing socio-technical aspects of a user interface for monitoring a refinery supply chain, and pop comes the papad man to my mind. how in the name of all good things on god's green earth did that thought get triggered by listening to that conversation, i would dearly love to know.

Patience..

get me that bottle from the fridge, amma would say. and i knew which one, the one that was on the top rack right under the freezer, inaccessible in a corner despite the fact that it was used daily. and i'd duly walk back to the kitchen with it, and she would carefully remove the top layer of cream off the curd she'd left to form overnight, and put it into the bottle in my hand. i'd stand there wishing there was a bit more, since seeing the bottle get filled was a pastime for me. id watch the white line of the top of the cream creep up all the way to the lid, day after agonizing day. sometimes i'd be asked to do the chore of transferring the cream, and i'd deliberately put in a little curd as well, just to push it up a few millimetres.

a bottle would get filled, but it wouldnt end there, another would get added. the agonizing process would repeat itself, then another bottle would be added. depending on the size of the bottles available, this would happen three to four times. and every day in the two or three months that it would take to reach this milestone, i'd watch the lines creep up with obvious impatience, look at the filled bottles with a certain satisfaction, and await the future. and finally, the day would come, usually a weekend or a holiday, when i would be asked to bring all the bottles at once.

and i would move at previously unknown speeds to the fridge, try and grab them all at once, and race to the kitchen; there was no time to waste. i knew what was next, the run to the store room to get the wooden thing that i still dont know the name of. followed by the big aluminium pot. when all was in place, amma would start. when we were younger, she would tell us the story of how devas and asuras churned the seas for amrit, or the story of how lord krishna used to steal butter as a kid, as she churned the cream for butter. which would soon start making an appearance as a big lump in centre of the pot, and she would take it out as one big ball and place it aside. i hated the butter, it was a mere obstacle to be crossed before the destination. id wait patiently while lump after lump of butter was placed aside. and look with concern at the bottles, which i would have to help with washing and drying, despite the fact that they served me well in my objective thus far.

now the good part would begin. the lumps were put into a large frying pan, and heated till they melt, while i sat on the stool in the kitchen and watched with equal measures of impatience and fascination. the aroma would soon fill the kichen, then the house, and soon you could catch a whiff from the gate outside. i suppose i did get a bit high on the smell, i wouldnt know. id just sit there till, at last, the golden ghee would be poured out into umpteen smaller bottles. when each of their lids were closed, and when each was safely stored away, i'd reach what i was waiting for. rice would go into the pan, mixed around in the residue with all the heart disease producing black bits, and i'd have the world's best ghee rice for lunch. and the months would seem worth every second.

good things happen to those who wait.. :)

How to kill a baby bulbul..

Since I mentioned the funny story in my last post, a few people asked me to reveal one where i was the culprit. I dont normally do these public demand thingies, but since this one was hilarious in retrospect, and since it's popped up despite my best efforts to hide it, i thought i might as well relent :P

Once upon a time, long before i expanded the list of animal species i had eaten to thirteen (counting the fish kingdom as one, else i wouldnt have a number to put up here), i used to be an animal lover. not that i was vegetarian (far from it, i was one of the few who could go to the chicken shop, pick out the chicken, watch it get killed and still eat it), but our house used to constantly have its share of injured pigeons, kingfishers, tortoises, crows, hummingbirds, squirrels and finally, the protagonist, bulbuls. most were unsuccessful hunting attempts by the neighbourhood cats, some were picked up from the roadside and from school.

bulbuls used to nest at our house every year. in fact they're so comfortable with the house, and amma is so adjusting that we regularly have these guys making nests on lamps inside the house. which usually means that we sit in semi darkness to accommodate the bird, and achan has to interrupt his shaving so that our tenant can leave via the open window near the wash basin. so as kids, we naturally considered these our pets, and everyone knew how many bulbuls we had at home.

so naturally, when an abandoned baby bulbul that hadn't even molted yet was found at school, i was called first to take a look at it. not that i knew much about the birds, despite having lived in close quarters with so many of them. but you know how it is as kids.. saw the bird, took pity, and had to do something about it. the first step was to get it to a safe location, which meant home. the most important hurdle was our PT teacher mr charlie, who had this amazing ability to muddle up any animal related situation. in fact, any situation, come to think of it. so it was smuggled out in the school bag, with important books left back at the desk to make room for the bird. that the bird produced an improbable amount of shit during the ride in the van and ruined the remaining books in the bag didnt matter one bit; we were on a mission.

i had a collection of abandoned nests of different birds, and i picked out one that i knew was a bulbul nest, and proceeded to make the little bird home in it. but there ended my knowledge, i had no idea what to do next. and we didnt tell amma since we'd figured she'd disapprove since the bird was too young. well as kids you dont tell amma anything anyway, especially if you have even the vaguest indication you could get into trouble. but maybe i should have. we kept the bird away from sight, and kept checking on it everytime we could get away. finally it was dawning on us that we would have to feed it something. and though i knew that birds ate worms, in the panic of the moment i forgot that perhaps, and decided to call in an expert.

enter VK, hero of the earlier story, who was the biggest animal lover and rescuer around, someone i genuinely trusted on these matters. it was he who figured that tortoises liked to eat mom's hedges (called khufia or something). with that kind of a formidable resume, it was inevitable that i'd call him. so i called, explained the bird situation, and asked him what do these things eat. he said they'd eat anything. i had no idea that he was talking from his experience with parrots or something, who apparently would eat a lot of human food. and he im guessing didnt understand the gravity of the situation, especially how young the bird was. "anything?" slightly incredulous question. "anything." assured answer. so i asked him a more specific suggestion, and he asked what i was having for dinner. chapatis, i said. so it was settled then, little birdie was having dinner with us.

so i slyly made off with the first chapati mom cooked under the pretext of not being able to wait since i was too hungry, and went straight to the nest. and started feeding the bird tiny tiny pieces of chapati. now this led to a second phone call situation. VK was called again, to ask how much i should feed it. he confidently told me that as long as the bird opened its mouth and did that thing little birds do asking mommy to feed them, i should feed it. disaster.

even though kids break a lot of rules, there are times when u stick to the book like it were the bible. this was one such unfortunate occasion. the bird had downed about one and a half chapatis before i realized maybe i should stop feeding it. it did keep opening its mouth the moment i went near its nest, but then considering that i ate only four chapatis for dinner, it didnt somehow seem right that a bird the size of my palm would eat one and a half, and still ask for more. i have heard various theories on this in later life, including that its a reflex for baby birds to open their mouth when they sense movement near their nest, so that their mother would feed them. i also heard a theory that birds dont eat chapatis, period.

sad to say, the bird was in bird heaven by morning, and i was devastated. and knowing the trouble we'd get into for this, the body was disposed of with enough discretion to make the KGB proud of us. i dont remember how exactly the story got out, but then soon i was laughing stock, and that doesnt trade well on stock exchanges. the story did die a natural death until strange alcohol related processes in one of my friends' head brought it back to life, and my laughing stock is trading higher these days. i have done no further rescues since then, except once make a call to pfa in ahmedabad to let the experts take care of a cow. it's one of the things i really regret and would give anything to reverse, but then again, in a strange dark and maybe even gerald durrell-ish sense, its also one of the funnier stories from childhood.