And finally the loafer came out of Chicago O’hare International airport just to say her brother that her checked in bags are stuck somewhere in London. All the way from India to Chicago and now left with only one cabin bag! As a laptop and some other craps could never meet even the basic clothing necessity of a person I could consider that bag also as another useless burden! Not sure if my mind did now want to see everyone again, I turned back just to see the glass sliding door written “Arrival”.
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I would have changed my position the tenth time hoping to get some sleep the night before. I adjusted the curtain by my side to avoid the intriguing yellow neon street lamps from peeping in. Without finding any luck, I sat up on my bed to see the hours left for me to catch the 5:30AM flight. I searched for my cell phone which I intentionally switched off and threw somewhere away. I couldn’t restrain myself from some of those weird thoughts which like to haunt me almost every night. I drank a sip from the water bottle kept beside me (as I already knew that I will be in need of it that night!). The honking air-horns of Trivandrum city are silent now, just the twittering of some birds that stay awake during the night to give me a company. Though my nights were the same no matter which city I am in, that night pressed me a little bit extra.
I reached Trivandrum airport at 3:30AM with amma & appa. As usual, just like paatti’s chanting, they both started feeding my ears from both the sides. I kept on listening to it as usual and didn’t forget to keep a facial expression as if this is the last dose medicine with which I could become the ‘extra neat’ as how Sundar anna is or as how Anju akka & Ramesh anna is! And as a conclusion my amma said ‘Chammatha iru kettaya!’. I looked at my wrist watch and said them “I will have to leave now! Will give you a call when I am done with the security check”. My mom was sounding more like having a block struck in her throat now. Is she about to cry? I never wanted my parents to behave like Meera’s when they left her at Hyderabad! I felt it more dramatic in that case when the whole family started crying all at once! Thinking of it, I felt that’s the time for me to leave. I walked through the pavement into the door which was written “Departure”. Don’t know why I didn’t turn back to see my amma & appa once again then! Maybe they would have also wondered! Don’t know.
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Almost after 24 hours of sleeplessness, I reached N-150 Cardinal Court with my brother at 3:30AM in the morning. Though I was tired, I wasn’t feeling sleepy. Not sure if that was the ‘cold’ summer night that was chilling me or as usual the ‘tug-of-war’ between my mind and nidra devi! My brother fished out a cell phone from his pocket. And that was to inform Megha that we are waiting outside. She came downstairs in a white kurtha sort of something with black slippers which was having a white flower cut stitched in it between the big toe and the second toe. Her spectacles as big as her eyes and I noticed an unwanted uneasiness in her! She never looked into my eyes even when I greeted her! And my mind was unnecessarily doing commentaries from inside me when I noticed her shyness in looking at me! I shushed my darling mind knowing that it’s my first meeting with her and with whom I am ‘planning’ to stay here.
She has already prepared rice and rasam and something else for us. I should say the truth that there is a good cook ‘sleeping’ inside her! She forced my brother to take more rice, who assumes himself as the next generation ‘Salman Khan’ with a psycho statement in his mind. Throughout the life just by having these rice,sambhar,rasam etc has sucked away all the nutrition from his body it seems! And so being a weirdo and the one who don’t appreciate such ‘affectionate’ dramas that much, my brother sweetie frankly said a ‘no’ to her, and obviously she looked shocked at his prompt reply!... because that’s how a Brahmin should be as per the ‘rules’ who should not say ‘no’ especially to food. And I bet all through her 24 years she would have never ever said a ‘no’ for anything by being herself! Moreover I felt that she is the only one following the ‘Go Green’ slogan inch-by-inch, when even after finishing the dinner I saw her putting some rice in the oily ‘thovaran’ pan mixing it up to eat, so that she could not waste the remaining last drop of oil in the pan!
The very next morning, even though it was a Sunday 7:30AM, our studious Megha set out for college after all those fidgeting to catch her bus. She was in off-white Salvar Kameez and she looked like a perfect 40 year old ‘Brahmin mami’ with her hair fully soaked in oil and especially with those spectacles of hers. Who said a Telugu Brahmin can never equal a Tamil Brahmin. I bet when she will reach 40 she could perfectly come one-to-one with any ‘mami’ in my family! If my father was there, then he would have proclaimed by this time that she was the one who he wanted to be as his daughter and somehow I chanced in! I also used to wonder which programmer coded everything for God for the program is so garbled and full of ‘errors’ like this!
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My appa is the most perfectly ringing alarm clock in the world as far as I know. If there is a time like 5:00AM, don’t know how, he will wake up and even I don’t know why, he wanted the whole house to wake up then. When he realized that waking up someone in the morning is the toughest job, he devised new strategies. Before 5:30AM, our milk cooker, which I hate the most, will start whistling like anything. And that’s my amma’s job to turn it off! And that would be the time when I would have won over with my n-number of cranky thoughts and just slipped in to cut short a 6 hours sleep to 2 hours. The next task in my appa’s chart sheet is to take a bath and you will find three grey rows striped across his forehead to do his daily poojas. From somewhere there will be a cassette crying suprabhatham loud enough even to wake the neighbors! And for my surprise, don’t know if it was my appa’s influence or if that’s something in the blood of every ‘Tamil Brahmin’ family to play such a sort of cassette in the early morning, you will hear a music competition emerging out from every neighboring door. When I found it far too no-way for me, I started locking my bedroom, though I over-slept more than a couple of times and missed my first hour attendance in the college. But my deterministic appa dearest, who is always worried of his ‘Oashakoyukkattai’ daughter, didn’t give up that easily and started knocking my door shouting and scolding me as a morning dose!
I found all these ‘perfect’ characteristics strikingly coining with our Megha in the very first day itself! Miss.Perfect will be the title that my appa would have given to her and would have asked me to learn from her also if he has gotten a chance to see her ever. Thank God! He didn’t create an opportunity for that. And that was the time of Ganesh Chathurthi when I unfortunately started staying with her. She, her mom, her dad, or maybe even her nerd brother would have insisted me to wear a sari that day to celebrate Ganesh Chathurthi! Even in my slightest of memories, I don’t know when I last celebrated Ganesh Chathurthi, than amma and paatti preparing vadai/koyukkattai/mothakam at home and me finishing it off!
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My alarm rang at 6:00AM, and I sprang out of my bed though I wanted to snooze it off or to throw it away! But after exchanging a kind of mild smile of mine for a doubly strong sharp glance from Debbie White for becoming late by 10 minutes for my work at Burger King Cash counter the last week, I am not feeling like becoming tardy again. I sat on my bed for a while just reordering everything that I need to do that day. Mostly all my days will start with planning and scheduling, calculating and re-calculating in mind how much I will earn that month and how much I need to pay for my expenses. Usually the only mirror in the house, which will be foggy because of the hot water that comes out of the left tap of the yellowish wash basin, will become the notepad for me to calculate as I brush my teeth. The re-calculating comes in as it’s always a human tendency wanting to reduce the zeros on a large number especially when it comes to a 4-digit college fee!
And that would be the perfect time when my cell phone will be ringing with my amma/appa at the other end just with the thirst to know if the ‘Oashakkoyukkattai’ has woken up or not?! And I will have to give all the same answers for all the same questions every morning. At times Debbie’s face making me even to raise my voice to ascertain what I have just said (when the question answer session will start all over again) to make them disconnect the call fast -without dragging it like forever. I will be getting out of the house at 00:41 past grabbing a bun or bagel if anything is left in the house, to catch the 00:43 bus.
After me shifting to O-163 with Shekhnoza, my life started getting more tightly packed - mostly tightly packed because the apartment resembled more of a thatched hut bird’s nest with three people sharing it and the third person being my roommate’s husband. I am twenty-four years old - little more than a child for a world-wise adult - and for a child old enough to be excluded from his magical world. All these obviously would have made me to think more, making me feel like watching a ‘Discovery Channel’ whenever I came across a ‘kid’ of my age who study with me! For them even they don’t know what all they just wanted to show off or flaunt about!
Done with all these craps when I will be back to my bed at night, it will just take some nano-seconds for my mind to start displaying all the rest of channels on the inside of my eye-lids in the best possible way it could show!
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PS : In one way or the other all the creatures named as ‘human’ will be put into a particular clan/tribe/caste by birth! Absolutely not his/her choice or decision! And that’s your fate because you are born as a ‘human’! And your life starts there, letting that as the first chance for someone else to take a decision for you! Even though nothing is being agreed, at least I can assure that all religions agree upon one thing that ‘he will go to ‘hell’ if he is an atheist’!
I wish I had a remote control in my hands? - With just one button to erase all sort of discriminations, barriers, rules, inherent complications… from human mind? from the face of this World?! Couldn’t a relative logical thinking based on the already existing empirical or statistical data provide you with a new dimension of knowledge? I wonder if rotation of Earth is somehow leading us towards a ‘Scientific world’ where we may eventually see confused mass of human matter lay stranding here and there without knowing what actually is to be done! J
... journey continues...
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