The Simple Royal

On the journey of life that has taken me to places far and wide, owing to the occupational hazard of having a father who was an Officer in the Indian Navy, there is one particular locale that will always bring a smile to my face; even one as I write this.

Titled "Queen of the Arabian Sea", Kochi, or Cochin if you prefer, was where I spent eight years, at a stretch, as I grew up. From the carefree days of Class I B to the first few tentative steps of adolescence in Class VIII A, Kochi, with her (relative) city-charm, steeped in mulled history, with a constant striving to become a metropolitan, holds a special place in my heart. The Chinese Fishing Nets of Fort Kochi that constantly bob up and down from dawn to dusk, to the Bolghatty Palace on Bolghatty Island that still retains its old word charm with the aura of Britsh regalia surrounding it, Kochi may be small, but it still holds the captivating essence of an era gone by.

I remember taking trips down to the Naval beach at INS Dronacharya, being ferried across in motorboats that groaned and rumbled simultaneously; I remember having picnics on the Golf Course inside Katari Bagh, which was the Naval Officers' Residential Enclave, laughing at signboards that yelled "Beware of Flying Golfballs! Flying Golfballs can be Lethal!"; I remember humid, rain stained evenings spent cycling on the wet roads of Foreshor Road, completely oblivious to the fact that we were zooming past the houses of Commodores and Admirals, screaming and shrieking sounds of absolute glee.

Kochi, with her fierce thunderstorms, dense humidity and constant presence of snakes and mosquitoes, could still hold her own among the bigger cities of our country. She may not have had a Spencer Plaza to hang out in, an IMAX for the true movie-going experience (though Sridhar still is very, very cool, I hear), a Juhu Beach to relax (and bird watch) on, or a Metro (though I hear there are plans for it), nor may she have had the fast paced life that the bigger cities boast of; for my innocent and childish mind, Kochi was my favorite place to be. In some ways, I think, it may still be.

Mad Mentoring (Or Something of the Sort)

Of the many hundred of people that I've come across over the past twenty years of my life, there are only a few whom I can call interesting, and only a handful I'd label as intellectually stimulating. From this subset of people, one of the most exciting whom I've met is a man who was both teacher and friend; Hussain Indorewala. With a name that long, you would expect someone who is tall, religious and uptight, but life has funny ways of imbibing in you simple, yet important lessons - one of which being "Never judge a book by its cover".

Standing at (I assume) barely five feet tall, Grandfather glasses on his nose that framed his big eyes, a mouth that was always in a smirk and wavy hair that had tints of gray catching the light, Hussain had the look of a man who was a school-teacher's worst nightmare and the brain of the same teacher's most cherished dream.

Taking a subject that was as vast and rambling as Basic Design and streamlining it to suit an architecture class's syllabus, is no mean feat; yet, he managed to do it with creativity and elan. If you spoke to him about a design that you had in mind, he would encourage you to push it forward, break barriers (including gravity for one assignment that included creating a design based on Jorge Luis Borges' "Library of Babel".), and show you designs made by other architects, that were similar in conception, to yours. With his brow furrowed, his eyes would twinkle behind his spectacles' frame and his smirk would grow as you explained an idea. Yet, for all his idealistic tendencies like refusing to eat meat of animals that were bred for the slaughterhouse; refusing to use even public transport because he believed that cycling thirty kilometers a day instead of using the bus to reduce his carbon footprint; or even simple, whacky ideas of meddling with our naive heads like asking us why we needed a door to define an entrance-way; his sense of mischief and fun was always an integral part of making us learn. Mind you, this included playing practical jokes on his colleagues as well. Such was his attitude to life, wherein having an argument was futile if you planned on winning, but not having an argument with him would be wasted opportunity.

Many others will come and go in my life who will pique my interest and intrigue my gray cells, but Hussain I will always have special regard and respect for, even if he annoyed me to no end.

Sugar and Spice and Chemical X

I wonder if you've ever come across the personified, in-the-flesh human version of a natural disaster. She's a common feature in my household. Glinting with a malevolent little twinkle in them, her nine year old beady eyes constantly dart from one corner to the other, looking for things to put out of place. In a way, she's a blessing in disguise (very heavily disguised). How? Well, let's just say that all the rooms in the house get a good and thorough check up for anything that may catch her eye, be it make up accessories or stationary items. It's almost like Spring Cleaning happened early!

Just like any natural disaster (coincidentally, we've nicknamed her Tsunami), it's the calm before the calamity strikes that brings about the anxiety around us, forcing every member of the family to chip in when it comes to hiding everything breakable, mouldable, edible (saccharine, not savory) and paint-able from her line of sight. Her nimble fingers, wiry limbs, poker straight hair that falls to her chin and skeletal frame quite often make me wonder if she just jumped off of one of the pages from "Oliver Twist"! She's adept at christening anything that finds her fancy, ranging from my eye-liner to my grandmother's watch, as her's, irrespective of whether she was told not to take others' things, or not.

I wouldn't call her a bad child, after all, with a mother who teaches eight year olds for a living, I've come to accept the fact that in the real world, minuscule signs of kleptomania, ADD and destructive behaviour in children, are actually signs of a happy childhood. I wonder if that makes me abnormal... Anyway, I would instead call her just another nine year old girl made of sugar and spice (in the ratio 1:4).

The Littlest of the Lot

I've begun to believe that I don't need external influences for my writing, when the internal ones are downright amusing. What better topic, really, than my own family! They're hilarious, lovable (once they grow on you) and quite fun to watch. So without further ado, I'm going to start a series of descriptive essays on none other than my family. Fair warning though, this will be in random order, so don't expect any form of continuity from one post to the other. The only continuous thread tacking everything together will be the fact that every member is related to me. Happy Reading and please do share along.

Trotting about with his round head held high, my two year old imp of a baby brother brings a delightfully mischievous aura into every room he steps into. Swinging only his left arm as he walks, he can give you the most charming of smiles, with his chipped upper incisor gleaming brightly, to make your anger not only subside, but completely vanish when he has been up to something destructive. His bright red lips seem to reflect the inner workings of his little mind, sometimes pursing and blowing only air out in his version of a whistle and sometimes opening wide and screaming for no apparent reason. His unnatural fear of ants, no matter what the size, colour or amount of life left in them, has proven to be a blessing to his mother and mine. "Suraj! Don't touch that!" makes no difference to him unless it has the word 'oombu' somewhere in the sentence. So now, for all intents and purposes, if he has to be punished or chastised for being a 'bad paapaa', we threaten him with an ant. However, if he's in a particularly stubborn mood, his podgy, caterpillar-sized fingers will clench into a fist while his peanut sized index finger will point indignantly at you and firmly proclaim "NO!". So much for obedience.

My baby brother can be quite demanding if he's hungry; and persistent at that. Rather than screaming for his milk (shrieking 'NANO' a few times just won't cut it for him), he rather chooses to wail and whimper for his 'Nano', as if we've been starving him, torturously so, for weeks. You would think that despite his maddening mischief; running through a list of things to pull down, urinate on, bite through (he has a preference for human flesh), whack, clang together and so on, all in the span of a mere 4 hours, we'd be a little more stringent with him. Alas, all thoughts of curbing his enthusiasm fly straight out the window when he sends you a kiss flying from cherubic little face, straight through your heart.