Tag: dreams

A wrist watch my uncle from Singapore gave me as a gift. So cute looking and I fell in love, in an instant. I wore it wherever I went. To occasions such as party, cinema, sports and small & big functions. Until someone spotted and told me I was wearing a ladies wrist watch. OMG! Slim straps, smaller numerals and a whole lot of jewellery. I have it now hidden inside a chest at home I only know where.

Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?

Cast, crush and a crash! All in a day!

Write about your first crush.

I was a young boy of about nine or ten. Our ancestral home was located in a village called Pudukottai, far away from Chennai, the capital of Tamilnadu, South of India.

People in our village gather every year during the month of January to celebrate harvesting. They conduct various local fun and play activities that include staging dramas. 

We call it Pongal Festival in Tamil.

Theatre and drama in India, as you know, are very ancient. They date back to the 2nd century BC.

Folks in villages found them mostly entertaining in nature. The drama crew showcased a lot of local tales and people sat the whole night watching the cast. They didn’t sleep a wink.

I was attracted to one such drama and fell in love with the female cast. She was beautiful. Flawless in her performance. People clapped each time she appeared on stage. 

She was simply a WOW! I had no clue about what the story was about though. 

All I knew, I had found my crush.

I went crazy, didn’t miss the show, sneaked through each night, three nights in a row hoping I would meet her and say she did a good show.

On the fourth day the crew packed up and gone. I welled-up in my eyes.

As I grew up, one day my uncle told me that the cast in those dramas were mostly boys and not girls. The girl, he said, I was madly in love with could probably be a boy.

What! Was my first crush a boy?

Gobsmacked! Years have gone, but the memory is still fresh.

A Polo for a Porsche?

Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?

Well, it was one day in 2012. 

I was flying from Delhi to Chennai. I saw this advertisement in a magazine while sipping a cuppa.

I’ve always dreamed of owning a fast (flashy) car. But I can’t afford a Porsche.

I thought owning a Porsche would at least help avoid eating the horrible food on the airline. 

I now drive a Volkswagen Polo GT. I still fly. Eat the same boring food. Sad.

Wish I had seriously considered popping in at a Porsche showroom and laid a hand on one. So much so that I don’t eat the airline food any longer. At all.

I’m looking at an offer from the German car company that helps exchange a Polo for a brand-new Porsche.

Hello, Porsche?

 

A Character in Wild-pants!

When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

When we were five, we were mostly dreamers. A dreamer with eyes wide open. A dreamer deep asleep.

I was too young to think of what I would become as I was told a lot of stories about animals and characters in cartoons. I lived purely in an imaginary world. A fairy tale life, to be precise.

I enjoyed listening to those stories and I imagined I would one day go meet them really and want to spend time with them.

Some stories wouldn’t end well as characters were chased and put to death. That gave me nightmares.

I remember I asked my parents one day if I could stop people killing animals. My parents told me that I should then become a forest officer, wear a uniform, carry a gun and travel in an open jeep. All day and night. A life in the wilderness. 

That’s when I imagined I would be an officer who was out and about helping save the animals.

That gave me pleasure. I thought I would bring those animals home, live with them in the comfort of my parents, brothers and sister.

A happy cartoon family was what I wanted.