Tag: vacation

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.

Nothing Stranger than Truth!

Describe a random encounter with a stranger that stuck out positively to you.

The year was 2004. I was new to London. 

I had just been there for work. My office was located on Marsh Wall Road and Canary Wharf, the famous financial district, was just 10 minutes’ walk away.

At the close of office hours, I used to take a stroll to see the place around Docklands. 

The Canary Wharf is home to many tall buildings, including the UK’s second tallest, One Canada Square.

Canary Wharf was a scenic beauty with a footbridge hung by wires and barely touching the waters, a huge shopping mall, seagulls flying so close to the waters in the Thames, the toy-train DLR (Dockland Light Railway) transporting commuters and visitors (in a solemn silence), the green parks & benches, punishing wind passing through skyscrapers, cycling lane and clean roads all around. It was simply a treat to watch.

I had a DSLR camera. The weekends in that part of the world are normally quieter. As one who had just landed in London, I wished to click some pictures and wanted to send them home to India.

I was snapping away all that came within my eyesight.

I had just stopped when I saw a group of kids getting ready for a face-painting competition. 

I watched them gather in groups and some sitting on tall stools. The make-up artists were busy drawing cartoon characters on their faces. I guessed an event was being organized. I didn’t want to miss one.

I started clicking. Shots of the venue, the audience, kids running, laughing and joking. I took the camera very close to the kids’ faces and clicked. The cartoon faces just began to fill my camera.

No sooner had I finished doing a great photographer’s job for the week than I was stopped by the long arm of an adult. Someone tapped on my shoulder.

“Sir, can I have a minute?” 

“Yes, sure” I said. I was a bit worried. 

The man said he was the father of one of the kids participating in the competition. And he wanted to know who I was and what business I had there.

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I started sweating. Did I do anything wrong? 

I explained who I was, the reason I had been in the Docklands and told him photography was my passion.

The man who was a complete stranger warned me that I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of kids unless I carried an ID or authorized by the organizers of the event. 

Secondly, he said it was a crime to take pictures of kids without permission from parents or the kids’ guardian. I was gobsmacked! 

He told me to show him those snaps. I quickly obliged, pressed the cam on and showed him the whole sequence of my evening at Canary Wharf.

He asked me to delete each one of the kids’ photos. The other parents soon gathered. They made sure I deleted all the kids’ pictures.

I apologized and left home. It dawned on me how ignorant I was. 

That was surely a positive lesson to learn in life.