Atom bomb in a Papaya

Diwali was always special when we were kids for it was the only festival that packed the whole deal - school holidays, mom made special sweets, new clothes, new superstar movies and fireworks. Getting up early to burst individual bijilies however monotonous it sounds (that was a good pun eh?) was infinitely more rewarding and more interesting than having to get up early for, say, the Suryan poojai in Pongal. From a purely adrenaline point of view the other festivals were woefully short changed.(Side note - MS Word should get a Desi version. It tried to auto correct "Bijilies" to "Bikinis". Seriously. Abacharam.)

Unlike other festivals, Diwali alone had the unique distinction of getting started at least 10-15 days before the actual day.  

There was an elegant beauty to the sequence.

T minus 15 days - The Tape Gun games are the first. Oh how I miss those! Every year I used to cry, roll on the floor, plead, fight and get a new gun. The big box of "ammo" used to have 10 individual packages and each package used to have 10 rolls. Having one of these gave a deep sense of protection akin to Calvin making numerous snow balls.  Running around in the neighborhood with your friends,  shooting each other was a deeply satisfying and immensely enjoyable simulation of tactical urban warfare.

T minus 10 days - Then came the bijilies. These were cheap and numerous. So like the pawns on a chess game, these were the first to go without any remorse. The other "big" stuff had to be saved for the last. But Bijilies were my first experience with compounding items - tying up two or three or sometimes four of them together. Many of the bijilies also tended to fizzle out and so at the end of the day will be the paper-mat ritual where all dud ones are put on a paper and the paper is lit on fire. Nothing can go to waste after all, now can it?

T minus 6 days - Next in line were the slightly bigger crackers - the Kuruvis and the Krishnas. These were not the big guns but big enough to be treated with some consideration. These are taken out  5 -6 days before  Diwali.

T minus 3 days - Then it was time for the badass'es. The Lakshmis, the Netajis and the atom bombs. These were on limited supply, especially the atom bombs. Probably had only one pack of those. So these were carefully used and with utmost respect. Each pack of five was meticulously accounted for in the memorized stock list and every one of it made to burst. Duds were unacceptable - so every possible trick was use to ensure we get the bang for the buck. (that was a good pun too isn't it?)

T minus 1 day - The Eve! very special day as the first "night" crackers were burst that night. The night crackers are like the desserts of a meal. Expensive, exotic, available in limited quantity and saved for the last. The sparklers, flowerpots, chakras, snakes and pencils were all debuted that day.

T - the big day at last. This is the day for the exquisite ones - rock forts, double sounds and the one big lar/wala that was bought. It used to be a 200 or 300X one and it commanded the reverence of a nuclear warhead. It was special. very special. The entire family would bear witness to  this one. This was the Diwali highlight. The chief guest. The night was the eventful home stretch with the rest of the night stuff culminating with the rockets and a couple of exotic ones - like 5 bursts or parachute or butterflies.

It is fascinating to realize how Diwali, the most awaited days of my childhood has merely become just another festival.  It still retains the meaningful aspects of a festival of course  - about greeting people, catching the patti manram on TV, watching a new movie and spending time with family& friends. But I miss the Diwali high, the excitement, the glee and the joy of bursting crackers. The things adulthood finds itself handicapped to grasp. I guess age tempers itself with what we believe as acceptable behavior and this conditioning  is so subliminal that we don't realize that we are growing old and boring.

One of our favorite Diwali time custom activity was to take papayas (from the trees in the playground), drill a hole, squeeze an atom bomb, light it, run, hide behind the walls and trees and wait in anticipation with bated breath for the "frag grenade" to blow. When the bomb goes off in a glorious and colorful spray of papaya, my friends and I will be clapping, giggling and high fiving.

I certainly don't see myself or my friends doing that now.

The joy of childhood comes from equal parts of innocence and irreverence.

Diwali will always be special for no other festival lends itself so well for these childhood qualities  to be expressed, enjoyed and celebrated.

Diwali will always be special for no other festival reminds us of our childhood and the joy of childhood. And there, in the midst of this remembrance, lies our motivation to live & love like a child and hence our redemption.

Happy Diwali folks.

PS - While I did concede that I don't see myself putting an atom bomb in a papaya now, I have to be honest and confess that I still find the idea brilliantly fascinating. 

The Motley Pill - Origin Story

More often than not, I have judged my own hobbies. This erroneous tendency, growing in influence with age, akin to any of the small voices at the back of my head that tell me it is wrong to pick noses in public or that I shouldn't nibble my Tshirt, unfortunately has the uncanny ability to smell like wisdom and hence nurture itself with whatever scant resources available in the barren land of my mind.

A detour now. Astral trips or out of body experiences, while a subject matter of neuroscience and psychology, is, in a mild form, very easily achieved. Ever tried saying your name continuously for a few times? After a few seconds the name and the concept of self seems very alien, something that is terrifyingly liberating. It's too tempting to delineate what we are with what our name signifies - which is actually a lot, including our life, our career, our person as such. Pause at this moment. Try it out. Go stand before a mirror (if it helps), blank your mind and repeat your own name.  See what I mean? May be it doesn't work all the time. But I am sure each of us have gone through these moments of extreme lucidity, however short lived it may be, where we transcendentally realise and experience the insignificance of our lives. 

Carl Sagan's Pale Blue dot quote hits the spot like nothing else though his intention of the statement might have been different. No, you don't have to Google it. I like you. So here you go, the quote diligently copy pasted.

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. -Carl Sagan.

and the point of this digression? the point is that there is no point in anything anybody does. So we should probably take ourselves a little less seriously. The pervasiveness of competition  in our lives is so complete and absolute that we don't even realize how our actions and thoughts are molded by it. 

It is sad that many of us aren't even comfortable talking about our hobbies. I realized this when I caught myself one day that I usually say "I read" when people ask me what I do with my time. It's not that I don't read, I do, but truth be told I should always say "I read and I watch movies and I play video games". It's just that subconsciously I have relegated watching movies to a "lesser" grade of a hobby.  It was stupid. So I have consciously corrected that in the last few days and this post is a continuation of that correction.

I love movies.

If I spend my hard earned money for something and/or my precious time and feel satisfied, contended and happy by doing so, it means I love it right? 

So as a record of my romance with movies I am starting my first movie blog. Your feedback and suggestions are sincerely solicited. :)

www.motleypill.blogspot.com

Our hobbies aren't what should make us cool or help us woo or make us social celebrities. Our hobbies simply have to make us happy. Our hobbies should give us an avenue to independently and harmlessly rejuvenate ourselves. Our hobbies should give us an sanctuary to hide from life's grind and turmoil. And it doesn't matter what it is. Some travel, some dance, some sing, some play, some cook, some talk, some sleep, some read, some watch, some browse...doesn't matter.  

We are, after all,a mote of dust on a mote of dust.

Should take pride in what gives us happiness. As Nicolas Cage once wisely said... ..."that's the secret to survival. Never go to war. Especially with yourself."

Orkut

Haven't written in a long while now.  Why, I ask myself and find the other part of me scratching its head in an unabashed display of denial and sham.

Here I was, in the gambling-void Las Vegas of Middle east, killing time browsing, having already eaten my fabulously delicious and unhealthy ready-to-eat dinner, when in a sudden burst of nostalgia, decided to check out Orkut as I vaguely remembered a news article mentioning that the service is being discontinued.

As much as I hate to admit it, it was simultaneously a feeling of joy and depression, not unlike a dark comedy from the Coen brothers. And why do I hate to admit it? Because I didn't think Orkut of all things can evoke such strong emotions. The voice inside my head went "duh..really?".

It is so because it made me realize that the old life, the college days, the feeling of innocence and arrogance and self righteousness that lend itself only to youth, the age of camaraderie, the  joy of friendships unadulterated with any kind of anxiety and the gut wrenching laughter are things of the past. It  made all of it seem distant and surreal, like the pictures found on a long lost photo album, like the memory of a mostly forgotten story that we made our mom tell us when we were 5 years old, like the vague remembrance of our childhood house and....like Orkut.

yeah. I used "youth" in the past tense. Well I feel old and those days seem long gone.

Going through the photos and "scraps" and "testimonials" was actually a very poignant experience. . I saved the archive in fear of losing  this. I suggest you do it as well. (Well, if you are actually reading this, you are probably a good friend of mine and that is probably the only reason you are reading this. So consider this my request).

In fact, once I finish writing this, I will put this in Facebook. And that's what Facebook has become - a news feed. I actually miss Orkut or rather the age it symbolises for me. The countless arguments and discussions and long chats and longer mails that I have had with some of the most wonderful people seem like exorbitant luxuries considering the dearth of fun, carefree moments where I am myself and there is no more agenda other than the simple enjoyment of conversation, in the last few years. I have grown up and so have my friends. Each mired in what we call our lives.

But I also recognize that the warmth and bond is pretty much undiminished when I get to meet or talk to these people on these rare celestial events. That is very heartening to realise though. The wit, the banter and the jokes flow freely when amongst them. It's almost like that part of me is still alive. Probably within all of us. And it feels good to revisit that self.

and why didn't I write? Why haven't I  been able to keep in touch with the people I would want to? why I talk to my best friends on freaking Whatsap once in a blue moon?  Why don't I write a beautiful handwritten letter to my loved ones? Why don't I do the things that I really like? I guess it's partly because I meekly accept defeat to what I make up to be my life, partly because I assume everyone is very busy  including myself, partly because of the feeling that everybody has their own lives now and partly because all of these reasons are actually true.

Then why am I suddenly writing now? I guess it's that optimistic rebellious part of me expressing itself -reaching out to the unreachable past, attempting to relish this life, feeling joy for what has been good, showing respect to what has been tough, vowing to live in my terms and being thankful for all the people & memories that I have known & made and doing what I like,  in spite of knowing full well that this part of me will smother itself to death by probably tomorrow morning in a glorious display of shortsightedness, fallacious setting of priorities and a spectacular inability to distinguish between what is important and what seems important,

Well, what can I say..it still feels good, while momentary and ethereal it may be.

But then, what is not?