A Firm Decision

It is slightly cold, but all the travelling had made me tired and sweating, train has just arrived in the station and everyone is rushing to get the first bus out from station, prepaid auto rickshaw stand is buzzing, people are waiting in long queue to get an auto. Altogether the station is crowded, and the time is nearing 11:30pm. No one was there to fetch me, and it was impossible for me to get into that crowded bus, so I went near the prepaid auto stand. The unending queue made me think otherwise. I decided to go to the bus stand near the station, hopefully there will be some bus, and the story begins.

Kannur, my native is known for its political history, one of the rapidly progressing districts of Kerala. Kannur railway station is a fairly huge station with people coming and going all the time, the new bus stand constructed to the left of railway station and opposite to old bus stand was a milestone achievement. The old bus stand was nearly forgotten after the new one started functioning. All the buses that started from the new bus stand have to stop at the old stand but the buses which started from the old stand need not go to the new bus stand. A lot of union problems were there during and after the construction of new stand, and I believe its still there, which lead to such a decision by the authorities. The odds favored the old bus stand and the decision was made, I took the right turn after exiting the railway station.

I was alone and tired, even worse was that my phone was dead. The long and boring journey all the way from my college has sucked up all my energy, but the excitement on reaching my hometown after a long gap gave me some rejoice. The busy station opened up to a dark and silent road, without a second thought I started walking towards the old bus stand. The night was really quite and cold, but I was sure in my decision to not take an auto rickshaw. I could see two people walking way ahead of me, that gave me some courage. I was really nervous from inside, but took special care to hide it and acted more like a macho guy. I know this place like back of my hand, has walked through this road infinite number of times, but never alone and that too at night. Each and every shop is closed, and why would it be opened in the middle of night, I tried to answer all my quires by myself and moved on. I have now walked past the vicinity of the lone street light, and my eyes are now cemented to the lane on which I am walking, even god will be unsure of the things lying there, and I walked slowly.

I am sure that everyone will be afraid of stray dogs, it is not the fear of dogs mainly rather it is the fear of injections we have to take after the dog bite. I am very much afraid of those injections and also stray dogs. Now a days  a lot of discussions have been going on in the top level authorities to overcome this stray dog issue. Mass killing of stray dogs was hot debate topic recently. And back to the story, I was praying to god that not even a single dog pop up in front of me( i am an atheist most of the times). The old bus stand was hardly 250 meters from the station but it seemed to be never ending when I started walking. Now I have reached the junction past the petrol bunk, this junction is known by the name of a temple situated there, the faint yellow light coming from the junction street light covered a fair bit of distance and automatically my walking speed was increased. I kept telling myself  'a little more' to curb my nervousness, But by now I have lost sight of the two people who walked ahead of me and some auto rickshaws were flying past me with passengers. No, once you made your decision you have to stick with it, I kept reminding myself that.

Now I have to walk through the underpass which always leaked water from above, and once the rainy season begins you could actually go fishing there. The road literally become pond after a rain or two. This underpass has hosted a lot of protests and dharnas, but nothing really worked for its favor. The leaking drops created a wired sound and it was annoyingly echoed by the walls of the underpass. It was pitch dark inside the underpass, but luckily for me a auto rickshaw was coming from the opposite direction and I managed to get through. All the main frightening points have been crossed and now its just a straight walk till the stand, some street lights on either side of the road provided ample amount of light and I was quite happy with that. It was nearing 12' o clock and I needed a good night sleep very badly. But I was in for a very bad suprize. The old bus stand was closed for some construction work, taring the road I guess. There was not even a single bus. I was shattered, all the courage(for me of course) I have shown went in vain. My calm nature went for a toss, and I am now boiling with anger, anger over myself for making such a poor choice.  But the relieving thing was the presence of some people their who have made my same mistake. I went up to them and asked where to find bus, sadly they didnt had any idea about it. I felt like shit, what a bad situation to be in, now I will have to walk back the same distance to get an auto or I have to walk even further to see whether there is bus or not. I thought for myself, walking further at this point of time will be a stupid decision, but going back and getting an auto will surely dent my self belief. Oh that was very bad situation you dont want yourself to be in,trust me. I made my decision and started to walk back with a stupid face. This time I was not afraid to walk through the dark road instead I was thinking about the foolish decision I made earlier. F*#k Me.

The Grand Old Tree

Sometimes its silly, but most of the times we are very much attached to our surroundings, we will be forced to live in places which we never like, but the nostalgic memories from within us gives us a refreshed feeling, or more precisely a moment of joy.There will be numerous things around us which knowingly or unknowingly gets attached with us, we will never understand its value until its gone.

Kannur, Yes that's my native place, people from Kerala will surely know the importance of Kannur for its political history, a place rich in culture and heritage. But this blog is not about Kannur, rather its about my small house located in Kannur near Valapattanam, an old house, a house which is older than my mother. My grandmother build this house after a long hard struggle, she always shared the troubles she had faced financially and mentally to construct this small yet strong house. I always used to wonder about her will power, she was a rock solid women inside and still maintained a kind posture. Circumstance changes a person completely, that must be the thing with her. But no, this blog is also not about my grandmother, My grandmother requires more then just a reference here and there. This blog is about a grand old jack fruit tree. Yes, even jackfruit trees can inspire you to write blogs, I am not sure how old that tree is, but I am sure that it has fed a lot of generations.

The house in which I grew was not the most financially stable house, we had our own share of troubles to make our ends meet. But I have no right to complain about my past, as all of those who took care of me has given me more than I deserved. Our house was a delightful place, we are all attached to that place where we grow up, no matter how the conditions are, we will  never be able to forget the tiny memories associated with it. There were a lot of trees in my backyard, but a jackfruit tree which stood in the front of my house was something special. As a kid I never liked the taste, smell or even the look of jackfruits, I found it very ugly and fat, we even mock people calling them "chakka" (the malayalam name of jack fruit). And I was not fond of that tree, It was always full of ants which when bites, Oh my god... the pain is more then what i could explain, and when jackfruits start to fall from tree, GROSS it was a big sticky and stingy mess, moreover it caused a serious problem while playing badminton, once the shuttle cock get stuck in one of its branches and we had to stop our play. 

 

                                                                                                                                                              

But others in the house was very much in love for this tree which i never understood, everyone except me like to eat ripe jack fruits like crazy, my mother, brother , aunt, uncle even my neighbours came running for it. But I never found it as something special. Now I wish I had eaten it  a lot those days, my grand mother used to make jack fruit jam which I am very much fond of these days. But I always kept a blind eye towards everything which had a jack in it, foolish me. 

The history as I said earlier associated with that tree and my family is deep rooted, my mother has told me many stories of how they have survived for days only eating the jackfruits. They trust this tree, they keep believing that this tree will provide them with food, which sounds foolish, but it is the truth. All my relatives living in different places always made sure that they eat this fruit whenever they came to my house, Obviously they came during their vacation but still they had that super craze to have some of it. People like me are those 'proud of nothing' type, we always find problems, issues with each and everything around us, and desire for something which we never had, I liked almost all the other fruits and simply ignored the one which is in front of me.

My grand mother died and the complete scenario changed, I was in college during that time and my brother was working in Mumbai. My mother was alone there so we moved into Vallikav Kollam, near my college, I surely missed my native but little did I know that I was going to miss that stupid tree, you get the irony right. Sometimes its like that, you simply dont require any real reason to miss something. Now I have started eating jackfruits from here in vallikav, and i really regret my decision of not eating that till now, All these years when we had plenty of ripe fleshy and juicy fruits, I ignored it and craved for something which was not there for the taking, Now after leaving that place and most probably for a very long period, I have developed a deep desire to eat that fruit.

I have learned an important lesson from this, that one should be able to find content with whatever he is having, I might not be able to implement this completely, but I will certainly remember this lesson whenever I turn greedy for something which I dont have. That tree certainly have some connection with our family, generations after generations it keeps on attaching the missing links of the family together and teaching us some important life lessons. Most of us keep trying to become someone or something which we are not, and shy away from the reality, but nature will keep on providing us with enough examples to look into, it must be our duty to understand it before too late.

Last Bench Love - 2

Before starting i would like to apologize to everyone for my grammatical and spelling mistakes in the previous post, and special thanks to everyone who pointed out the mistakes. I will try my best to keep it error free.

'Why are you disturbing her?' the angry face of my class teacher confused me very much, she kept on talking,  'dont stand there looking like an idiot, now give me an answer', the whole staff room turned towards me staring hard. 

The days started to become eventful, slight drizzle has now changed to heavy downpour, stagnant water here and there, nobody would have liked to get out in such a heavy rain, but my usual laziness have got a sudden hit, i may not be super exited to go to class, but i was never late to get the first bus to school, there was now a special joy in reaching the class.

Now let me give you a slight intro about her, a small girl with even smaller face, her shining locks were always kept tied without allowing it to breath fresh air, eyes big and always opened, but her main attraction  was the beautiful smile she had, she was never stingy in smiling, maybe a tad too much of smile, but she is beautiful in her own way and i never found her innocent smile so appealing till then, but the major issue for me was her close friend(a fat bi**h), her friend was always with her, and she was so annoying, she had a great influence on her decisions, and that was even more annoying, but a challenge is what we all like, isnt it. For me the hard part was to impress her fat friend, which was almost impossible, but i never lost hope in doing so.

Now that a slight change to my character was visibly clear to everyone, many of my teachers started to mention my name in class, telling me that i have changed a lot and should focus on studies and nothing else, to be true i actually liked teachers saying that because i always wanted to change my image of being a nerd, most importantly i was getting the much needed attention of the class and she started to notice me, she never took any interest in talking with me, but she started to smile whenever she saw me, and i will never be able to describe my happiness in words of seeing her smile. Till then i believed that having a girlfriend or even a lover is only to be a cool dude, and it has is nothing to do with your future life, marriage, children, once you have completed your school everyone will part ways and someone new will come into your life or atleast in your thoughts, but her smile has changed my concept of love, and i am very much greatful to her for that, she taught me an important lesson of life, it is better to be loved and lost than never to be loved at all.

One day i accidentally told my other friends about her, and that turned out to be a very bad accident afterall, they told me to go and tell her about it, and started to urge me for doing that, if they had told me do so ealier, i would have done it without any hesitation, but now the whole scenario has changed and i lacked courage to do so, now i was even afraid to stare at her anytime during class, as my friends would notice it. Some of the girls already had their doubt and my friends helped them to solve the mystery, and they started to give me that sarcastic smile, which i hated the most. I was afraid about the kind of reaction she will be having after hearing such things from her friends. Next day, i didnt found the usual smile on her face and her fat friend was staring at me like i was a criminal, so the conclusions were made pretty easily and i was completely shattered. During break time her friend came to me and told that she doesnt love me and if her mother came to know about it then that will be her end, i was completely shocked, she was looking at me from a distance and was very nervous, i lost my words and only stared at her.

My friends being what they are became active on hearing this from her friend and started to make fun of her and her friend openly during class and interval time, to be frank i enjoyed that to a little extend where her fat friend was made fun of, even today i believe that it is her master brain that has worked against me, but the joke started to turn serious, one day i saw her cry in class, and others girls were sitting next to her, one girl came to me and told that she is very upset and i am the reason for it, my friends are making fun of her and she was not taking it well, that really made me feel bad, but i didnt asked my friends about it, after seeing her cry they also stopped it i think. Then after that incident everything took a U-turn, she looked sad all the time, and her beautiful smile was also missing, the girls in my class also started to isolate me. My friends stood by me all the time, and they had a lot of plans to get things back on track,though nothing was applicable in real life.

One day i decided to go and meet her in her house, whatever be the consequence, I had a rough idea about where her house is, but was not quite sure, still my gut feeling was to go meet her and say sorry, this decision came out of desperation, +1 classes had concluded, vacation classes will start within two weeks or so, my main aim was to build back the old friendship, and to see her smile again, It took me a lot of time to decide on whether to go or not, for a person like me it was a very big issue, simply because i had never visited a girlfriend's house before, but i was sure about one thing if i am going i will be going alone and not with my friends, as she did not like my friends too much, i reached her place but had no idea about her house, after calling one girl i got her address and moved towards her house, you cannot image the tension i had while going to meet her, my palms were leaking water, heart was pumping more than it ever had, it is impossible for me to explain that situation, i reached in front of her gate, my mind was completely unsure about what to do next, NO, my courage has cheated me once again, i cannot do it, i simply cant, i walked forward without even looking back, my eyes started to fill up, but i tried to control my emotions to the max, i will never be able to talk to her again, i said to myself and returned home.

Vacation classes commenced and it was really boring, she was also there and she looked happy, i could see her smile again, but she was not ready to talk or even to look at me, the next day i was called into the staff room by my teacher and she had a lot of questions for me, she came to know about all those stuff and was really angry with me, i wondered how she knew things that happened a month ago, but the real suprize was not that, it was her mother who told my teacher about all those things, i was shocked and frightened to hear that, she told everything to her mother, i could not believe that, after a lot of harassment teacher told me stay away from her and to concentrate on studies in a soothing manner. 2 months passed and we didnt talked or even looked at each other, then we had our school tour and so on, i am not explaining each and every incident, then this story will never come to an end, lot of days passed since that staffroom issue and every one seemed to forget about it, all my friends had a smooth relationship with their girlfriend, and they always looked happy while talking about them, i tried my best to remain sarcastic while talking about her, my ego of not having a girlfriend has gone, maybe i was too much proud of my looks that i thought girls will fly and come to me, all those negative thoughts have slowly started to go, i was obviously sad, but there was some satisfaction, as days passed it was time for model exams, and everyone was terrified about the final exams, all my friends came to my home for combined study and that was real fun.

As said earlier i am not explaining everything, as it may sound boring, but the real twist in the tale happened during the second model exam, she talked to me, she told me all the best for the exams and study hard along with her pretty smile, my reaction was completely stupid, i walked away without telling anything in reply, even today i dont know why i did that, my mind was completely lost and wandering, our exam will start on 14th february , physics lab exam. I was not bothered about the exam or viva, all the time i was culminating my courage to finally say to her what i feel on the day of love, i bought a card and scribbled something on it, and was completely prepared to face any challenge, this is the last chance, after school i may never be able to see her again, i didnt even have her number,( actually i had her num but most of the time it was with her mom), so after setting my mind ready for it, i went ahead,  you see i am having a nerd history so i had obviously prepared for the exam, but more than that i was feeling determined and confident, so exam turned out to be easy for me. After exam i waited for her on the staircase, i thought that would be romantic enough for her, she has to go through that stairs after completing the exam so it had dual pourpose. And finally i saw her coming down the stairs, her fat friend was also with her, so i requested her to talk with me in private, her friend moved away and we got our own space for the first time, i didnt felt any kind of nervousness and gifted her the card, and said 'I LOVE YOU, if i didnt say it now then i will never be able to say it another time, you can either like me or not but i will never be able to forget you as you are my first love', her eyes sprang out from their sockets, she started to sweat i think, but kept staring into my eyes without saying a word, she was searching for words to give a reply, i could read it out from her face, she started to walk away without uttering a word, and i kept staring at her from behind, but didnt asked her to stop.

I did expect such a behavior from her, so it did not had much effect on me, but my proposal was completely out of the blue and she was really shocked, the story did continue but unfortunately it didnt ended well, all of us had moved on since then, but the feel of first love is still within me, and it will always remain in me, we did talk after that, but nothing positive happened, this last bench love has given me a lot of memories to cherish, hopefully some day i will also find my true love.