Randomness !!!!!!

A strange realisation that suddenly dawned upon me and thought I’d share it with you’ll
Our lives are essentially a function of randomness
from the chromosomes determining our gender
to the families we are born into,
from the random lottery determining our KG admissions
to our bench partners being randomly allotted to us in class and becoming a lifetime friend,
from the random questions we revise just before entering an exam hall and finding them in the
paper
to the random moods of the examiner determining our marks
from the wicked sharks we bump into randomly
to the angels we discover randomly
from the random job consultants suddenly calling up
to the random people becoming our bosses
random people we fall in love with or are forced to
random death sequences
It is this randomness that essentially determines how our lives go down the pages of history
Its this randomness that we ought to surrender ourselves to

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Anurag 19:33  2 comments

Nanaji

Laughing faces do not mean that there is absence of sorrow ! It just means they have the ability to deal with it !!! Nothing epitomised this more than my Nanaji !!

I just can't seem to forget the calm voice in which he'd utter his magic words "koi khaas baat nahi hai " that would instantly put to rest all the waves of turbulence that would be hitherto tormenting your existence till the point you finally decided to share the same with him.

The reassuring impact would be all the more profound for someone who knew him closely, for someone who had either seen / heard (like me) how the man who had refused to say "Quits" to life in his 63 years but somehow had always managed to muster the strength to move ahead with unbridled enthusiasm......

He'd strike up instant solutions to all your problems.....

A school-days incident strikes me instantly:

Way back in the year 1999, freshly enrolled into a Class 9 Accountancy course, the school rules didn't permit usage of the calculator. Wondering how to cross-check my answers,especially when one had to sum up a long list of numbers. I went up to him with perplexed looks on my face.He simply smiled and said "All that you need to i) do is add up the digits in the long list of numbers and ii) find the remainder on dividing by 9. If this matches with the remainder obtained on dividing the answer by 9, be rest assured that the casting is correct !!!!!!". I was dumb-struck by the sheer mathematical excellence. This was some rule of Vedic Mathematics coming from a person who had very little formal education. "Wow..Nanaji...u are great " was the instant reply ........his little trick helped me score a 99 in Accountancy that exam and I was on Cloud Nine. When I showed him my report card, he said it was time for celebration. "Bhutta khilayega kya?" he asked ..."Dekhna kacha daana hona chahiye" .....little things in life brought him so much joy !!!

Everything about him had a particular style ...from his attire to his walking style ...from the literature he read to his social circle!!!

On each occasion in our family, be it a birthday or an anniversary, we'd line up to take his blessings by turn.......he'd take out his bundle of crisp Rs 100 notes and hand each of us one .....we still have them preserved with us ....no one dares spend them !!! I may add that so concerned was he about everyone that he'd hand over Mom 3 notes for Didz, Jiju and Reet, my niece also ...to be given without default the next time he came !!!

He truly was the value strategist of our family , who's vision steered the execution of our lives !!

He was equally receptive to our jokes. With age , as one' wisdom increases, he gets balder ........but the few remaining hair-strands were Nanaji's prized possession !!! While we giggle away in our hearts of hearts, we'd urge him that it was high time he went for a haircut :) He'd respond with his usual smile .."Haan ...naai ke jaana hai ..time nahi mil raha"

He himself would share jokes of his youth days with us !! Once he had gone to a customer in Burtolla Street to collect his payment and the customer asked him to wait and continuously kept looking at the sky. Exasperated beyond a point , at 6 pm , Nanaji asked him ..."aasmaan mein se tapkega kya paisa ? payment hai toh de nahi toh jai raam ji ki " ..He burst into laughter when the customer politely replied " Sahaab , baarish nahi aane pe fatka laga rakha hai. Bas 15 minutes nahi aayi toh Rs 10,000 kamayenge ..ussi se aapko payment denge " !!!

Once I had suddenly developed a fancy for an experiment to burn a piece of paper by focusing the sun's rays with a convex glass !!! I had just shared this aspiration of mine with him when I went to nanibaadi......To my utter surprise, the next day , he came himself to hand me over my cherished toy......God knows where he had sourced it from as I had been desperately searching tinsel town since days for this. This was just once such incident ...each and every demand of ours , if overturned at Mom/Dad's level would be fulfilled by him !! he'd especially turn our "lender of the last resort " when we had run out of our pocket money for the month .....

The moment someone didn't visit him for a few days , a call would instantly come up ....."kya hua , kisi cheez mein uljha hua hai kya ?" and you'd rush off to meet him !!!

And suddenly post Diwali-09, the turn of events eventually snatched him from us in a time span of less than six months.

We lost him !!

Lost to the corrupt hospital, to the insensitive doctors

But eventually I'd say we lost him to destiny !!!

Probably the Almighty needed him more than us !!!

Tomorrow (16.09.10) would be the first time when I'd not be able to touch Nanaji's feet for blessings on my birthday ...and it would be painful, really painful !!

Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes.

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Anurag 02:37  4 comments

Didz........

"Monu ...will u cry at the time of my vidai ?" my didz would time and again ask me ..
"Paagal hai kya " would be my instant reply .. "It would be the happiest moment of my life ..Imagine the joy of having the whole bed at my disposal.. The almirah in it's entirety. Realisation of the fact that post your marriage ,I would be an eligible bachelor puts me on Cloud Nine."

But as she walked down the aisle on the 5th of February ...this apparently so insensitive brother of hers was overcome by an irresistible surge of emotions ...memories of a 22 years of an awesome association flashed by him in split seconds ...and he was left in tears ...he cried contrary to public expectation!!!!!

Yes, I cried!!!!!!!!
The sudden realisation dawned upon me that henceforth my sweet sis would be Mrs. Nitika Agrawal and not Ms Nitika Singal !
That she would now don the mantle of a bahu and that vermillon, bindis, saris and payals would now characterise her existence...it would not just be her appearance for a fancy dress competition as she had done in class KG ..!!
That from now on I would be touching her feet for blessings!!!
That henceforth she'd just be a guest to our house and her visits marked by much fanfare would be only ocassional !!!!

22 years of an association marked by awesome moments ..moments of joy ..moments of despair.. moments when we taunted each other .moments when we made faces at each other ..

Those unforgettable moments probably constitute our biggest treasures!

I would sleathily enter into the room where she was exercising in the guise of dancing and tease her for trying to shed that excess flab!! "Moti..." (the more she got irritated ,it was all the more thrilling..)

No sooner did she return from office then I would rush off to the jhaal muri vendor
"Futafatt ek muri baniye ..bittu didi ke liye " and he'd understand it all ..would require no further instructions for his most-valued customer!

The wars she'd wage on me on realising from the wrappers thrown around that I had enjoyed an entire Dairy Milk when she was away from home and apprehending that I had not kept back even a single piece for her ...It was like her uttering to me " How could you do this to me,Monu ?" and then I'd unwillingly hand over to her that 50% of the chocolate bar .."Take !! take your Goonda Tax"

The contrasting manner in which we reacted when we got to know that now there was a new entrant in each other's lives ...Hrithik in hers and Aish in mine..
I took it quite sportingly ..even gifted her 16 photographs of her crush on her 16th birthday ...
She,on the other hand, got outrightly insecure ..I donno why .. didz would would leave no stone unturned to bring Aish's flaws to my notice...would be on the top of the world when a movie on Aish on rare ocassions bombed at the box-office

I would be about to appreciate the taste of a new dish served at dinner but would immediately retract when I'd get the hint that it was she who had cooked it ..."Kuch khaas baat nahi hai tera dish mein .it's so-so types ..you can never match my Mom..!!"

I would insist on her calling me "Bhaiya" nd would cite instances of such occurrences in the locality! To this she would vehemently protest .."Check your date of birth dear..it's 16.09.1984 ..that's way way behind 21.05.1983!
On top of that,in terms of education,I am ahead of you by 3 years ( There's a secret to that ..Lemme clarify that I've never had to repeat a class in my entire academic career.It's only that .....) .."Jaa Jaa Chal Hut!Bittu!" ..that was the only way I could extract my revenge ...by not calling her Didi!

She'd chat endlessly for hours at a stretch with my Airtel jiju during her courtship period ..I'd get mischievous and would sit just next to her .."Hum Bhi aap log ka bat sunegaa..hum akela hai" I'd utter."Monu ..plz go away .." the lady would shout immediately as she became so conscious of my presence.."I'll talk to u later" she'd tell my jiju and hang up the phone.

Believe me this is only the tip of the iceberg..we've always being at loggerheads to each other!

However in midst of all this melodrama , she remains world's best didz ..the most intelligent,understanding and healthy girl in the world ( I hope that one understands the context in which I've used the above terms ...with all their grammatical variations and cognate expressions)Her marriage leaves behind a void which gets so overwhelming at times ..

You wake up in the morning ..in a semi -conscious state and try to locate Didz on her share of the bed now wholly at your disposal and then suddenly realise that ..

The doorbell rings at 8.00p.m. and you shout "Mom... Didi has come .. am going to bring Jhaalmuri for her" and then you suddendly realise that ...

The subconscious mind instantly, almost like a ritual, earmarks for her 50 % of the chocolate bar..the Goonda Tax ..and then suddendly realises that the Goonda (Goondi) is 12-13 kms away in another home sweet home.

You spend hours with your mom planning the dress you'd wear at tuitions the next morning ..wondering whether a Steel Grey shirt with Creme trousers would be fine!
Finally the unresolved dilemna takes the form of an sms to Didz " Yuck..Poor Combination" comes the reply instantly .."Wear the black shirt ..the one I had bought for you last year "

Trust me .life has become so confusing when your sole decision maker on almost all matters under the sun is now not at your instant disposal ..the bed and the almirah fail miserably to bridge this gap

There's an irreristible urge to get back to the bygone days .

There's an irreristible urge to send across the message..

"Alone I can only say but together we can shout

Alone I can only smile but together we can laugh

Alone I can only live but together we can celebrate"

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Anurag 21:54  10 comments