The One Who Cries on Birthdays...

Today is my birthday, but I will not enjoy it anyway.

This will move into the past like any other day.

I'm unhappy for I can't move to the past like the quick-mortal days.

Gone are the days when I looked eagerly forward for my birthdays.

Thinking of the time when I was not this tall, not this fat.

I was a so small that you could have packed me in a little hat.

Whenever the wind blew with a whistle,

I jumped over the fence and hid behind thistle.

Rain came pouring down on my little head,

When I ran to the muddy fields to have a little thud.

Hours and hours and hours of playing

No homework, no tensions, only enjoying.

Mom came rushing to get me from the mud pool.

She dipped me in water to send to the school.

Her kisses fell on my face like mud's splattering,

When I slipped my feet in the field while playing.

Walking along the road which bordered with shrubs,
Leaving the bag to hang on my back like a hump.
Sky winked at me with its blue and white eyes,
That let me taste the milky clouds and tit-bits of starry nights.

Then one day I knew that I was growing

Faster and faster and faster than ever.

On birthday cakes, I could see candles taking the space more

Making me panic and failing me to blow them any more.

I hate to see the candles now as they remind me
The years I passed and the years left with me.
Each piece of cake gave me sweetness on my tongue
But wounded me on my heart which hurts like a bee-sting.

It takes me to nowhere else but the hell,
Why do we want to enjoy the death's call?
I hate my birthdays as they stole from me what I treasured
And loved more than my youth, which my childhood...

Some context:

I wrote this poem when I was a student about ten years ago. We had a subject called Creative Writing which was very fun. Once while taking an exam of around two hours' duration, there was a question to write a poem on one of the topics they suggested. I picked childhood and wrote this poem.

When I'm reading this after all these years, I feel like an idiot! Some of the lines do not even make sense to me. But it was my very first attempt to write a poem in English, which is not even my first language.

And putting cherry on top of the cake, my professor gave me A grade and told me, "How did you manage to write such a poem in an exam hall? That too with a lot of rhyming? You can actually keep this as something special and show somebody saying you wrote this in an exam hall." I was kind of over the moon after that... So I thought I should keep this somewhere people don't actually see... lol...

My Partner in Crime!

I was never a popular girl or celebrity in my life. Still, I have had countless friends during my school and college days. Some of them were in my close circle at different times. Yes, besties in my life.

Some friends keep up with every stupid step we take. We won't forget them no matter how hard we try.  Everyone prefers honest, selfless and innocent people as friends. But how can we cut those who push us into all troubles and keep eating our heads all the time? They also fall into the best friends category.

Since college, I have had a buddy, just like Tom and Jerry or Calvin and Hobbes. Unlike me, she was smart and outgoing. But I felt a special connection with her. She has played a huge role in making my hostel days unforgettable. Plus, she is the master who guided me to all the mischiefs. Though the god, or maybe the devil, created her with a tumbler of forgetfulness and a jar of spontaneity, that girl was a gem of a person.

Neither of us ever had a grain of interest in studies. We spent most of our academic life in the hostel's WiFi hall. The room was meant to be a study hall for students. We labelled it 'WiFi hall' because it was the only spot where the network was available in the entire hostel complex. A lion's share of hostel life was spent in the hall playing with mobile phones and sleeping in our rooms.

However, inmates in our neighbouring rooms were unbelievably studious. They were students of hectic courses like MBA, Computer Science, Chemistry, Botany and Radiation Physics. We go to sleep watching them studying and also wake up the next day seeing their heads buried in the books. Studious and lazy people do not usually sync well. But we were all friends in some way or another and lived in the hostel in perfect harmony.

As daily episodes of our lives were going smoothly, our rooms suddenly started getting trespassed by a bunch of unsolicited guests - mosquitoes. Actually, after joining the hostel, we had become so used to the lullaby and sting operation by mosquitoes that we started missing them when they were not coming. But that day, we had to run to the store and buy a mosquito repellent liquid as they were unbearably aggressive and violent. The machine to attach the liquid was already in the room, somewhere hidden among the old stuff piled in corners.

While my buddy and I were busy gossiping in the room, I took the mosquito killer machine, attached the liquid bottle, plugged it and turned on the switch. Suddenly, we heard a deafening noise and the power went off the next moment. For a while, we were clueless and stood still. Then we managed to wade through the darkness and opened the door.

All rooms across the verandah had power, but our room and that of the neighbouring Botany students were in utter darkness. What happened there?

We don't normally strain our brains thinking about these silly things and just go to bed if there is no power. But not all are the same. They wanted to study and not waste time. So, we just headed to the matron's room and called her.

Hostellers and matrons are traditionally synonymous with mice and cats, or lambs and wolves. So, our matron started interrogation as soon as she landed in the crime spot: "How come only your rooms have no power? Nobody else has any problem. I think you people are using some induction cooktop or something without permission..."

"Oh no... We have no idea... Let alone induction cooktop we don't even use an iron box," we told her innocently while an iron box was tactfully hiding underneath a pile of dirty clothes.

"Hmm... Then let me reset the fuse," she went straight to the switchboard and reset the fuse. In a flick of a second, power was back. We didn't want to make a scene again. So, we just tried praising the matron, "Wow! You fixed it in a jiffy... Superb!!"

But she gave us a sharp stare and left. Other students might have suspected us due to her comments. As power was already back, we quickly went back to our rooms with faded smiles on our faces.

"Why did she blame us? Is it right to put all blame on us? Weren't we sitting idly here?" We, two hurt souls, started discussions as soon as getting back to our rooms. "But how did the power just go? We have to find that first."

After discussions and contemplations, we caught the culprit - the mosquito-repellent machine! 

"We heard that blast-like sound when we plugged the machine."

"But how does that tiny thing explode?"

"Ok... Come on then.. let's try it now.."

"Yes, we have to test it right now..."

We decided to give it a go. But, another question popped up.

"What if the machine is the real trouble?"

"Then we shouldn't risk it... Matron will quickly kick us out if the power is out here again..."

Though we encountered trouble as soon as we planned an experiment, nothing could stop us. There was a vacant room on the other end of the verandah. Nobody stayed there as its leaky roof let all rainwater seep in during monsoons. Sometimes we used to dry our clothes there. So, we fixed the location of our experiment.

We hid the accused machine and tiptoed into the leaky room. As we shut the door tight behind us, both were nearly trembling. We looked at each other, reassured with a deep breath and plugged in the machine...

Boom! The same explosion... Gotcha!!! We were happy to catch the thief red-handed finally. Giving a pat on our back, we cheerfully returned to the room to sleep. Suddenly, we heard another noise from the verandah.

As we opened the door, we could see students of other departments like MBA, Computer Science and Maths, complaining and whining about 'something'. Just out of curiosity, we just asked one of them in a murmuring sound, "Hey dude, what happened?"

The girl, with a very distressed face, said, "Power just went off when we were studying. We have an exam tomorrow. No idea what to do now..."

Both of us felt a bolt of lightning running down our spine... Girls were waiting outside some other rooms too. Simply speaking, our experiment ended up cutting the power supply to at least two-three rooms. Duh!

Needless to say, we dashed into our room to avoid unnecessary attention. 

 

At least for two weeks after this incident, we never dared to utter words like 'power' or 'mosquito'. Even when others talked about it, we automatically turned into expressionless robots and fled the scene in a jiffy.

Gradually, this horror episode skipped our minds as we kept engaging in even bigger troubles. However, by the time, we left the hostel after two years, we were happy that we could annoy the matron and hostel mates to the maximum capacity. Well, I count it as an achievement. If you can't make people love you, at least make them see you as God: as in 'Oh God! You again!'

Fountain in a Love in Tokyo!

Most of the bookworms who have read "God of Small Things" will recognize the words in the title at once. After reading the celebrated fiction by Arundhati Roy, this phrase remained in my mind as a keyword for several days. Rahel, one of the protagonists of the story, appears in her childhood with her hair tied in the shape of a fountain with a Love in Tokyo. Her image was thus successfully tattooed to the minds of numerous readers.

As a reader and as a girl, that fountain in a Love in Tokyo was the supreme factor which made the book close to my heart. Almost all the girls might have had a childhood when their hair was tied in curly, straight or wavy fountains. And that Love in Tokyo.... Ms Roy explains in the novel what that thing is. It is a rubber band with colourful beads attached to it. I specifically remember countless sets of Love in Tokyos I had possessed in my girlhood which I had been using to play rather than to tie my hair.

What a pretty thing it was! Some of them had beads in the form of animal motifs, some were flower-shaped, fruit-shaped and so on. Once on Independence Day, I tied my hair with a toffee-shaped Love in Tokyo, which went well with the colours of the flag. Its first twisty end was in saffron colour, the last end green and the middle white. On birthdays I used glittery ones. And for regular use, I had collected umpteen of them in multiple hues to match each of my dresses.

When my hair grew long, I lost interest in Love in Tokyos. Now I have none of them with me; not even one to make me nostalgic. And gone are the days of fountain-haired little girls. New kids have begun to explore the latest fashions in hair-do. I can see toddlers with ponytails and pigtails in the yards of nursery schools, but it is rare to see some cute faces crowned with a fountain.

Let's go back to Rahel. I could immensely identify with her, both mentally and physically, while reading the book. And I believe that the sole reason behind it was the fountain in the Love in Tokyo, which brought to light the resemblance of our childhood.

Before reading "God of Small Things", I had read some of the essays of Ms Roy. Naturally, my prejudice made me conclude that her fiction also had a political nature. Now I regret very badly for that. Otherwise, I would not have missed the fountain in Love in Tokyo for so long.

I do not recall any other writer who has attached importance to such trivial but nostalgic elements of childhood. Though the title of the book defines another character in the story, I think one of those Small Things is definitely a Love in Tokyo, and the God is the author herself. That fountain of hair has been embossed on the novel to enable the reader to feel it above every other element in the work. If there is anyone who has not felt it yet, I bet, they let lose the chance to feel the hues of that fountain in Love in Tokyo....