Pages

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Life's Best memories!

It's been a few weeks since i am in the web of nostalgic memories from my past. Memories that made me smile, one's that made my eyes fill with tears and also a few that made me thank god that i survived through them and am still alive! To tell you all about it, i thought of sharing them in small packets. For the purpose i divided my life into segments of five years each! I thought of posting the BEST memories in each of those 5 year periods and hope to be able to get down to a good list that will do what they do to me! Now here i stand few days away from my 21st birthday and it's so nice to remember the last 20 years of my life!

1st 5 yr plan: Age 0 to 5....(Years of growth!!)

First of all i don't remember much of my life from this period. So here goes.......

1) The very first memory of me in my childhood will be getting my toenail busted by a huge rock thrown at me by a guy who lived in my own colony. Those days i was living in the Air force quarters @ AFS Avadi. I was something like 2 or 3(i dnt rem my age that much). The incident happened really fast. I had a quarrel with a dude abt something and the next thing i rem is he hurling the biggest stone he could find in that ground and thus ensuring that i lose the nail of my smallest toe I go home crying ammmaaaaaaaaaaaa and my grandma saw this and then goes out of the house and beats the guy black an blue! Next thing i see is he coming with his Punjabi mom and she beings to shout at my grandma. It was funny seeing her defending what she did even though she didn't understand a word of the Punjabi mixed hindi that the lady was talking!

2) Crying and beating my nursery TEACHER when my grandma left me at the place and started walking home! I think that was the 1st time in my life that i was all alone in a strange place! I started to cry and then when my teacher tried to console me by taking me in her arms(i dnt knw a better way to put this) i started to beat her. Guess that shows am not too good at respecting teachers!

3)Being scared by a COW on the way to my nursery school when i was 3 yrs old. It was usual for me to walk alone to the class which was about 1-2 kilometres away from my house, and i had stopped beating the teacher too! I was walking alone through the road and saw this COW on the road! I thought of it as a MAD BULL which will hit me and my fear was emboldened by the fact that i had seen some film which had a similar sequence. I started to run and stopped only when i got to the class!

4) Going to school for the 1st time in my life! Yes that's right! Am among the few who got to a school when they were 5 yrs old! It's done both good and bad for me in years till now! Main prob being that i usually am the YOUNGEST in my class(though i rarely look like it). So this time i was in AFS Bareilly. Bareilly is famous for being the home-town of former Miss World Priyanka Chopra.That's a pretty important Air Force installation. I still remember my dad saying that it's the ONLY base outside Russia equipped with Mig 25(Foxbat). It was a very secure installation and the only times i went out were with my family. The base here was HUGE and had almost all the facilities in house! The picture below is one which i took from Wikimapia. It shows the region around the base, including the MIG's on the ground!!! The link to the pic can be got here.

The school there was also pretty big. I still remember my teacher and the few faces that i can still recognise in my 1st school photo!

5) Still remember the day i put my sister's hair on fire. It was very stupid of me to hold the candle near her hair and i realised my mistake only when i saw the shocked expression on my mom's face. The shock went off the the next moment when i got a nice slap on my cheek.


Pretty good period for starters eh!


2nd 5 yr plan: Age 6 to 10....(Years of ......can't say what)

1)School was great, i had friends who spoke almost all the 15 languages that India has. My best pal in those days was a guy named Nimesh. He was a Bihari by birth, but then he was among the brainiest guys i have ever known(don't ask me how brainy a 6 yr old can be). He was the class topper and i was somewhere in the top 5(yeah, you heard it right). Still remember the day that we went on a tour from the school and it was to a park somewhere in the city outskirts. Don't know why i remember this day, but this was the 1st time i had gone out with people who studied with me. I still love the days i spent in Bareilly.

2) I used to like the train rides to Kerala during the vacations. I still remember getting to New Delhi railway station early morning at about 5 AM and waiting for Kerala Express at the platforms. The train used to start at 11 AM or 1 PM. I am not so sure about it. But i remember the journeys that me and my family used to undertake each year to Kerala. It was fun to be in a train for 3 days, to meet new people, to see the landscape change as the distance passed and so on. So this is among my best memories too.

3) The day i stepped into KV Pattom. I had come for getting admission to the 3rd standard and was given admission since my dad was in a special assignment posting. The 1st day i didn't get to meet many people. Just met 6 people. I was in the middle of 2 gals. I joined the school on 25th Jan 1993. I remember the day very well coz it was on the eve on the Republic day. The teacher was a very pleasant lady and introduced me to the class. It was the 1st time i was facing an audience and she told me to say something about me. I was kinda shocked. I told a lot about me and the people in the class were having a question mark on their faces after they listened to it. Prob was that i spoke in Hindi. A language that was used by all in my old school. But it wasn't so in KV Pattom. People looked at me like an alien from some other planet(i get those looks even now at times)

4)The very first time i saw a ELEPHANT in my life up close. Till then the elephants that i had seen were either in TV or one's that i saw in zoo's. This happened when a elephant came to the temple near my house. I went very close to it and touched it. It was a very sweet memory from my life.

5)The day i learnt to ride cycle. I got a crash-course in cycling from a relative in a SINGLE DAY. I almost made it, until i forgot to press the brakes while cycling down the slope from my home to the temple. I went down into the drain next to the road and had a bad time walking home from the hospital with the bandaged toes.( I still proudly say that i have
NEVER had a single broken bone or fracture in my ENTIRE life)

What to say about this! it was a great period and i will not change anything from this if i got a chance to do so!

3rd 5 yr plan: Age 11 to 15....(Years of Love n Adventure.....can't find nythn better)

1)School was still the best thing to happen to me in this period. I had a great time there. It was a great period of changes in my life; both physically and mentally(if i go more into that, ppl wd rate this as inappropriate). It was in one such day that i found the very 1st LOVE of my life. The 1st in a long list. She was one who was in my class and i hadn't noticed anything special about her until the day she said that she would like to have me as a friend for her entire life(again a dialog that i am used to now!). Things changed overnight and we became thick friends. Problem was that i was going down on my studies in this period and she helped me a lot in this time. Thus it was good in many ways

2) The memory of me watching my very 1st PORN movie was also in this period. I can't explain more about it, but it wasn't a good experience. For the guys who still are hanging on.......it was a mallu oldie from a friend's UNCLE's collection. Guess that's enough to quench your thirst.

3) There were many things that are still afresh in my mind. The top among those will be my entry to one of the biggest and oldest library's in the state(if not country) the state central Library or commonly known as the Trivandrum Public Library. I got in here when i was 13 yrs old. It was like a treasure house to me. I had rows and rows of stacks arranged with books. It was a dream come true for a person, who's family didn't have much of a habit to buy books. I used to go every week and it really helped nourish the bookworm in me.

4) The occasion when i was the class leader and had the 2nd LOVE of my life( yeah, life moves
FAST). It was rather an accident and it wasn't even an infatuation. It was just a thought put into my head by a friend who happened to comment about the way my picture was close to that of a gal in the class in the class magazine. She was the gal's leader and i was the boy's leader(yeah I WAS, TRUST me on that). The pictures were put rather too close and one gal commented like this: "wow, this looks like a marriage photo". Things took a rather unpleasant turn and ppl made a hell lotta stories about me n her and finally i had to oblige!

5) I learnt to ride a bike in my 10th exam holz. I was still 15 and my 10th Board exams were just 10 days away. It was among the best passions in my life that i have still not had enough of. It still gives me a thrill when i ride my bike at the maximum speed it can go. The maximum i had gone in those days was a meagre 40 kmph. But then i progressed quickly and really enjoyed the days with my bike in my 10th break.


Now that's a happening age isn't it??


4th 5 yr plan: Age 16 to 20....(Years of Passion n Action......)

1) I had lotta changes in this period and i still continue to evolve, or rather revolve around the thoughts that come to my mind. The first thought that comes my mind of this period is the time i spent with my friends on a tour from my class to Goa-B'lore and Coorg in my 3rd year of engineering. The pictures from that are posted in a previous post and that i will say is a frontrunner for the award of BEST Memory of my life!

2) I got a kiss from a girl for the first time in my life.(Dnt ask stupid doubts about the veracity of the fact.... and don't even dare to ask who the gal is......)

3) I drove above 100 kmph for the 1st time in my life and it was such a great thought to see the road just becoming a blurring picture in my eyes.

The Machine : Pulsar 180(not mine of course)
The Man : Eh... stupid to say, but ME :D
The Turf : The NH 47 bypass stretch from Chakkai till the turnoff to the Veli station.
The Reaction : Shouting at the top of my voice "Yaahoooooo"(now that's somethin even Shammi Kapoor wd be proud of)

4) Cheering for my college at Dhwani '04 after we won the overall points. It was a great experience during my 1st year of Engg. I was a very eager fresher who had very little reasons to be proud of my college. People all around me were cursing and mouthing abuses at me for selecting Mechanical Engg @ GECB rather than going for Industrial Engg @ CET. It was indeed a special moment when i too was proud to be a part of the team that were winner's @ Dhwani '04. I too had a small part by being a finalist in the quiz.

5) Getting to join UNI-Y. UNI-Y is the best thing to have happened to me in my college years. I joined in the 3rd semester of my engg and i met a great bunch of friends whom i can trust for my life. I got to be with them and be part of the organisation that moulded many a great person in their youth. I am truly happy to note that the time that i spent there and the friends i made there will be in my mind all through my life. I know many will not like me placing this as the last memory from my life. But then the order in which i have typed doesn't signify anything about the events. Each have a distinct mark in my heart and mind and will remain to be so till the last breath i take.

So that's my life of 20 years in a set of 20 sweet memories!