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An Attempt At Portrait
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Focus on the Tag
This week I cut the tag off a pair of jeans. The look and feel, the quality, the whiteness, even the metal rim around the hole – made me fall in love with the tag! And I had an idea. I wanted to use it – for something. This evening, I thought I’d take a picture of it before I actually did something with it. And then I just took pictures of it – trying to focus on the quality of the paper.
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Recipe for Disaster – Part 2
Crack an egg
I was about four years old, and it was the festival of holi. Standing in the balcony of an apartment on the ninth floor, I watched my brother drop water balloons on passers by… While we hadn’t technically collaborated on it, by virtue of standing there, and watching with delight, I considered myself partner in crime!
But as far as collaborative work was concerned, there was virtually only the one time – when I messed up the surprise for our parents’ anniversary.
After the ‘bucket fiasco‘, we didn’t plan anything together. Whatever special we did end up doing, was independent of each other.
Once my brother bought a couple of beautiful key-chains for our parents’ anniversary. It was supposed to be on behalf of both of us, but I had no knowledge of it whatsoever. Another time, I made a greeting card on behalf of the two of us, without involving him.
Eventually, when we grew up*, we became too busy with our own lives. We fought lesser with each other. We became more civil and our conversations attained more intellectual tones.**
Every year was more or less the same. A day, or a week before our parents’ anniversary, we’d discuss for a brief moment what it was that we were doing. And then we’d agree to a bucket of flowers. While our mother baked a cake, we were generally quite lazy and our patience lasted only as long as the time it took for the cake to come out of the oven.
And so it happened that on the twenty fifth wedding anniversary of our parents, we spent the day at home, and devoured freshly baked chocolate cake. Our laziness, and refusal to collaborate with each other meant that we contributed absolutely nothing towards the celebration of a milestone.
One Year Later
I had just finished my high-school. And my brother had just completed his post graduation. We were both at home, relaxing after our exams.
The conversation began, as it had the past several years. “Amma and Appa’s anniversary is coming.”
And for once, in our lives, we read each other’s mind. We had messed up a golden opportunity of making their silver jubilee a special day. We had to do something. Something which was truly memorable.
And so we came up with a plan. Our plan was so grand, it needed quite a bit of ground work.
* whether we grew up or not is debatable
** add salt to taste!
Image Credit : Chocolate Cake Public Domain
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Recipe for Disaster – Part 1
Where’s the bucket?
Anna* and I used to fight like cats and dogs as little kids. Our fights would often get physical, and we’d hurt each other pretty badly. Our mother would patch us up more frequently than she would have liked, and grudgingly we would apologise to each other.
To the outside world, though, the story was entirely different. We were extremely well behaved around guests, and even stood up for each other. In family photographs, we looked like the sweetest sibling combination.
Maybe there was something there that the photographs captured, that we couldn’t comprehend. It was perhaps due to our silly childish stubbornness, that we chose to ignore the obvious. Despite all the petty fights and bashing up, we made one heck of a team – if we wanted to.
It was a week before our parents’ anniversary. I was very small – maybe eight or nine years old. My brother had saved up a little money. I have no idea how, but that was not of any concern to me. Anna and I went to a local florist, and we chose a beautiful bouquet for them.
On our way back, anna kept the bouquet a little further away from the staircase leading up to our apartment on the first floor. He asked me to go in first.
Our house was seldom locked at the time, and we went in and out of the house without having to disturb anyone to close the door.
My job was to enter first and distract my mother, while anna would come in later and hide the flowers somewhere inside the house. And then we had to wait – till one of them found the hidden gift. It was a perfect plan!
I did my part of the job, and anna did his. So good was the execution of the plan, that even I didn’t know when and how my brother hid the flowers. The hardest part was waiting for the bouquet to be discovered.
And we waited for a long time. I grew fidgety and restless. After what seemed like aeons, when I could no longer control my impatience, I pulled my brother into the kitchen, and asked where exactly he had hidden the gift. In my excitement, I blabbered ‘Where is the bucket?’. He gave me a bewildered look.
‘Where is it – where did you hide the bucket? They haven’t seen it yet!’ I continued, ignoring the strange looks.
He looked past me, and refused to answer. ‘What are you looking at?’
I turned around, and found our mother standing right behind me. She looked down at me, and unable to control herself any more, burst out laughing.
That day went down in our family’s history as the ‘bucket fiasco’ and the source of laughter for years to come.
* Anna is a Tamil word meaning elder brother.
Image based on Photo by Meg Zimbeck CC-BY-2.0
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Portrait of a Bouquet
She was a gem. And to capture her beauty was not something that was easy for me. She could hardly stand still. She kept running and tripping over herself just to avoid me. And in the end I gave up trying to take her picture. And instead just admired her.
One Bouquet – Three Views (Two were simply not enough!)
Close View
Top View
Portrait of a Bouquet
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Masterpiece
We had received several gifts at the family gathering. All the gifts were wrapped up in glittering and colourful wrappers, and we looked forward to unwrapping them!
As I began unwrapping one of the boxes, the note on top of the wrapper caught my attention. It was the prettiest little label I had seen and wondered why someone would squander money on just a label. As I took it out, I noticed the back of the card.
I examined it closely. There were pencil lines at the back of the note. I looked closer, and there was a little slit on one of the edges. The overlapping paper had an uneven edge.
‘It’s hand-made!’ I screamed with joy.
I do not remember the colour of the wrapping paper, or even the gift inside. But I loved the name tag, and kept it along with all of my other treasures.
It could have easily been something bought from a stationary shop, but it wasn’t. It could have been just another label. But it wasn’t. I loved how someone had taken the pains to make something, and that is why it qualifies as a masterpiece!
Weekly Photo Challenge : Masterpiece
PS. The name was digitally removed!
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Wimbledon Fever!
It’s Wimbledon Season. And I have fever. But this post is about a video. And an event I have not written about.
I’ve been away (yet again!), and I’m just too scared to open the WordPress Reader, because I know I’ve missed way too much. The past few weeks have been rather busy and I’ve had the wonderful opportunity of working backstage for an event.
I would have loved to write about it, and probably should have done it last weekend, but for the past one week, I’ve had a series of health problems – from backaches to cough, cold and high fever. I’m feeling quite drained out, my head heavy with the medication, but I just had to write this post, and share something.
Lying down the whole day with practically nothing to do, I would have gone insane – if it weren’t for Wimbledon week. So that’s it! I’ve written down an apology of a (slightly incoherent) post. Now I’m off to take some more rest!
While I wait to recover, with some tennis to cheer me up (even without Roger, its pretty decent) here’s a short video I patched up post-event!
See you on the other side of the net!
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Just For Joy
In our school, starting from the fourth standard, all students were put in ‘houses’. Each house had an associated colour – red, yellow, blue and green. Inter-house competitions were organised across several disciplines, and at the end of the year, one house was declared the overall winner.
Now I’m not sure if there was a sorting hat involved while deciding which students to put in which house. But I was suspicious. Invariably, the yellow house had awesome athletes, the green one had students who were artistically inclined and did well in cultural activities. The red one had more intellectual students.
And the blue one, well, it had the rest of us. We were never really expected to do well overall, but we sprang a surprise every once in a while.
During one particular year, we had a Sufi Kalam Competition. We had a tough time preparing for it. Unlike other times, there was no one to teach us. Our teacher in-charge gave us a cassette, and we had to listen to the tape in order to learn the song. Fortunately the lyrics were written in the folds of the cover of the album. Our teacher explained to us, the meaning of the lyrics, and we chose the paragraphs we understood.
I don’t remember what the other groups sang. I’m not sure if they also listened to a recorded song and learnt it by themselves. But I remember our song. I remember how we would look for quiet places to practice. Mostly we went to the basement. And if it was closed, we sat on the staircase leading to the basement. We would play the tape and listen intently. The other groups practised in the open, flaunting their songs with pride. And we’d feel tiny in front of them. Everyone was sure the green house would win – and so were we.
The day of the competition arrived. We went over the lines one last time, and clarified which line had to be sung how many times.
As the program started, I began feeling the nerves. I had to sing the opening tune – solo.
A few of the girls tried to comfort me and tried to get me to relax. My mind went blank. My heart pounding, threatening to escape. Our team name was announced, and we went on stage.
As soon as we were seated, the music teacher played the tune. My voice refused to come out. I looked at our music teacher. The expression on her face was crystal clear. ‘Why aren’t you singing? Come on now sing!’ She played the first line again.
And this time, I did sing.
What happened thereafter, was amazing. The whole group joined in at the chorus in unison. A couple of boys got up on their knees and began clapping and dancing. The other girls gave the best of their smiles, and sang with infectious energy and confidence. I was surprised. There were smiles all around, and everyone genuinely had fun while singing. Some students of our house cheered as loudly as they could. Soon the audience joined us in clapping, and we got a great applause at the end.
Our group had some really awesome singers – that year every house had their fair share of singers, but I was extremely proud of our team. We were not really friends, and I struggled to have a decent conversation with them. As I write this, apart from the three girls who sat in the front row next to me, I don’t even remember who were there in the group! But somehow, at that moment, we came together beautifully, and managed to pull one out of the hat.
I don’t remember if we won. I’m too lazy to fish for the certificates. But honestly, I don’t care who won, we, or the green house. I took part in several competitions, and my little box of certificates swells with pride at how many we won, or nearly won. But this one stands out – not because of the outcome, but because we had fun, we felt the song, and the audience loved it.
* * *
Recently, Kozo at Everyday Gurus wrote something about ‘getting the point’. As I sat down typing a comment, I realised it was getting too long. I decided to write a short post. It started with a series of rants, and then this story popped up!
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Musings of an eccentric mind 