There have been countless songs written about the beauty of rain, the amorous effect of rain and even on as mundane topics as the usefulness of rain. I daresay any of these song writers were from IIT Madras. As the lingo goes, Rain is a Pain here in IITM. Let me tell you why.
Even I love the rain, but only when I don't have to wake up at 7:40 in the morning, find the clothes on line drenched, miss the bus, wade through acres of slush, get water splashed all over by a freshie on a bicycle or the CCW guy on the Luna, both of whom pretend to be very punctual, to be finally put to sleep by the Prof's droning voice. Oh yes, I only love rain when there are hot pakoda's waiting for me, only when the classes get canceled on the pretext of rain and only when I can cozy up in my bed without having to worry about any deadlines.
This was a particularly gloomy Friday afternoon, a very rare instance I must say. The rain had rendered everyone 'enthuless' for every constructive activity. So instead of going to a nice restaurant to satisfy our appetite we just went to the mess to kill it. I was walking back from the mess along with two other friends X and Y after the expectedly insipid meal. X, who nowadays has a perpetual grin on his face because of some intern he had got, remarked on the disturbed childhood he had. He paused expecting a reaction from us and upon getting none continued to elaborate more on the events that had led to his disturbed childhood.
"I always lost at cricket.", he said. The grin had now disappeared. Still not getting a favorable reaction from us, he continued.
"You see, we always divided up as two teams while playing cricket, my younger cousin and me in one team while the other had my neighbor's kid and an elder cousin. The younger cousin didn't play cricket well and so we used to lose every match. That really affected my confidence. I really had a disturbed childhood."
By the time he completed his narration of his childhood disturbances, which believe me was pretty long, we had reached our wing. In spite of my incessant complaints about the deadlines I had to meet both of them barged into my room. X made himself comfortable in my recliner and mused about his childhood while Y stretched himself out on the bed and started observing us with an uncanny concentration.
"So Boof (not my favorite nick name), why don't tell us more about yours? I am sure you would have had a disturbed childhood seeing how skewed you are." said X, much to my indignation.
I protested vehemently against the view that I was skewed but X just wouldn't give up. But I had to get them out of my room and the only way to do that was to give them what they wanted, a story about my disturbed childhood. While all this was happening Y remained silent being content with just listening and observing. It was then that I realized that he was taking notes mentally.
I probably should tell you a little more about Y. He is a Maadu, a Marvadi in other words. This should tell the people acquainted with the Maadu lore all that they need to know about Y's character. But for the benefit of people who do not possess this knowledge (I sincerely advice you to acquire it at the earliest possible) let me talk about a few important things of the lore.
1) Maadu's always observe, maybe for some personal gain or maybe just to tell a story about the event elsewhere.
2) They never truly narrate what they observe. You can be sure that at least a part of the story is either made up or modified to meet their needs.
Now that I have equipped you with some knowledge about Y let's proceed.
So it was to an expectant looking X with the grin back on his face, and to a Maadu intensely taking notes, that I narrated my story.
My dad had bought me a TV video on my 7th birthday. Those prehistoric things that you could plug into your TV and play Mario and Contra on. And now I always ate my food very slowly, so on weekdays whenever we got back from school my elder brother wouldn't let me play the video game till I ate my food. To add to this he used to play only one game, baseball, which for me was boring to play and excruciatingly painful to watch him play while I was stuck eating the much hated spinach and broccoli. By the time I finally finished my food my parents would be home and then I was thrown out of the house to go play outside when all I wanted to do was to allow my brain to rot in front of the Video game.
On the weekends all the neighborhood boys, who sole aim in life seemed to be to prevent me from playing the Video game, used to descend on our humble abode like a swarm of bees.
My mom would say, "You play it everyday. Let them play as well."
With this one statement I would be deprived of the rights to play my video and would be confined to derive vicarious pleasure while they saved the princess in Mario. So the Video game that was gifted to me was always out of my reach.
Thus I concluded my story. Y was busy memorizing every detail while X was staring at me with an even wider grin.
"Good. But not enough trauma." he said.
Not enough trauma? Dude, I was seven years old, how much trauma do you expect me to face?
He was adamant and said that it was not disturbing enough. This hurt my sentiments. My suffering wasn't disturbing enough for you? X and Y got up to leave. I stopped them. Yes, I initially wanted them out of my room but now I wouldn't let them go without proving to them and making them believe that I had a more disturbing childhood than them. No one messes with my childhood. How dare they ridicule my trauma.
It was with a hurt pride that I started on my second story.
This was in my sixth class. I loved reading books. Ya, clichéd, I know. But nevertheless I really liked reading books in my school days. So I used to borrow books a lot of books from the library. After some days, for reasons unknown, the librarian refused to lend me books. She had imposed a restriction that I borrow no more than one book a week. As a result I used to borrow a book every Monday, finish by Wednesday and spend the rest of the week in boredom and in search of books to read.
To add to this after sometime my parents came to the conclusion that I was only ever reading novels/ comics and hardly ever touching my notebooks and textbooks. They decided that the way to rectify this was to restrict my reading of novels. This way even when I could finally lay my hands on a book I wouldn't be allowed to read it without interruptions from my parents and my brother who never lost a chance to snatch the book from me. I probably would have been a young Guy de Maupassant by now if not for all this trauma.
This time they truly were impressed. Both of them expressed consent that I had the most disturbed childhood of the three. We sat in silence ruminating about our childhood troubles and slowly came to conclusion that all of us have had a disturbed childhood. We were roused out of this reverie by the sudden recollection of the ever looming deadlines.
So all of us proceeded to go work to meet the deadlines.
X ended up watching Peeping Tom in his room, the Maadu was heard narrating this story to a group of people, of course with a lot of condiments added in, while I switched on my comp and started writing this.
