Life, as experienced by me

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Collections - 2 [Marbles]

Now that we have started talking about my collections, the next thing to talk about is - Marbles[kanche in hindi]. Yes, those small round balls with which kids play on streets. I had a fascination for them, loved them, collected them and treasured them. More then two jars were filled with them - hundreds of them.

They are simply beautiful. Having transparent outer shell covering and with fascinating multicolored beautiful designs woven into them, they sparkle with life if you hold them with your thumb and finger and watch them with light falling on them from the back side. It seemed that each marble had its own story to tell, with it's unique design and color combinations. They came in all varieties of colors and color combinations - red, blue, purple, orange, green, pink to name just a few. Pure or totally white marble, like a small ball of homemade butter, was very rare, considered lucky and was expensive too. It was aptly called the makkhani.To me its was extremely beautiful and I could easily exchange it by giving five or more ordinary marbles. The other rare variety were very small, round or oval marbles which were called chiddis or piddis owing to their sizes. They too formed a part of my collection even though they could never be used for playing.

There was a shop nearby where an old uncle used to sell everyday-need goods and had kept big transparent jars of chocolates, toffees, chewing gums and of course marbles on the front glass showcases of his shop, to lure innocent kids like me to buy those items from him. His trick always worked, at least for me. I used to watch those marble jars whenever I used to go to his shop to buy something and if I could locate a few beautiful marbles on the top of the jar, I was desperately scouting for 50 paise or one rupee to buy them to add them to my ever increasing diverse collection. I always used to buy marbles from him only because he was the only one in the market who let me choose the marbles I wanted to buy.

The other way to acquire those gems, was of course, to win them. Definitely,a harder and more laborious and risky task then just buying but nevertheless extremely enjoyable and joyful. Two types of marble games were most popular at that time - goli pill and ticha.

Goli pill is played by two or more kids. A small hole called pilley, roughly the size of a ping-pong ball is dug in the earth.It should be easily able to hold just one marble. Digging a good pilley in itself is an extensive work of science and art. One kid then stands on the pill with one foot on it and throws the marbles collected from each player after juggling and mixing them thoroughly in his hands. The kid whose marble goes furthest away from the pill gets first turn and then the second furthest and so on and so forth. The task is very simple - you are supposed to first hit any other marble by your marble and then subsequently put your marble in the pill or vice verse, by placing the thumb of your hand at the location of your marble and using the first finger and fingers of other hands for hitting. If you do that the marble you had hit is yours else its next guy's turn to try the same .

Ticha is played by drawing a line on earth - mostly by a sharp stone, standing behind it and throwing the marbles collected by all players further away. Then while standing behind that line and without bending forward you are supposed to hit any marble on the ground. If you hit it, its yours for the taking and you get one more chance to do the same. Otherwise its the next guy's turn.

If you lost all his marbles while playing, it was considered a big disgrace and all the other kids used to laugh at you saying - 'poda ho geya tera'.

Needless to say, I was good in both - Ticha and Goli pill. The filled jars at my home were testimony of that.

Imagine me as a young kid, lean and thin, short curly hair, wearing spectacles with oval glasses and thin black frames, in white shirt and dark grey pants and playing Ticha and Goli pill. The feeling of unlimited joy and happiness after winning a marble as if I had conquered a country and celebrating it with a wide grin and pumping the fists. The sorrow of loosing a marble as if I have lost a fortune. In those days the life rotated along such uncomplicated wonders. Imagine me playing Ticha, taking an aim at a marble on ground by holding two marbles in my small hands, close to my face, clicking the two marbles to hear the sound of the click, not satisfied, taking out another marble from my dirty pant's pocket, clicking again, adjusting my spectacles at my nose, by the tip of my little finger and then finally hitting. Or slowly walking towards home, sad and dejected, with head sunk low - after loosing all the marbles that I had brought to play. Or desperately trying to brush off the dust and earth from my dirty clothes after the play in order to avoid a scolding from my mother. Trouble was, hands itself were dirty, so there was always a dilemma whether the clothes were getting cleaned or more dirtier.

I used to take out all the collected marbles once every fortnightly or so, sitting on a bed, with soft sun rays falling on the entire bed from a nearby large wooden framed open window and see all of them glittering and shining in a falling sun rays. It was a wonderful experience. Then I used to count them slowly and remember the count, so that, if my younger brothers [twins] had dared to steal them, I would know. While counting I used to hold the beautiful ones up across the sunlight and enjoy its beauty for a while. The whole exercise took hours to complete but who was worried about time then.

Slowly I grew up and stopped playing marbles but was not ready to part with my collection. My mom used to ask me to give them, at least a few, to my younger brothers and other smaller kids, as I had no use of them now. But, I was stubborn and always said no. One fine day, I don't know what came to my mind - I took out all of them and gave 50 each to my younger brothers. Still there were too many left, so I just called up the younger kids of my neighborhood and distributed all the marbles to them without keeping a single one with me. The joy and satisfaction in seeing their smiling faces was greater then the sorrow of parting with my beloved jewels.

Hence came an end of a fascinating, beautiful journey and the story of me and the marbles.

I did not know at that time but realized later that it taught me very profound Lessons of Life. Learn to play the game. Learn to play it better then the others and then play it without cheating or using unfair means.Success will be yours Enjoy the learning process, the game and the earnings and then finally let it all go. Give it away. Give all away.Give learnings to others. Give earnings to others. Find a new interesting game. That's all there it is.

To be continued.....

milte hain break ke baad..ding..dong..ding..
Keep Smiling....

Friday, May 27, 2011

IABPD continued....

Feeling is Everything'. That's the quote with which one of my batch-mates used to sign-off all his emails. It might just be 3 words but have a very profound meaning. Most of the things we do daily are related to feelings, either the cause or the result or in some other way related.

I can go on rambling about quotes and dialogues till eons and eons.

That makes me think, I have always liked anything beautiful and collected various beautiful things throughout my life so far - beautiful in my eyes. I have always liked heart-tugging, beautiful words, sentences, paragraphs, poems, thoughts, lyrics,and other similar literacy works. When I was a kid, I used to write down any beautiful,heart-touching lines I came across, in a diary and treasure that diary.It was always a wonderful experience to sit down and read the diary once in a while, especially when I was sad or otherwise in low mood. It was an instant mood elevator in those times. Otherwise too, it was always a great read.

I also used to collect pictures, photographs and articles of exotic places, wildlife, natural beauty, cars, bikes and anything and everything that looked beautiful to my eyes. Back then, there were no digital cameras, mobile phones and other electronic gadgets or accessories by which you could capture pictures easily. Personal computers were hardly found in any house and the world 'Laptop' was totally unheard off in those times. So, cutting the pictures and articles and storing them in a file or folder was the only option and probably the only known way, The major hunting grounds were the daily newspaper and the old second hand magazines, which were available at dirt cheap prices in the nearby market. I used to always scout for those cheap and easy preys, whenever I went to the market.

The newspaper - 'The Times of India' used to be black and white then, but once or twice in a week, there used to carry out additional pages - magazine sections like wildlife, nature, cars etc, which were delightfully colored and the paper used for printing them was thick, smooth and glossy, making them an ideal hunting ground for my expeditions. I used to eagerly wait for those days and in the mornings of those days, as soon as the newspaperwalla used to throw the newspaper at my doorstep, I was over it, enthusiastically hunting for my preys. But, I couldn't kill the prey on that very day itself. I had to painstakingly wait for the next day to do that - my dad would had killed me with his bare hands, had I made big rectangular holes in the current day's newspaper. The next day, the newspaper was all mine to play with and with a big scissors having orange colored handle, mercilessly, I used to make big glaring holes in the paper and was always satisfied and happy to hold that butchered pages high in the air and see through them.

The cutout sections went into an Arts file specially saved and devoted for that very purpose only If you are of my age group or older, you might remember that, we used to have a thick cardboard made, hard, glossy from the outside, roughly about one and a half feet wide, 10-12 inches long and about one inch thick - Arts file. In that we used to store white drawing sheets which were of slightly smaller length and breadth then the file itself.Some of them had small triangular silver metallic edges.Files with those sort of edges were always preferred from those without them, for a very simple reason. Edges of those type of files did not crumple with daily use and wear and tear of the file Needless to say, you had to shell out one or two rupees extra for getting those types.

Both the file and drawing sheets had two holes in the middle-top to hold them together. A long thread - always green in color and with shiny metallic-silver colored endings was used to hold the sheets and the file together. There was a very subtle nuisance involved with tying the sheets and the file together, if you had covered the Arts file with brown paper. If you tie the knot of the thread outside the file i.e. on the cover, then you will have to dig two holes in the brown paper over the file cover, and if you do that, very soon you will find that due to daily use - the paper has torn at the places you had so efficiently dug holes, and even sooner then that, it has spread like a wildfire all over and the brown cover of your beloved arts file requires a replacement. In order to avoid that, the best way was to always tie the string on the top of the drawing sheets itself, inside the top hard cover of the Arts file.

To be continued.....
milte hain break ke baad...isi channel per...tring...tring..tring..ding...dong..ding...
Keep Smiling...

Monday, May 23, 2011

I am Back on Popular Demand

'I am back' on 'Popular Demand'. 'I am back' is a famous Arnold Schwarzenegger dialogue He says it when he reappears after everyone has assumed him to be dead. The world is doomed, on the brisk of major catastrophe, just a few minutes away from coming to an end and only he can save it. I came to know that the blog world is heading for the same fate, so His Highness dutifully makes his appearance.All standup and applause, bring the garlands and flower malas, drum rolls please.

'Popular Demand' was a dialogue used by VP in our engineering college days. VP was my classmate and he would say it whenever he was surrounded by 8-10 or more classmates and they had pleaded with him for like 15 minutes. After that he would reluctantly yield to their demands and say - 'All right, on Popular Demand, make sure there is no girl around'. Then he would give a sensual, seductive dance performance with all the boys surrounding him in a circle and booing him. Hell, not sensual, it was purely striptease - sometimes male, sometimes female - but without removing the clothes. He was a good dancer too I wonder what he would think, say or do about Munni and Shella or today or maybe rather what Munni and Shella would think if they would have seen his dance.

This post will be continued, its just a trailer to show you that many many and more many exciting and interesting posts are yet to come. So, start making preparations for making chilled mango shake with a bit of ruhafza syrup and lots of cherries in it - so that you can leisurely sit down and savior its taste while you enjoy reading my posts and beat the scorching summer heat.