The Confession – Chapter 1 – Memories

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David woke up to the sound of the continuous faint beeps of some machine kept somewhere close to his ears. When he slowly opened his eyes, he didn’t quite recognize his surroundings and it took him more than a few moments to realize that he was in a hospital. The beeps were coming from a machine which was supposedly monitoring his pulse and heartbeat evidenced by the sensors connected to the machine from his chest and the small clip-like device on his left index finger. Feeling his face, he noticed that he had a couple of bandages on his left forearm and his head was also bandaged with an injury on the left side of his forehead.

Once he got over his initial grogginess, he looked around and noticed the other guy in the room. He had propped up a second chair to put his legs up and was dozing away. When David cleared his throat, the other guy opened his eyes and looked at him. On seeing David awake, the guy broke into a big smile.

“Hey dude, welcome back!” he said, getting out of the chair and coming up to David’s bed. “You had us worried for quite a while bro.”

David didn’t quite know how to react. For whatever reason, he simply couldn’t recognize the other person at all. Although he felt some degree of familiarity with him, David couldn’t quite place the other person or figure out why exactly he felt so familiar.

When David didn’t register any emotion or say anything, the other guy asked him “Hey David, dude, are you ok man? How do you feel now?” and when he didn’t get any answer, the other guy pressed the switch to call the duty nurse into the room. And when the nurse came in, the other guy went up to her and asked her to inform the doctor that David had regained his consciousness.

After five odd minutes, the doctor walked into the room, all the while smiling at David. “So David, you had us all worried for quite a while now. How do you feel now? Does your head still hurt?” he asked. David mumbled “I feel fine, kind of…”

“Where am I? What happened to me?” he asked.

“You were involved in an accident around 36 hrs ago. You were brought in by the policemen, who managed to call your friend Ram here based on the last dialed number from your mobile” the doctor replied.

David looked a little perplexed “Accident! But I don’t remember any of this.”

“That’s ok, you just need to relax, take some rest. Just lie down and try to get some sleep” the doctor put his hand on David’s shoulder and told him.

He then took Ram outside the room. “It looks like your friend might have had more serious internal injuries than we initially suspected. Let us run a series of tests to verify the same, but my initial suspicion is that he has experienced some form of memory loss.”

“That is why he reacted the way he did. It was almost like he didn’t recognize me!” Ram exclaimed. Given that David had been his room-mate for almost three years now and they were quite close friends, Ram had been disturbed by his reactions over the last ten odd minutes since he had regained consciousness.

“Don’t worry Ram, these kinds of things are quite common in accidents involving head injuries. Let’s not jump to any conclusions yet. Let’s run the tests first and then we will be in a better position to figure out what is happening to David. Ok.”

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This post has been written for the Write Tribe Festival of Words 2 where today’s prompt had to be about memories.

This is the first post in a novella “The Confession” that I am writing trying to correlate the same to the Write Tribe Festival of Words 2.

On duty, all these years

Mekhri Circle, Bangalore, in 1995 was not a pleasant road to be driving a car or riding a two wheeler on. Given the post-liberalization boom, the availability of foreign brands in India and the slowly increasing levels of affluence in Bangalore, courtesy the new sunrise sector of Information Technology, meant that more and more vehicles were finding their way on the roads of the Garden City, but infrastructure development projects were not keeping pace with this growth. And nowhere was this more evident than the Mekhri Circle traffic signal.

Staying in one of the new localities of the city, Sanjaynagar in Bangalore North meant that Sita had to pass this signal at least twice a day, on the way to office and on the way back home. And the fact that she worked in a nationalized bank meant that she had to travel during the peak hours in the morning and the evening as well. While her trusty Kinetic Honda allowed her to zig zag her way through the traffic, the fact that there were so many more smarter riders and the additional fact that all of them seemed to be in a perennial hurry meant that Sita had to spent quite a few minutes at this particular traffic signal every day of the week.

On most days, during the third consecutive red light at this signal, she would notice the traffic policeman briskly going about his duties and regulating the frequent offenders who jumped the red light. What interested her the most about this particular cop were two things: the first was the fact that he was young and quite trim when it came to physique which is not something that the usual traffic cop looks like. In fact, he looked quite out of place in the traffic department without his potbelly and the nose mask which covered most of his face. And the second thing that she noticed him was his unusual tattoo of five stars that he had on his forearm.

The years went by, the traffic situation at Mekhri Circle only got worse with each passing month. And finally, the Bangalore civic authorities had to construct an underpass which would ease the traffic congestion situation, but by the time they actually planned and finished the underpass, the volumes of traffic had reached levels unmanageable by the underpass as well.

In the meantime, Sita grew old enough to retire from her job at the bank and settled down quite well in the Sanjaynagar area. And it had been around 12 odd years since she had actually ridden her two-wheeler through the Mekhri Circle traffic underpass.

Life in Sanjaynagar has settled down into a decent routine for her. She would get up in the mornings, go for her morning walk with her husband and a few other common friends of theirs, come back home, freshen up, have her breakfast and then go to a few spiritual classes (Bhagvad Gita, meditation, etc), and in general she kept herself quite busy. With this packed itinerary and her voracious love for books, she managed to keep herself engaged for most part of the day, and she was enjoying her retired life quite a bit.

Both she and her husband always took their morning walk in the Dollar’s Colony Walking Track as it provided them with the opportunity to catch up with common friends almost everyday and it also provided them with a secure environment as the track itself was fenced with a polite Security Guard at the gates. In fact this guard was so polite that he smartly saluted her every morning and evening without fail.

On one of the days when Sita was enjoying her brisk morning walk, there was a commotion near the entrance of the Walking Track. When she reached near the place, she realized that a biker who had tried to snatch the chain of yet another morning walker had been apprehended by the Security Guard. She stood around and watched while the policemen arrived and took the chain snatcher away.

Impressed with the guard, she waited until the cops left and then congratulated him. He just smiled and smartly saluted her. Given that she was actually seeing him today, she noticed something familiar on his forearm, an unusual tattoo of five stars.

She had seen that tattoo before. If only, she could remember where.

Sitting down on the benches in the walking track, she furiously searched through her database of memories and then it all came back flooding to her. The Security Guard was the same smart traffic cop from all those years back. She went to him and confirmed this information with him. When he replied in the affirmative, it was then she realized why she hadn’t realized this before.

Back in the days when Ramu was a traffic cop, he had always covered most of his face with a nose mask to keep safe from the pollution. And now that he was a Security Guard, he always wore a full sleeved shirt. In the scuffle with the chain snatcher earlier today, his sleeve button had come undone which was why she noticed the unusual tattoo on his forearm when he saluted her.

It was then she realized that until people like Ramu still existed in this world, people who would turn up to work everyday and put in their best efforts despite rough weather conditions and bad traffic, the world would remain just that little bit safer.

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This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda. This weekend’s prompt had to include the line She had seen that tattoo before. If only, she could remember where which is the reason it has specifically been highlighted in the post.

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This post is one of Blogadda’s WoW picks for the weekend of Nov 17, 2013.

Missing School Days

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I am sure that all of us would agree that school days remain among the best days of our lives, and for whatever reason remain fresh in our memories as if they happened just yesterday, don’t they. All of us long for those wonderful days when innocence was in plenty and life was much simpler, don’t we.

Ok, now that I have managed to get your attention to this post, let me come straight to the topic. Just like the rest of you, I also miss the good old school days, the only difference being that at this point in time I am not missing my own school days, but the school days of my little daughter, who is at home full time since October 2^nd, courtesy the puja holidays at her play home.

When R was younger, both my wife and me used to read out stories to her, talk to her and make her reply to our questions, show her different things and help her identify them, play with colors and teach her the various shapes and sounds, used to read out her animal books, vegetable books, fruit books, and teach her various things. Little did we realize that keeping my daughter engaged for a good portion of her day would end up backfiring in such a crazy manner.

Since R joined playschool in June, my wife has been enjoying her three hours of peace in the morning, after which R comes home, has her lunch and naps for a good two hours. So all in all, my wife had a good five hours at her disposal during which time she used to complete the cooking, house work and also have some time to pursue her hobbies which includes reading, putting up posts on my blog and other assorted things. However, as all good things come to an end, so did this. Come October 2nd, and after spending one full day with my daughter, both of us realized that we were in trouble for the time that her school remained closed.

She has developed into this relatively hyperactive kid who cannot sit still for even a small period of time. She needs to continuously be given stimuli to her brain in the form of books, crayons, shapes, colors, physical games, conversations, questions, answers to her questions, the list goes on. And to add fuel to this fire is the fact that nowadays she is not tired by the time it is her usual nap time. And this means that she has a very light nap in the afternoons which is invariably disturbed by some courier delivery person who picks the wrong doorbell to ring and hits the switch which has the weird song which always wakes little R up.

My parents, my wife and me have all had enough of reading out the same books to her again and again, we have all had enough of playing the same games with her. My wife and me have had enough of taking her to the park and hoisting her up the platform from where she slides down. For whatever reason, she refuses to climb the steps up the platform and insists on being physically hoisted up by either of us. All in all, our levels of patience are severely depleted, and we are now turning to divine assistance to help us get through the 10 odd days more before her play school reopens.

While we truly appreciate the fact that the little one is not at all interested in television viewing of any kind for a duration of more than 5 mins at a stretch, at times we end up praying that she watches a little more TV to reduce the hyper-activity that surrounds her when she is in the same room.

To be really honest, I have never really missed school so much until the last week or so, when I have truly wished and prayed that it reopened soon.

I would love to hear your viewpoints on how you tackle hyper activity in your two year old children. Any tips and suggestions will be rewarded in the form of inclusions in our daily thanksgiving to the Almighty.

A walk down memory lane with P

Dear P,

The earliest memories I have of you are that of you hanging upside down a tree near Bala Chitappa’s house in Lottegollahalli. The funny part is that even though I have mentioned this to you more than a couple of times before you don’t seem to remember this at all. Of course, given that you have hung upside down from more than a few trees when you were around 10 yrs old, I don’t really blame you for not remembering this.

And yet another vivid memory I have of you is the Mahabalipuram trip that you and me had with Mani Mama and family with Deeps and Keerths as well.

That was one fun trip. I remember how we jointly sang “Shape of my heart” by Backstreet Boys in their album, Black and Blue. While you knew all the damn lyrics like you always did and always probably will, I sang the chorus bits, you were the Nick Carter of the duo, I probably was the rest of the boys. That was one fun trip, wasn’t it.

And given that you had recently learnt swimming and your father was egging you on to get deeper and deeper into the sea, you ventured more than you should have on that day and ended up scraping your knee quite badly on one of the shallow rocks that day. Those memories are still quite vivid in my mind.

In the big family get together in December of 2012, you mentioned that your earliest memories of us together were all the times that my parents left you and me in the car when they went shopping for groceries and vegetables in Malleswaram 8^th Cross. While I remember those car conversations well, for whatever reason I don’t ever remember you and me becoming the thickest of friends over mutually shared expletives and their meanings, as you mentioned.

I guess it was more than natural that you and me became good friends given that we are the only two ‘only sons’ without siblings in our common cousin group. And the fact that both of us were ‘wannabes’ in every sense of the word when we were younger also meant that we gelled well together, didn’t we? Our common likes in music, movies, conversation topics, ogling at girls and having all those ‘failed crushes’ during our teenage years, most of them happened around the same time despite the fact that you are a good 6 yrs younger than me. It was almost as if God, Destiny or Life meant for us to be good friends.

It goes without saying that we did all our ‘teenage sins’ together in terms of smoking cigarettes, drinking our first beers, watching our first porn movies on VHS tapes. And it was but natural that you ended up becoming better friends with my best friends G and P when I was away at Indore. In fact, I guess the three of you more than made up for my absence in those two years, didn’t you. Based on what G has to say about those days, you guys seemed to have had quite a bit of fun.

Even when you were in Seattle for those 3 yrs in the middle, you made it a point to call me up almost once every two months and speak to me for more than an hour at least. While the topics ranged from everything under the sun, the conversations almost always ended up with either of us having to hang up because we were just too sleepy or too tired of talking over the phone. We never seemed to have a dearth of conversations to talk about, and that probably is because we both were meant to be what we are today, the best of friends.

I could go on and on, but then the way I see it, there’s so much more to be done, so much more to be enjoyed, so much more to talk about, and therefore, I am going to leave some for later.

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Image courtesy: Google images search

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This post has been written as part of Write Tribe’s Letters Unsent – 3 prompt where we had to write a letter to our sibling or closest cousin, and given that I am an only child, this letter goes out to P, my all time favorite cousin.

Apologies for all readers if they found this post extremely self indulgent, but the fact remains that what I feel for P probably cannot be put in one post or one letter. We just have too many common memories for that.

A letter to my best friend…

Dear Television,

I know it has been quite a while since I have sat with you for an extended period of time and enjoyed your company. Blame my lack of interest in you, blame the internet for making all the good sitcoms easily available for download, but the truth of the matter is that I haven’t spent too much time with you in the recent past.

I still remember how I first became your friend. The spinning logo Doordarshan with its whiny music introduced you to me. I remember how you and me spent lots of time together, both of us as 3 yr olds (me in the physical sense, you in the sense of being introduced to India). Those first few days of our friendship were spent in me enjoying possibly the most photogenic politicians of his time, Rajiv Gandhi. And then I also remember spending many a sleepless night catching the 1983 Cricket World Cup which India won, and a few other sporting events like the 1984 Olympics (with Carl Lewis, Daley Thompson, sticking in my memories till today), etc.

The next few years when you upgraded to color were exciting for me. Apart from the weekly Ramayan and Mahabharath episodes, you also opened my mind to Western Music Vides courtesy the two hour slot given to MTV every evening. It was fun actually watching Madonna and Michael Jackson while humming their songs which was etched well in my mind. Those were also the days when you introduced me to.

The mid-1990s heralded the arrival of satellite television and those were the best days of our friendship. You showed me the wonderful world of sitcoms in the form of Doogie Howser, Wonder Years, X Files, and most importantly, the WWE (used to be called WWF back then). You helped me view the world in an entirely different way as you showed me snippets of life from the US, Europe and various other parts of the world via these wonderful channels. These truly were the most memorable days of our friendship. You made me a more enlightened person and all that knowledge well and truly helped me become an awesome quizzer in an age where the internet was still a dream and books, newspapers and you were the only real sources of information about the wide world.

In 2000, I started with m professional career which automatically meant that I started spending less time with you. That being said, you were the only friend who unconditionally still provided me with entertainment when I wanted it. You along with the VCR and the VCD player still remained good friends with me for some more time to come.

Come 2004 when I left home for higher studies and reached a hostel was when our friendship reached its lowest point. Considering that I had to share you with at least 20 others in a common room where hardly anyone respected the others’ space, I simply couldn’t afford to share our friendship with others, and preferred to keep it under wraps. This was also the time when my new friend, the laptop took over the mantle of my best friend. Him along with high speed broadband have been friends with me for a little over 8 odd yrs now.

The sad truth is this, today the laptop and high speed broadband are well on their way to making you irrelevant. Yes, you are way ‘smarter’ today in the sense that if I connect you to a Wi-Fi signal, you can beam the entire internet to me, if I connect you to a laptop with a HDMI cable, you still provide the best damn movie viewing experience, but having said all that, you still remain a friend only because you harbor those other small snippets of entertainment that people call ads with you. That being said, I am pretty sure that you are on your last few breaths.

That’s the reason that I thought I will write this letter to you to rejig all the wonderful memories of our old friendship, to relive some of the awesome moments together once again.

I miss you old friend. Have a wonderful last few years of existence. Although a small part of me hopes that you make a huge comeback and bounce back into my life. But only time will tell. 

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This post was prompted by Write Tribe.

This post can also be used for the Daily Prompt.

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This post has been selected as one of BlogAdda’s “Spicy Saturday Picks” on 10-Aug-2013.