THE LITTLE SOLDIERS

It was 6:30 am..the 'auto-wala'(a driver), who was hired by my parents among many other helpless parents, had parked the auto-rickshaw nearby a paan–wala (tobacco shopkeeper) and my sister and I sat in the auto, relaxed for a while, in our warm sweaters and scarves, which otherwise flew whenever the engine boiled to run that sleepy auto towards our school.

“Chapter one, chapter two, yes I guess I remember all of them…oh god what was the name of the niece of Aunt Polly in chapter ten??...will I remember everything during the exam??...”

I could feel the weight of the stuffed mind I was carrying and felt a desperate need of unloading that weight from little me. I entered the classroom, but instead of shedding the weight, I added a few pounds more of my classmates’ and my teachers’ unnerving expectations to the stack of the expectations of my parents , embodied with fear, as, those were the days when I always used to come first in my class.. “what if I come second in these exams…!!”..

Some song from one of those old idiotic movies of Govinda( an Indian comedy actor) in 1990s was being played from one of the houses behind the walls of my exam-room and it seemed as if the fresh new stream of erotic words from the song flew in, forcibly displacing the data(syllabus) captured in the tank of my mind. It seemed there was a fight going on between the two data in my mind for the shelter in my big head. I wondered how hard I had tried to imprint those slippy chapters on my butter paper like mind and still those invaders had managed to find place in my mind when I had never bothered to listen to those songs. I was in class 5 then.

The question papers and the answer sheets were distributed among tiny fifty soldiers of my class. Our fight began. We were being invigilated by ‘Tara’- a monster like teacher and I again remembered an innovative song sung that morning itself, “TARA ra ra ra, TARA ra in the morning…”, by a funny boy in my class. And I felt like banging my head against the bench in hope to rearrange my head components in case something had gone wrong!! 

Ten minutes were left…and the monster started collecting the sheets. I still had to attempt a two mark question and revision was to be done. My roll number was 33 and I thought of resuming my fight till the monster could reach my desk to snatch my answer sheets...and all of a sudden, the shortest girl in my class, but the bravest of all young soldiers I had known till then, begged in front of the monster to let her complete the paper. But the monster didn’t move. 

She again begged but went in vain..the monster roared, tried to snatch the paper from her but the soldier resisted and folded her hand away and got slapped on her face by the monster. 

The soldier didn’t move and got slapped again. A stream of tears emanated from her anguish and made itself visible to the whole world (at that time my world limited its boundaries within that classroom)..another slap came striking her face and I spoke……….

I feared another slap, but on my cheek this time, and soon the funny friend of my mine spoke in our favor and following him the whole army stood up. Finally, the hearts of the little soldiers boiled and together they spoke as if attacking the monster with the only shells they had,  “ma’am the time is not over yet, we should be given ten minutes more to complete our paper, you may ask the invigilators in other rooms."...

We were asked to show up in front of the vice-principal and explain. I was the monitor of my class then and held a good reputation and with the first rank which somehow I had always managed to get then, bailed us out of that attack.

We never got those ten minutes. I scored 97 marks out of 100 in that paper and the brave soldier who had stood for her right, got 95 marks in that paper…We must have been nerds then!!

But we did get the ten minutes of the inglorious war we had fought bravely against the monster…the monster had not moved in the war, but afterwards , I am sure something inside her had moved.

The little soldiers had permanently printed the war and the fear in the monster’s head…

I’m sure all of us, at some stage of our lives, must have been some kind of soldiers in our ways and still feel our chests exalted with those memories!!

MISS ME COZ I MISS YOU...MY HEART BECOMES SOLID, IN THERE WHEN I PLACE YOU...

I chose to read this post after a long time and became mushy as I went through it. It feels weird reading again one of your own posts written long time back. I suggest, you too give it a try. I've edited this post on 15-03-13. 

The original post starts now (with some changes due to some sentences' restructuring to eliminate grammatical errors that I had made then which I couldn't stand now). Here it goes..

Have you ever experienced hollowness??

Have you ever felt as if you need to cry but you can’t?

Did you ever feel the need of crying with no substantial reason in front of you??

I'm guessing that everyone must have felt so at some point of time in their lives (to avoid being a different kettle of fish) )!!

A few years back , when I had to bid final goodbye to my college, on the lanes of which, years had walked on different roads. And my hostel stood there silently as if with a solemn message "Believe it or not, but I was your home". To bring it though under a lighter note, I saw it mocking me with a sarcasm saying, "Enough of lollygagging. Now get lost!"

So I had to vacate my hostel room and say good bye to some of my friends and to my surprise I had real tears in my eyes which I could not conceal behind my otherwise deep dry eyes and soon I was reminded of the time four years back when I was asked by my parents to shift to the hostel room. I remembered how bad I had felt then, as if leaving those only individuals with whom I felt the most protected and then it seemed I was about embark a journey, once again after 4 years, into a world full of individuals who would think me to be nothing more than a mere living entity. What I could not understand then was that why such thoughts were pouring in my mind and what exactly did I feel bad about!

All I knew was that I remembered that I had felt bad leaving home when I had to leave for college and that my mom whose tenderness is unique and incomparable, a fact had generated tears to shamelessly roll down my cheeks.
So as all these memories were flooding my head preparing me to become part of a bigger emotional set up, one of my friends came running to me and hugged me, sobbing and asking for forgiveness as she knew that I was upset. She was not supposed to be there as she had some plans and I knew that and so I had anticipated that she wouldn't be there to see me off. But she was there. And so my eyes became watery again while another friend of mine seemed to maintain composed disposition until her father made her realise by stating the fact, the truth that from now on the college life we had lived for four years was to be lived only in our memories for the rest of our lives. And it was enough to ignite our swollen hearts we were bearing then to avoid spilling floods of sentimental stuff that we were trying hard to control…
I had never cried in those four years in front of my friends and on the last day too, I tried to do so, but this time the efforts went in vain or may be for the first time I didn’t really want to veil my feelings in from them.

I had to leave for my hometown, Pune where I had to stay for four days before joining my first company and this time I didn’t’ feel like leaving for the city. The sense of hollowness deepened and I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t I happy with the idea of being at home for even four days.
After coming back from home, the same feeling clouded me. With the care that my mother was able to shower in that little time she had reminded me of the fact that no one else in this world had the ability to love me in such self-less manner and that how she went through all the odds only to support me, and how even with the distance between the cities in which we resided was not able to bring even a fraction amount of difference in the love and care that she had for me four years back.
Can anybody think of any mother to even come across an idea of trying to replace her child with other interesting things that otherwise some silly minds think of in case of long distance relationships..?? At least I haven’t come across one.

Well for now, my belief in loving and caring for your parents always throughout your life (specially my mom in my case) has strengthened manifold.
Take out few minutes in your apparent busy lives  and give it a thought!