Woh Purane Din.....

some of my Grandfathers Juniors and my dad's colleagues came home today. they had especially come to meet my grandfather. he is a retired chartered accountant, and a very good one. over a cup of tea and a few evening time Diwali special snacks, they spoke to my grandfather as i sat listening to them. they spoke about how my grandfather used to work, and how scared all of them used to be of him. they spoke about the times when they were training to be CA s, and how they used to doze off on the table where they used to tally the Balance sheets, how they ran to the 'Dhabaa s' the day they got their stipends....how they ran around to look for one piece of paper....woh purane din...
it was nice to see the smile on my grandfathers round shiny face. i felt proud. finally someone had taken him back to his times. they praised him and told him that he was their inspiration. no matter how modest one may be, two word of praise does make you feel loved and respected. its human nature.
their conversation left me thinking how my grandfather would have been in his prime, i would love to experience that side of my 'papa' as i call him fondly. when i look at his spectacles sliding down the bridge of his nose and his snow white hair, i wonder if those glasses would slide down in the same way in 1958?

Picture of Hollis Woods

Today, in the afternoon, when i had nothing much to accomplish, i put on the TV and surfed through the channels, suddenly my eye stopped at HBO, a movie was just starting, an animated kind with slow soft music.

This movie genuinely moved a heartbeat. it was about an orphan, who was shifted from family to family to find a perfect home.....this kept me wondering is there a perfect home?? a home where there are only laughs, no sorrows...only births no death?

she is made to believe from a very young age that she ruined everything around her, as the movie proceeds, the events because of certain situations do turn out to be that way,what she doubted did become her belief after all.
like most Hollywood stories, this one as well has a happy ending..she finally does get a family that she wants, but the journey up til there is very dramatically portrayed...a must watch.

Happy Birthday to me!!!

Let’s begin from where it started. I was crossing the busiest of the roads in Mumbai two days before I loose my ‘teenager’ title. My phone rings…my favourite (and only) Aunt called to ask me if I have left for the station to catch a train to go to Hyderabad. I make an obnoxious face. Its only 7!!!! My train leaves at 10. She yelled back, it felt as if she was standing across though she was a 700 kilometres away. She asks have you packed?? A spat a lie. Shit!! I have a train to catch in 3 hours, I have to pack and travel half way across this city. This time I made another obnoxious face.
I sprinted to the 3rd floor of my building in 16 secs and started to pack. I finished packing in 20 minutes (phew!! if you were a girl you would know) my phone rang 30 times in those 20 minutes…Mom, Dad, Aunt, Uncle, Cousin Brother, Roommate, Best friend, not so close friends….all the people who would never call me when I am bored staring at my ceiling they remembered to ask me about the paper, the weather my birthday plans…traffic!! Yes traffic!
I packed my bags and was ready to go it’s almost 8 now, to reach the VT in this time I had to either run or hire a jet, which I could possibly not do, so I quietly left. The proportion of my cell ringing and the battery dying was inverse. We almost travelled towards VT, suddenly my aunt calls to tell me to catch another train with my cousin as my ticket for the VT train was not confirmed, so I now had to go to Dadar. To change the path was not very difficult, so we did we were anyway near Dadar, now its 8.30 then my dammed phone rings again “go to VT the ticket has been confirmed”….shit!! I can’t do the shuffle, the traffic was just not moving at all, and I got of the cab and almost ran to the station to catch my cousins train which left at 9. It was this train or the local to go back to Bandra. I met my cousin on the platform; this damn phone will not even stop ringing now. We were supposed to share a berth as my ticket was not confirmed I was on the waiting list.
After raging arguments with the taxi driver, fights with the people from the other side of the phone, the battery fighting to live I finally got into the train with my cousin. The ticket for that train was not a confirmed one, it was on waiting list. Now my only fear was, when the TC comes to check my unconfirmed ticket, he will throw me out. I had visions of being thrown out of a moving train!
We had boarded the train at 9.30(P.M), so we expected to see the TC by 11, but he did not turn up. Phew! Both of us had not eaten at all, so when the railway food man cam ewe both made a face and ordered for a ‘Veg. Biryani’ something is better than nothing. We ate 3 bites of the Biryani and discarded it. We were asleep by midnight. I woke up the wailing of a kid and checked my watch. 7! Damn only7. I had 8 looong hours to kill. Thanks to the invention of the laptop, we saw 2 movies and I read every word on every page of Vogue, I admired Aishwarya’s pictures a million times.
Then at last we landed Secunderabad station. And within an hour I was home, at my Aunts place.
She told me that I had exactly 20 minutes to feed my face and have a bath, coz we had to leave for a party in half an hour!! Ya right! So, I travel for 12 hours, come home, wear my best clothes and leave for a party?? Yes. I had to. So I did.
We reached the place we were invited to. It was a farm house nearly 3 hours out of the city. The funniest part was the name...”Button eyes” huh? What the hell does that mean? Either way, what was funnier was the name of the swimming pool…”that’s it!” yah that’s the name….
We ate approximately 2 chicken birds (if we count the number of kebabs, Taangs, Tandoori’s we ate) and ate some more. At 12, all of them gathered and suddenly started singing Happy birthday to you…… people I did not eve know! It was great fun. Then out of no where, emerged a cake! Which I cut. Soon after that my phone rang constantly and rang till the time I got home.
What a way to celebrate my 20th birthday!! I had loads of fun. Happy birthday to me…

A TRIAL AND AN ERROR

“Dr. Nicholas Scott, you are convicted for the murder of Mr. Jeff Miller, you can thus face death penalty or serve life imprisonment”
Loosing a best friend and a roommate was not something easy for me to accept.
Loosing a husband and a lover was even more difficult for Carol.

How much I regretted the day I introduced Jeff to My best friend and his wife. I can still vividly remember how enchanted Jeff looked when Carol walked across the room to greet me. I don’t blame him; everybody was in love with her beauty and her charisma. Those soft blonde ringlets and those dreamy eyes…. It sometimes kept me pondering as to why she is still married to a man she doesn’t see when she wakes up in the morning because he has already left for the hospital and doesn’t get to sleep in the comfort of his arms in the night because he is out drinking. Besides carol is an intelligent woman, she is young, exceedingly gorgeous, and comfortingly amiable and yet so lonely….

She rang the doorbell of my house knowing I would be home working on my novel all day. She needed company and I needed a break. We drove to the grocer and had lunch together. Our conversations raced from nick’s drinking problem to how interesting she found Jeff and how lonely she was going to be when I would go to Egypt for a week to complete my novel on Cleopatra. It was clear both of us enjoyed the company of the other, we got along well.

Meanwhile, when I was away I was not aware about how close Jeff and Carol had become. Jeff was not only blessed with champagne coloured hair, chiselled features and deep dark entrancing eyes, but he was also a smooth talker. He was good with women. His career as a Soap star had just set off. Why wouldn’t carol like him? Any women would….

Couple of times I would see carol and Jeff strolling down in the neighbourhood, seeing them in the coffee shop. But what I discovered one night changed it all. It changed the way I thought about Jeff and my impressions about Carol…
I still remember it as if it was yesterday. I had gone for a drink with an old classmate, I thought I would drop by Nick’s house to see them, but no one was home. It was around 12 in the night; Carol is normally at home at this time. It was Sunday, moreover the finals between Chelsea and Manchester United were going on I assumed that Nick was at home. I immediately called Nicks Cell phone and found out that he was at Woodside Inn, drinking, and watching the Game with a few of his friends. I asked him where Carol was, and like me he assumed that she was at home. Suddenly in the rear view mirror I see carol walking from my house across the road to her house. I promptly drove off so that she could not see me.
When I walked into Jeff’s room I saw the rumpled sheet that depicted an evening of passion. Jeff was in the shower, he obviously heard someone coming, from the Bathroom. He assumed it was Carol. He said,” Carol, sweetheart, you better head home, Danny must be on his way home, and besides I don’t want your forever outraged husband to find out you were with me he might just kill you….and if Danny sees you here…things will complicate”

I spent a week of sleepless nights and I realised that a helpless anger was simmering in me. If I tell Nick about this, I wonder what the consequences would be. I don’t want him to harm carol. But nick was my best friend. It was my duty to inform him.
I decided that I will tell him this when all three of us are together so that if they get into a fight I will resolve it there and then.

On a Sunday when Jeff and Nick both were free I called Nick over for a drink or two. This was the hardest thing for me to do, but I had to do it. Nick walked in an hour late, he was pretty drunk, and before I could stop Jeff he already offered him a drink. Nick will never refuse a peg of Scotch. One followed another. I did not want nick to drink anymore so I decided to tell him now.
I asked him to come to the study with me, where I told him all that I had caught sight of. Rage poured upon him like a trembling flood and he swayed in the sudden grip of anger towards the living room where Jeff was sitting. They immediately got into a fist fight. Jeff was younger and much more powerful than the short, fat and balding Nick. Suddenly there is a Gun shot…….
At the sound of the gun, a frantic carol came running to my house. When I let her in, she almost fainted at what she saw.
Loosing a lover and almost loosing a husband was not easy to accept.
The rest of the evening was spent in running up and down the hospital and the cop station and I knew the next few months will be spent in the Court room….
Carol was having a hard time. Nick was under arrest .Her anxiousness never for a minute subdued. The image of Jeff’s dead body painted in blood and the image of Nick lying there almost unconscious with a gun in his hand haunted the living daylights out of her, and the trial was only a week ahead.

Carol and i walked into the courtroom, the judge sat there motionless looking at carol from head to toe. Nick was standing in the witness stand. I glanced at the jury and tried to imagine what Nick was going through. It must have been a blood curdling intimidating feeling. Nick looked straight into my eyes as if he was accusing me of something. I looked down….
The trail went on for another hour. They called Nick’s close friend and colleagues for their statements about Nick’s character and his drinking habits. The defendant was Jeff’s long time girlfriend Susan Alexandra, who filed a case against Nick.
Nick had nothing to say in his defence because that night he was so drunk he could not remember the series of events at all. Carol was called to the witness stand where she confessed everything about her objectionable relationship with Jeff.
I was the prime eyewitness and the only one. My statement would be the deciding factor. But due to constrain of time, the court was adjourned to the day after.

On day 2 of the trial I was standing in the witness box. The defendant’s lawyer asked me several questions about that night. Some questions where repetitive but framed in a different way just to make sure I am not changing my answers. After my statement, the judge examined the gun and bullets and the fingerprint analysis. After spending 20 minutes with the jury, the judgement was passed. It was inevitable. Nicholas was convicted.
Carols grief skipped beyond borders, she was home all the time, and she never went out, did not meet people and was completely another person I did not recognise.
About a month later, I called Carol home for Lunch. I wanted to go out because there was no food at home. But we just settled on ordering food from the nearby bistro.
I had not seen carol this way for a very long time. She was wearing a pastel pink and white dress. Her hair looked wonderful. Most importantly her face shined, and her eyes twinkled. I was happy she was not mourning anymore. We talked for a while, like old times, about my work, about Jeff and Nick. I offered her a glass of wine.
The doorbell rang; I was fixing her a drink so I asked her to get the door. The food we called for was here. So I told her to take the money from my wallet and pay him.
When she came back, she looked pale as if she just saw a ghost. I asked her if everything was ok. She simply nodded. There was something terribly wrong.

A week later, four specialised investigators including a deputy chief investigator walked into my house. Before I could even think of what was happening, they arrested me.
Fear curdled in my stomach. They told me that Mrs. Carol Scott has filed a case against me. Why?? Did she find out……

Two days later I was standing where Nick had been standing a few days ago. Yes, it was a bloodcurdling, intimidating feeling. The piercing glances of the jury, the stone-faced judge and carol. The look she had in her eyes was a look of deceit and broken trust. All I could do was look down. Before they started to question me carols attorney asked her to come to the stand. The attorney asked her what she discovered when she had come to my house for lunch. She said” I was asked to pay the food delivery man from the wallet by Mr. Daniel Marshall, the minute I opened his wallet I saw an unusual orange receipt, it grabbed my attention because I knew it was the receipt from Mr. Smith’s shop, Mr. smith sells guns and bullets and also repairs them. So I quickly hid the receipt. After lunch I went with my lawyer to Mr. Smith’s shop, where he told me that a few days back Nick had come to get his gun repaired, but he did not collect it as yet. He also confirmed with me that Danny had come to buy some bullets. Note that he came the same day Jeff was shot. Also Nick and Danny bought identical pistols from him”
My heart sank. She is an intelligent woman after all
After carol, Mr. Smith was called to the witness stand and he conformed everything Carol had said in her statement. After what the defendant had to present, the judge asked me if I had something to say. I did not what would I say? It was true I had no alibi….all I said was I did it because I was in love with carol and when I found out about Jeff and her it infuriated. When Nick and Jeff got into a fight, it was the right time for me to get rid of both these men in carols life, and In a fever of unrelenting rage, I used my gun and shot him, I then placed my gun in Nicks hands, he was unconscious, and because I used gloves, my fingerprints did not show. I am sorry Carol.
And today when I think about it I realize that even though I was so conniving about the murder one error and this court trial has turned my life around. I have lost a best friend, a room mate and carol…… For whom I did all this

My thoughts are interrupted by the prison guard as he brings me back to reality which for me now is this 6X6 cell.