Granny and the KISS...

Granny and the KISS...



"Do you love him?" she asked.

"I don't know granny!" the twenty year old said shuffling a little in her chair. She looked at her granny expecting her to react.
Granny did not react.

"How will i know if its love granny?" she asked. There was no reply from the granny. Again!

There was silence for a while.

"Granny speak something." the girl was getting restless.

"How will i know if it is love granny?" she asked again... waiting eagerly for a reply.

The granny was quiet for a while before she started speaking.

"We were married fifty two years ago, me and your grandfather. Till he passed away four years ago we were very happy together. There was one.... one...(she hesitated... actually searched for the correct word.) thing or habit that we had. It was not something we planned for. It just happened to us."

"What is it granny?"

"It actually started a month after our marriage. The first few days of our marriage... i was a shy girl. He mixed well with everyone. In hardly a week i got used to him. I was very free with him, though not so much with my in-laws. Slowly we loved spending time with each other. In no time I fell in love with him..... at least I thought it was love. It did not take me much time to realise he loved me too... He never said that he loved me..... but he always showed it."

"It was the sixties... United.. combined families was the in thing.... So we had very little personal moments... so fifteen days later... we found ourself in kodaikanal..."

"Romance haan! dadi...." she winked.. Granny smiled.

"To me.... it was romantic. I loved the place and our stay... we visited several near by places but everynight we came back to the same hotel room. As far as I remember it was on the third night of our trip. We had gone to visit a temple near by. We walked around as the scenic beauty was great. We came back tired but content and happy. We held hands which back then was quite a deed. There was this feeling.. like i was floating in air. Unexpressable it was."

"We were on the bed and I had closed my eyes, rewinding and playing the entire day's events. Suddenly i could feel warm breath against my face. Your Grandfather was a very romantic person. He was a very good kisser. so I was waiting him to kiss me.... if you understand what i mean. " the girl laughed... and winked at her Granny.

"I did not open my eyes. He kissed me on the forehead. Two seconds later I opened my eyes... anticipating to be staring into his and guess what... I was staring at the ceiling. I did not understand but I chose not to turn to him... so I quickly closed my eyes.. and ended up slipping into sleep sometime later."

"The next day was good too. Spending time alone was really getting 'real good'. That night too.... i was lying in bed... I was thinking about how life has turned good after marriage and suddenly there was a wet kiss on my forehead. Somehow again I did not manage to open my eyes immediately.... two seconds later as i opened my eyes expecting him to be there this time at least..... all i found was myself staring at the ceiling."

"The next day.... i wanted to know what he was upto... so i did not close my eyes.... I was shuffling on the bed continousyl and the kiss never came. Some time later after i stabilized and closed my eyes... the kiss came back.... this time I did not want to open my eyes...."

"... and from that day for the next forty eight years.... every night when we get into bed... to him I am asleep. I wait for him to plant that kiss on my forehead before he sleeps. Never in those years has once did he mention that he kisses me. I never wanted to mention him that i would be awake with my eyes closed every night as ke kissed me. I just never wanted to mention. That one kiss would make my day complete. How many ever problems or difficulties I had... he always kissed me. Every night I switch the lights off and get into bed... for that kiss. He made it a habbit to kiss me everyday and I made it a habit everyday to be awake with my eyes closed... but asleep to him."

"Sounds really romantic Granny!" she said with a pleasant smile on her face.

"To me... these are things that tell you if it is love or not. Saying 'I Love You' is not all... you have to show it... and though your grandfather did not mean to show it by kissing me... because i was awake I always knew he loved me. Even when we fought... the day just had to end with that KISS. Always special!. There are those certain things that happen between a pair or a couple which you would just want everyday and never get bored... to me... those are things through which love is expressed and the presence of such things means... it is LOVE.


Written by
Goutam Chalasani

THREE-- right here! right now!

Some accidents are sweet. Buying a book; coming back home with the wrong one and then realizing that the book is actually good was the sweetest accident that happened to me this summer.

It was old. The pages were yellow. The book was damaged, in a sense that the pages were folded badly at the edges; torn in some parts.The cover was made from cardboard, covered with a blue velvety cloth and the letters DIARY were printed on it in an odd shade of gold. I held the book delicately and turned to the first page. the entire top half of the page was empty. I was filled with excitement and shock when I glanced at the year- on the top of the page, printed in bold was the year-1978.
and at the end of the page-

"Dear diary! welcome to the world of Three! but don't get excited; my life sucks!"

I carefully turned to the next page. It took me seventeen seconds and seven lines to realize that this person called herself 'three' and yes! it belonged to a certain she. Over the next two pages I learned a lot of things about her. She was a woman about the age of twenty five at that point of time. She was an orphan, was a small employee at a big firm; her job paid her enough to lead a comfortable life, but she had no friends and no family. I came to the end of page four; paused; took a deep breath and told myself that this is going to be different. I leaned back into my chair and turned another page.

"Another day, another month and another year have just passed. People all over the country are celebrating and my colleagues are having a party, but i find no reason to join them. what should I celebrate? the departure of the old year or the arrival of a new one? The entire year has been boring and I have been alone and this new year doesn't promise anything better...."

and as I read through several other pages, one thing was very clear- this girl truly and wholeheartedly hated her life. I turned one more.....

" Its another dull, foggy winter morning and London doesn't look any different." It was then, at that moment I understood it totally or I thought I did. A girl's diary, that too from 1978 and London, for a second i thought i was in a crazy dream. I told myself that this was true and I was lucky. It felt nice to read through thoughts of a previous generation and that too International thoughts. I continued reading...

"Aby is the only half- friend I have and she is the only one who has a little concern for me. Around her I feel different. Today I had lunch with her and Jenson(her boy-friend). I liked the way he took care of her. It feels nice she says. She says- He makes me feel different, he makes me feel special, as if I am wanted. Would I ever feel special? would there be anyone who would care for me? When would he come around? I wish he existed and I wish he were here, right here! right now! "

I wish you were more than just a dream,
I wish you were true.
I wish you were with me,
I wish you were here, right here! right now!

I wish you could make me feel different,
I wish you could take care of me,
I wish you could make me feel special,
I wish you were here, right here! right now!

I wish you would hold my hand,
I wish you would take me into your arms,
I wish you would look into my eyes and say 'I love you',
I wish you were here, right here! right now!

I wish you would come quickly,
I wish you would cast your charm,
I wish you would sweep me off my feet,
I wish you were here, right here! right now!

G, Devan, The Rat and The Welfare Secretary.

Before you assume anything, let me make myself clear to you. I am not an animal hater, I have never violated any blue cross guidelines and I have no past history with the rat involved. I did not entice the rat and did no harm to it as it wreaked havoc. I could do nothing more because all that is expected of me is to complaint the situation to the higher authorities and i decided so be it.

I decided to approach my close friend and the maintenance secretary(Devan) and...

G: devaaaa! There was a f-ingly huge rat in my cupboard and it damaged two travel bags, my closet door and it troubled me so much.
Deva: OH shit!
G: I want full compensation.
Deva: what do you want?
G: I want the rat to be hanged until death and when I say hanged, I mean by its tail!
Deva: oh! come on! It could be hanged but till death wont be done.
G: ok, then I get to slap it five times.
Deva: ok! slap it five times. Ask the welfare secretary to kick start the interrogation proceedings.

and so accompanied by Devan I approached the Welfare secretary(WS). I explained my entire case to him and....

WS: I will look into the matter.
G: what do you mean- you will look into the matter? I demand full justice.
WS: See... both of you are under my constituency. So I cannot ignore one(me) and accuse the other(rat) without proof!
G: so what are your plans?
WS: I will put my best team on this; catch the rat; interrogate it and bring him to trial before the judge(Warden)
**silence for a couple of minutes.**
WS: But I have no leads...
G: now what? you want me to describe the rat for you?
WS: that could help us a lot and give us a head start.
G: good! make it fast, I can't wait to slap the rat.
WS: wait! wait! you get to do that only after the rat has been proved guilty.
G: Oh! come on!

after a couple more formalities and a session with the artist, the scene for the man hunt has been somewhat set.

WS: (via facebook ) Attention all units, a photo of the rogue rat is being uploaded onto the wall. I want the perimeter to be secured and every one thoroughly checked. Every unit tag itself onto the photo and comment below.
one minute later- fifteen tags and fifteen comments that read- ROGER THAT.

four hours later

WS on IITP news: The manhunt for the rogue rat has just ended successfully, and as we speak it is being transferred to a secure facility for further interrogation.

three more hours later

WS on IITP news: now that we have spoken to the rat and have inquired several key witnesses belonging to both parties, we firmly believe that the rat is not guilty and the same has been reported to G. He has decided to press charges against the rat and has appointed Devan as his legal advisor.
IITP reporter: So what will happen to the rat?
WS: the rat rights protection association chief spoke to me a short while ago and we have decided that i will lead the case against these heartless humans.
IITP reporter: but that means you are going to fight not one but against two people who belong to your constituency.
WS: I am going to fight two heartless, cruel egoists. To me the welfare of the rat association is more important than these two.

The date of the trial arrives, the case has been presented before the judge(WARDEN) and....
Deva: Your honor! The damage done to the two travel bags , the closet door and to my clients pride is no small offence and we demand full justice.
Warden: your point has been noted. 'WS' you now may proceed
WS: you honor, my client was never responsible for what happened. It always fed on remains of the mess food and thankfully to the students, it always had plenty to suffice with and hence it has managed to remain more healthy than G. But because the students have been boycotting the mess since a couple of days, no food has been cooked there and hence nothing for my client here to eat. It had no option but to search for food and it came to the most meanest student's room without the slightest idea that it would be locked in the cupboard for eight hours and tortured by G.
Deva: this is ridiculous!
Warden: do you accept the accusation - that you locked the rat in for eight hours.
G: I had no idea it was there.
WS: note this point your honor!

Warden: Based on rat-tarian grounds, it has been decided that the rat has only been trespassing and it has be relieved of all other accusations. The case thus has been declared closed and the rat is being warned not to enter the hostel building premises and to stick to the mess surroundings!. G is fined three kilos of cheese for that rat for the un-humanly act.

Devan: come on!
G: come on!
warden: yes come on! lets go have our dinner!

The naming of the DEVIL....

To many of those who know her, this new name would seem inappropriate, out of place and to a certain few it might even seem preposterous. To me!, it is apt and perfect.
I don't remember exactly what happened that night except for the fact that I was sad. Me being sad and depressed!- nothing unusual. she talking to me on the phone- nothing unusual. The unusual part was that she was trying to cheer me up and to a person who is only used to pulling my leg, it was a little difficult , actually pretty difficult. Nothing worked and after a while she resorted to doing what she was best at! and that is pulling my leg. As far as my knowledge stretches and in this case it stretches to the end of the universe - she knows very well that I would do anything for an Ice-cream or non-veggie food! but she still.....

SHE : today while coming home from office our car stopped at 'almond house' and my colleagues bought haleem!
G: nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
SHE: and then we ate ice-cream...
G: nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

and she was happily laughing away to glory! it was at this very moment that it came out of my mouth...

G: you are a DEVIL!

when i said her that she was a devil, i never had any intentions of giving her a new name, that name!. but she would never stop pulling my leg. Come on! damn it! I am the one who pulls everyones leg and here was one who was pulling mine and I shamelessly was laughing. But that did lighten my mood and for this, from that very day she became my DEVIL, DEVIL in a cute way!

It has not been more than a week since i gave her this name but i already kind of got accustomed to it!

Now, coming to those certain kind of people who think i being ridiculous when naming her a DEVIL- you all just don't know how she troubles me, though i kind of enjoy it.
we(me and the DEVIL) have a lot in common- smart, intelligent, ambitious, bubbly, talkative and of course charming. But there are somethings at which she is different- she is honest, sincere and hardworking and me well!, i am G. But there is a certain quality in her that irks me the most. Its the way she talks, especially to me. Its never direct, never to the point. I ask her a question and after that i have to ask her a set of questions before I get the answer to the first one and that too if I am manage to ask her that many questions without losing track of what and why it is happening. Usually I am lost half way through, lost in a maze that I create when I ask her so many questions. Can you believe it! I am lost in the maze that I create! damn it!. I end up pulling my hair and making a mess of myself mentally. It then takes a very careful and precise approach for me to track back and reach exactly where I started. And by this time it is usually too late and the DEVIL is already fast asleep. By the next morning, the question is lost in the vastness of time and the creativeness of her talk.
It will fill my entire hard-disk, if I ever tried to store the unanswered questions and the questions that are a by product of the former and the back tracking process, all on physical memory.
I once managed to ask her, why she talks like that when I am around and ....

DEVIL: do I?

and that flushes another of my questions down the 'unanswered questions' gutter.

She is a DEVIL!!!....

change in perspective

Over the past six months many of my friends turned twenty and over the next half year, most of the rest of us would join them.
Twenty means stepping out of your teens and entering the youth. Wearing upon yourself responsibility. I won't sit here and give lectures that it is time we started acting responsible and stuff. I won't because most of us are responsible.
People of the past(as we call them) or the wise ones(the way they call themselves) think otherwise. fortunately or unfortunately our parents are a part of these wise men and women. I am not saying that they don't think you are responsible, they do but not to the correct extent. Indeed we are responsible, we act responsibly. Its just a matter of different perspectives. the way we see responsibility and the way our elders do. We can't blame any one of them. The way we perceive things, the way we admire them is different from the way our parents do.

The time now belongs to us, the youth. Times change. People change. There must be a change in the idea or notion about responsibility. There must be a change in perspective. This is not the sixties or the seventies or the eighties, this is 2010. laptops, mobiles, bikes are not a luxury but another basic necessity. did you all call paper to be a luxury back then?

phones, music players or even personal transport, if they were never a luxury at your time, how could they be a luxury now?
your gramophones or radio became our i-pods. your bullock carts and bicycles became our bikes. Your letters became our e-mails. your booked trunk calls became our instant std. your old model phones became our new model mobiles.

It takes the same effort to write a letter or an e-mail. the music is still the same, Beethoven remains to be Beethoven whether its a gramophone or an i-pod. It is just that over these years the ease with which work can be done has improved. life just got more comfortable. that doesn't mean it has become any easy. It is as tough for us as it has been for you all, just that when we go out there we have a sense of security in our hearts. A sense of security that you all definitely missed. I whole- heartedly thank you all and am grateful to all of you for having provided us with this sense of security.
But, we want to live our lives the way we want to. this was something you all could not afford to do back then. you all led a cautious life. It was the need of the hour back then, but it is surely not anymore. We can afford to be ourselves. We can afford to be experimental. We can afford to be foolish.
We are not half your age. We won't say we know what we are doing because most of us honestly don't know what we are doing. We do it because we trust our instinct and our gut feeling. Be supportive not persuasive. You all say that, " it has worked out for us because we did things this way", but have you all ever realized that you never knew how things would turn out to be. As the famous STEVE JOBS said, it is easy to connect the dots looking backwards and impossible to connect them looking forwards. Guide us, don't try to influence us. When you show us people- successful people and ask us to take them as our role models, all of you forget one thing - those men were successful because they chose what they wanted to be. they chose the way they wanted it to be. they never chose from the paths the lie before them, they made their own path. A new path, a path they wanted to travel along and in this process they have created another path for us to chose from. Let us make our own path, if not at least let us choose our own path.
let us have things done our way. let us have our own style; unprecedented and unique. let us be unorthodox but effective and efficient. let us fail at things, so that we don't fail in life. Let us be true to ourselves and self satisfied before we are responsible.
what is responsibility without meaning. responsibility towards a society means acting as per the interests of the society and towards its development. what is the worth of being responsible towards the society when you cannot be responsible towards yourself. why do you care for what others have to say about you when you are not wrong. If what they say is positive or for your good, then may be it is fine else don't give a damn. don't give a damn to the guy who sits in the last row and whistles when you stammer on the stage. mind you, that guy doesn't have the guts to go on stage and stand there and be laughed at.
there is something special about the youth. there is a fire in them. yes! it cools down with age. but before it does, it creates history. yes! this fire may commit many mistakes, but at the same time it carries a potential to reach great heights, which the so called calm, cool and composed oldies cannot. Don't kill the fire. Its but natural that this fire will diminish, please do not be a catalyst to this process.
don't ask us to be more and more mature. don't ask us not to be foolish. if we are as matured as you all are and that means at one third your age then surely something is not right. definitely!
let the fire inside us burn. Don't put out this fire. if you have already then its time you re-kindle it. It is surely this fire that would take us and with us the world forward. as we here, enter the youth there is only one direction and its forward.

the return of the mystery girl...

hey guys... it has almost been a month since i have introduced you'll, though only informally, but surely to the mystery girl!

the dreams just continue...
so all that is happening is in the dream...

well, for the past month i have been in constant touch with her. And the more i meet her, the more i get to know about her, the more mysterious she is. honestly, i still do not know who she is. everything in the dream happens so fast. I don't remember most part of any of those dreams. I guess i am not supposed to. The fine details are always missing. I just won't remember why i am at that place. Initially it was quite confusing but when there is a girl like her around who cares for where and why? at least i don't.

Ice cream at midnight. no idea how we sneak out of home, but we are there, and there on my bike. midnight! empty roads! and with a girl! AWESOME!.
Walking around the streets. dimly lit streets! cool breeze! romantic! just that i do not know, what feelings we have for each other. then! as if she heard my heart speak, she holds my hand. The scene is so good that i am actually thrown out of my sleep.

She holds my hand. her palm is cold! i can't decipher if it was her cold palm or her holding my hand, but one of them surely caused a kind of shock wave through my spine.
I was too lost in her. All i could feel, was sweat on my left palm and it took me a lot of time to realize she was actually holding my hand and i was just... well not holding hers back....
everything about her is lovely.
The way she looks. The way she dresses. The way she talks. The way she looks into my eyes when she asks me something. The way she holds my hand. The way she says " shameless you are" is so cute. god damn it even her perfume smells nice. But who the hell is this girl? Why does she like me? Why does this dream happen to me? and why so many times?

The thing that eats away at me is why the hell is everything just a dream? why can't all this be true?

and then and then.....
whenever she says goouuttaammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!! there is a sweet pain in the heart. my heart beat rises. i am filled with some kind of nervous energy. i feel happy, elated! that she is around and she cares!!

hey mystery girl...i don't know what feelings you have for me and i have for you. I don't care for what those feelings are. its nice this way! its awesome! all i hope for, is you to be real and be a part of my reality.
Be my moon and guide me through the night's darkness. Be mine!

...

it has been three days!
three days of gloom, nervousness and anxiety!
but the time of the shadow seems to have ended,
its about time for the light to dawn upon us,
mistakes have been made!
lessons have been learnt!!

it still feels like a dream
i was there and i could feel it!
i could feel the dementor's breath!
waiting to suck the life out of me.
one after the other, we were fucked by all!
raped we were by white and black, short and tall.
nervous hearts and sweaty brows,
legs that shook and hair that stood,
we carried them all into the lion's dungeon,
not knowing when we would return, if we would at all.

questions flew in from all directions making us tense,
it did not matter to them if they carried any sense.
we stood there like a rock on the shore,
tide after tide they came and we shook them away,
we stood shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand
and we fought them with all the might in our hearts.
they scared the shit out of us,
tortured we were and tormented.

we withstood everything that came at us,
nothing could defy the spirit within us.
the spirit of brotherhood it is!
brothers we were,
brothers we are, and
brothers we shall remain
some went through with the torture,
some fought against it,
and the others stood there by us,
for all the troubles we've been through,
we still remain awesome buddies and
nothing and no one can deny that,
slowly and surely we are coming out of that shock
whatever may happen, TRENDSETTERS rock!!!