I like this!

i really do!
i mean it's just poetic that this thing is called something that sounds as meaningless as 'blog'!

this brings back another childhood memory.
when i was old enough to have memory, my parents moved into a one-room flat system building. so the door was always shut. and mostly i was alone at home. may be a cat.
anyway,
so they realised that leaving such a small kid alone is not a good idea and i should be watched over. since i totally refused to be watched over by strangers, they decided that i should go to my grandma, who lives alone in a chawl. so they asked the woman who used to drop me to kindergarten and bring me back to drop me to grandma's instead.

since childhood i have the tendency to become popular in small groups. (at least in the begining, the tendency extends to becoming the laughing stock in long term. i'm not old enough to know what happens next in the tendency. anyway.) so i became popular with the kids in the chawl almost instantly and everybody wanted to be my best friend and everybody wanted me to visit them etc.

but at lunch hour, one must go to one's home. so i finally did enter my granny's house who declared that i'd not get any food untill i got out of the school uniform and got into cute clothes that i wore at home.
my gran's house in the chawl was also a one room and it had a common balcony that faced a row of other houses. mostly houses of my new found friends.
since it was a one room hall, i relaised that i'd have to change in front of my gran, who i decided i didn't know enough.
when i had to change in fron of strangers at home, i'd go into the bathroom . but here, no such system seemed to exist. so i took my cute clothes, walked out the door, into the common balcony and took off my uniform. as i was wearing my home clothes, thnking i should not have to go through this for lunch, i heard my gran laugh, and i saw around and noticed that most my newfound friends were staring at me from their houses right accross.

i think a blog is this sort of a common balcony where you strip yourself naked in front of newfound people as you hide yourself from the ones that are actually closer to you.

it's like writing how you hate your parents and your best friend on a piece of paper and then origaming it into a boat and sending it down the gutter, hoping a stranger would rescue you.

hmm..
before you start analysing, let me tell you, i'm an only child and i was loved immensely and genuinely by both my parents. i'm not a teen ager and this blog is not about me and my parents.
and i'm male.
23 years old.
etc.

The Toad

I was 6 or 7 or 8. and walking home from school. My parents always made sure I was accompanied to school by someone. A maid or someone. It’s still a profession in suburbs by the way.. Old women who walk children to school. They carry all their schoolbags and waterbags or tiffin baskets. But you have to be a woman and you're preferred if you're old.

I pretended to be sensitive as a child. So I never gave my school bag to the lady. But I always asked her to walk from as far away from me as her conscience would allow her to. So I’d feel asif I were walking alone.

I’ll talk more about walking alone a bit later.

So I was walking home. It was raining. I must've lost my umbrella as usual or I must not be wearing my raincoat so that I could feel the rain. (I told you, I pretended to be sensitive as a child.) I used to really like the rain. But I always thought a man may choose to become anything he wants in life, but he should never become the rain in Mumbai. You’re hated for coming and you're hated for not coming too.

I’ll talk more about Bombay rains a bit later.

So I was walking in the rain. Drenched. My schoolbag getting wet and the maid looking on helplessly at me from her umbrella from as far away from me as her conscience would allow her.

There was a small playground with red soil. Very dusty. And always behind a closed door. But during the rain, it'd be full of mud. i imagined quicksand must look like this. Anyway.

So one monsoon, i noticed HUGE frogs sitting in the mud. They were HUGE. as big as a big rat. Frogs toads, whatever, it's called 'Bedook' ( i think that's a better word anyway.) so Big yellow bedooks. And spots all over them. Also getting drenched in rain.

I loved animals. (For reasons I have specified earlier) but something about those bedooks really scared me. I was never afraid of cats big dogs, even cows with horns. But the bedook scared me.

It was asif it was a being stuck in the middle of vegetation and animals. It had big eyes and it never blinked. Raindrops went into its eyes and it would not blink. And some of them croaked, but they didn't open their mouths when they did that. They had yellow ski with spots and looked like a diseased human skin. I mean they had no fur or pincers or any of that stuff. Plain skin and they did not react to anything. But they were alive.

They scared me. And I flung a stone at them. Not a pebble, a stone. I wanted to see them move.

The stone landed in the mud and splashed a bit but they didn't move. Then I targeted one of them. A big one. And threw a stone straight at him. He didn't even blink. The stone hit him, he reclined a little, but that was more like how a sofa would go in if sit on it and got back to its position staring straight at me.


I ran as far away as possible from those things.

I didn't know what scared me really, but it was this numbness I felt. This coldness. This tendency not to even move after being hit and this half alive state. I don't know. I was really scared.

Later when I went home I found out that they are hiding during the rest of the seasons and come out only during monsoons. I didn't want to see them again.

I thought a man may become whatever he wants to in life, but he must not become a toad.


--

The Toad.

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just trying out fonts. they look so similar...