Long ago and seriously long ago, when I was in my fifth standard, I was in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. According tothe 'then' rules, in Madhya Pradesh, standard five children needed to write board exams. So here I was, sittingimpatiently after my pre-boards, in the month of February. It was a daily routine - get up, brush, go to the balconyand sit and read the newspaper. What happened in the meantime, was Amma making milk and bringing it to thebalcony for “her Highness”.The Army jawans who were sent home to help Appa, cleaned and made my bed as well and as usual, they wouldsay:' beta, teek Kar diya, ab app ja sakthe ho!' Appa would march from the other room bellowing.'Deepa, this is your bed, you make it, 'NOT THEM!' 'But Appa I never asked them to do it'This is how my day would start. (Usually). So here I was, with a clean room, clean table, pencils sharpened and allbooks piled and kept systematically. I don't remember doing any of it though! All I had to do was study!!! Prettystraightforward, right?Another thing I need to mention here is, music was a big "no no " in my house. We had a small transistor, which wasthe only mode of getting news from all over for us. Once in a while, I accidentally tuned into Vividh Bharathi. Now,this was one station which played Hindi music. I had to play it softly because, if my dad heard the music I would be 'hanged till death'!!!!So, on one such day, I heard Kishore kumar's song from the movie Aasha namely Eena meena dheega. Now, I lovedthe song, though I had heard it just once and had ’by-hearted' it as I heard it. Unfortunately, I was not sure of the lastline in the second stanza. To be sure, I had to listen to the song again. Now, let me remind you that in those dayshaving a radio was a luxury. Now I wanted to listen to a song that was probably released in the late 50's. This was inthe 80's, by the way. Besides, radios are for news (so I was told very, very clearly), BBC to be exact.So, here I was wanting to listen to Vividh Bharathi (again). There was no assurance that the same song would beplayed, even then just the thought of the unknown kept a nerd like me on her toes. I got the radio for myself a weeklater and fortunately for me, the same song was played. I wrote the song down in my secret diary. I used to love thesong just because it was a good tongue twister.In fact, I remember one of my dad's friends had come home and he said, "beta sing a song" and I proudly sang 'Eenameena deega'. When I had finished singing that classic, that uncle (my dad's friend) mused:' You really like tongue twisters, don’t you?' He looked at my dad and said, ' I wonder why they make such ridiculoussongs!' I was aghast!! 'Ridiculous song???!!!'Ridiculous or not, I loved the song so I remember it to this day. Now fast-forward to thirty-odd years. I am now ateacher in one of the reputed schools. One day, I had a substitution in one of the classes. When I went there, thestudents were all trying to read a word that the teacher before me had written on the board. The word was'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ' I made it a game where everyone got a chance to pronounce it. Many did, andmany did not.Ultimately, like a wise owl, I picked those who had pronounced it correctly. To this, a boy (who had not got thepronunciation correct) remarked, ' You really like tongue twisters, don't you?' My memory went back instantly tothe uncle who thought that my song was ridiculous. He left the mortal world a few weeks after our meeting.That boy continued, ' what a ridiculous word!! I can't believe I spent a whole period trying to pronounce it!!'I thought, “RIDICULOUS!!!???GOD, I hate that word!!”Anyway, I think the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is simply supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!!!!
It is only when you sit to write on a topic that has been randomly put into your mind, do you realisethat suddenly, there is this weird sense of ... emptiness of mind. Till a few moments back, when I wasfreewheeling my mind on the thought of writing something on the power of mind, I was feelingpretty powerful and happy, as there was this avalanche of thoughts that had come gushing into mymind. Well, the word avalanche might be too farfetched, the thoughts were trickling in, but then,even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things. In fact, I was feeling like a God of smallthings in my mind with respect to the Power of my Mind.
Change language