Life, Musings, Misadventures, Epiphanies by Arun Raj

Continued from Part 2: Arjun the Contender ... Arya set his wooden sword back into his belt and bent down to settle himself into position. Like most great champions, Arya had his superstitions. Left leg knee went down first, then switch to right leg knee. In Arya’s eyes the world looked different. His world was now the scene of a live colosseum, where gladiators fought for glory. In his ears, the sounds of murmuring children around him were like a 100,000 strong crowd willing him on, to kill at will.  Shabaaz stood by Arya, pumping him up. “You were made for this! Focus on this moment. Fly like a butterfly & sting like a bee.”, encouragingly Shabaaz said to Arya. Both highly driven followers of Muhammad Ali.  While Arya had his superstitions and Shabaaz, Arjun had his younger brother, Virat, by his side. Virat never left Arjun’s side. Virat was 3 and a bunch of energy and seemed to always hunt for trouble. Arjun found it comforting to have his brother by his side ...

Every weekend I returned from college, the four of us - mother, my two sisters and I, we had a little ritual. We had dinner under the open skies on the terrace of our home in Kerala. The typical city dweller might awe at this experience, but this was a regular for us. The beauty of most homes in Kerala is that there is space left around the home for plants, coconut trees, mango trees, teak & then quite a bit of strolling space. After dinner, we sat up a little later into the night, after keeping only the necessary lights on about the house, and lay down on the terrace together to star gaze and marvel at the night sky. Mom was the child in our family of 5, she still is. It was Mom, who like a fascinated child would ask a naive question like - ‘What lies beyond these stars?’. My sisters had & still have an aversion to the philosophical and were always the last to engage. It was then left to Mom & I to argue out our versions. Quite predictably, I approached the q...

Continued from ... Some marbles from an earlier game, Arjun had started, lay lazily inside the circle drawn for the game. In the background one child intently looked, while Arjun collected & cleared all the marbles in the circle, reminiscing at all the marbles he lost in the match that he had wrapped up with Arjun just prior to Arya reaching the game area. For both Arya & Arjun, the game of marbles was an important part of who they were. Cricket & other common games seemed too insignificant to their marble player identities. For them, the game required individual precision, which seemed a much more challenging task like the games of tennis or badminton. Although both were exceptionally technical players of cricket & football, here they had something more - an arch-rival, someone who they defined their identities around. Legends were drawn against their rivalry often. One legend says, Arya & Arjun kept at a match of marbles for 18 hours at a stretch, and yet no...

A wooden sword in hand, cape tied on, Arya woke up from a difficult night of sleep. He immediately knew what he had to do today, doubt evaded him. The glimmer in his eye could have inspired soldiers to win wars or dinosaurs to nuke the meteor that killed them. He felt as if he was born just today and with a singular purpose. His mother, with a glass of milk in hand, was his biggest obstacle now. He jumps to the left & then to the right, holding his cape & covering his face, his mother skips to stop him in his path each time. But alas, a mother’s persistence could beat acts of God to pulp, and he was but a mere child. He gives up and gets the glass of milk from her. Half a glass down and there is a knock on the door. It was Shabaaz, his comrade & closest friend, exactly the person he needed to win the war he woke up today to fight. Arya & Shabaaz have been friends since they were 4, rarely left each others side and as inseparable as Batman & his mask. ...

Will you still love me When I’m no longer young and beautiful? Will you still love me When I got nothing but my aching soul? I know you will, I know you will I know that you will Will you still love me when I’m no longer beautiful?  ~ Lana Del Ray, Soundtrack - The Great Gatsby ( Lyrics ) Think about someone you love, think about the precise moment you fell in love with them or realised how important they were to you. That moment of lucidity, when you knew there they are and nothing can take the moment away from you. We go through our lives rarely experiencing such moments of clarity & pure elation. A moment of childlike naivety & deeply ingrained sense of faith that things are just going to be perfect. A moment when judgement, the future and survival did not matter. Then you see children who live in a similar state of lucidity, a lways about constantly moving forward &  always in love - giving without reason, and getting attached without reason. And ...