The Scribbling Eccentric

Dharamshala - a quaint hill station nestled in the mountains of Himachal Pradesh. The moment I remember the place several glimpses of my visit flash in front of me rapidly. The crowded yet cosy town centre, the several small stores selling almost everything under the sun. The wonderful Norbulingka monastery and its exceptionally skilled artisans create "Thangkas", artworks that take extreme dedication and several months to complete. If there's a place  that I owe the most for making my life's journey so much more beautiful, it is Dharamshala.  A place where I jumped off a cliff and flew like a bird while experiencing true liberation from my fears. It was the second year of my marriage and except for the marriage, everything else was on a rocky path. My wife felt we both needed to unwind so she signed me up for a trip along with the entire clan of in-laws who were planning for this trip months in advance.  When we reached Dharamshala, my brother-in-law's eye caught...

My friends always called me and my wife, Kunjal, an odd couple. There was nothing normal about the choices we made in life. The benchmark of normalcy is living a mundane, monotonous life without taking much risk and without any great ambitions. That was exactly the opposite of what we were. We were ambitious (we still are) and we are adventurous, sometimes bordering towards recklessness. But the one thing we take great pride in sharing as a common trait in us is that when we fall, we don't waste much time in that state. We learn and move ahead. However, there are a few lessons that have remained etched in our minds permanently. So, we were on a vacation at Mount Abu and since we were completely unaware of the place, we relied heavily on a tourist map. For days we roamed across the place visiting all the major tourist destinations listed on the map. Towards the end of our trip, Kunjal happened to notice the thin lines on the map that were passing through the area demarcated as for...

It was raining heavily when I saw her for the first time and even heavier the day when I saw her the last time....she had laughed or was it just the rain I do not know...but even today whenever it rains and I close my eyes listening to the sounds of rains I can hear her soft angelic laughter somewhere in the distance....... It was one of those years when we were supposed to think about studying and only studying. Any other thought that crossed our mind was considered an abominable sin. The incessant bombarding of physics, chemistry, math, and biology was at its full force. I still wonder how all of us survived it without getting our brains blown off. It was somewhere in the middle of all this struggle with my studies was when I saw her for the first time. She was always there but I seldom noticed her. The fact is she never did allow anyone to notice her as much. A little shorter than me, she was always covered from head to toe in a black robe, which they called "burkha...

Amit...I still remember how shy he was, it always amused me. Not that being shy was a very funny thing but given his size and look, I least expected him to look down at the floor and speak meekly when asked his name. And I thought I was the shy guy! But I wasn't aware that this shy giant would affect my life to such a great extent...... It was class 8 when I started to understand how important friends can be in your life. I had a bad fallout with a buddy the previous academic year because of some stupid reason and when I came back after my vacation thinking that he would like to patch up, it was all over. He had new friends who were better than me in studies and sports. They were the guys whom girls looked up to and I was the shy guy always pulling him back because I was afraid.....always afraid of something or the other. It was a bad start of the course, but I accepted my flaw and tried to have no bitter feelings against anyone (that never happened though). It was sometime du...

What is the emotion that you go through when you think of a refrigerator? The question came out of the blue from my boss while we were discussing the idea of a promotional campaign. Though a simple question, it did stir a lot of emotions within me. For some reason, I could not answer the question and just sat there remembering what a refrigerator actually meant in my life. In fact, any middle-class kid with both parents working would understand how important such appliances were in our lives. They become our friends and pals. They are at times disciplinarians, entertainers or even nurturers. They were an integral part of our families, the unusual family members. As a kid, I and my sister spent several days in the company of nothing but these appliances and ourselves. Our parents were working and striving hard to fulfil their responsibilities not only towards us but also to the family in our native village in Kerala. However, as a kid, I never understood why they worked so hard and wo...

A terror..... that would be the first impression anybody would have when they witness him walking through the village streets. Children would run helter-skelter screaming at the sight of his shadow. But in appearance he was just another common village man. It was his heavy coarse voice, resultant of many years of smoking bidi, that invoked such terror in people. His fear was not just restricted to kids, but elders too. People seldom said anything wrong in front of him fearing his eardrum shattering yell and an unfortunate slap that will leave its mark on your mind for a lifetime and on your body for weeks or mostly months. He was a terror for many, but also a devoted son and at the same time a carefree bird. He had a lot of adjectives to describe himself, but for me, he was my "Valiyachhan" (literally means Big Daddy), my uncle and my Dad's elder brother. The first born of Unnimaya and Narayanan Nair was named Raman and was fondly called Gopi by his parents and ...