This, that and the other

I'm pretty sure I saw this as a title for a post somewhere.. but whatdouknow, there are very few phrases that express that feeling of nonchalant boredom that leads you to write about.. well, this and that. Yesterday's show was not as much fun as I expected it to be. Insomnia's performance was its best till date,and the other badn that came did a good job, but I couldn't sit through even one song of Sledge's. I think that is the last of the death/thrash/hard metal I will be listening to for a long time. Most of us retired to the instruments waala room, and played pictionary on the board till the concert was over. In a rock show too! Man have times changed.

Situation: You are having a rather lame conv with someone and they are making all these really dumb jokes which have factual, logical and all other errors possible and seriously lack in humor content. They're making all these awesome repartees and feeling on top of the world that they are Bernard Shaw's reincarnation (I'll eat my hat if they know who he is).. and you are too bored to think of repartees to non-repartees or say something even lamer like 'oh of COURSE you're right sir!' or something. You have tried saying you're sleepy or have a class and the like, but they have not given you the satisfaction you look for at the end of a chat sessions, however lame it may be. How do you effect a graceful exit that allows you to go ROFLMAO instead of rolling your eyes?

A conversation with a friend yesterday about Lord of the Flies by William Golding brougth back a lot of memories. When I was a kid, the bedtime stories my mom used to etll me were these lovely little tales she concocted from her imagination and her memories of Kerala. I must've been about ten when she told me one about an elephant and his mahout- how the mahout loves his elephant, washes him everyday, and the elephant loves his master back. And then the elephant gets sick and can't work for the mahout's employer anymore, so the cruel owner wants to give him away to someone else, because he has become unprofitable. The mahout pleads with him because he doesn't want the elephant sent off. But the owner is immovable. I think it ends with the mahout bringing the elephant to his home and taking care of it on his own. Mum knew I'd be very mad if anything happened to the elephant. I'm not sure about the ending. When I asked her, she was very surprised that I remembered. Then I told her a few more that I remembered and she looked at me as if I was some sortof a genius or something.

There was one more about a little girl whose mother is ill. Her father is not in town, so she has to go alone all the way to town and buy medicines. It is getting dark and she is a little scared but she goes anyway. But by the time she reaches the town, the shops have closed. She walks back crying because she wasn't able to get medicines; now it is very dark but she doesn't notice. Suddenly, she hears a faint 'Help, help' from somewhere. She stops dead in her tracks, but when she hears it again, she advances in the direction from which it was coming, and comes to an open well. It has slippery moss all around it and the voice is coming from inside. She gingerly steps over the moss and peeps inside and sees a man lyiing there, looking almost unconscious. She steps back, horrified, and runs all the way back to the town, goes to the police station and calls the police who rescue the man. The superintendent is very happy with the girl and takes her in his jeep to the doctor's house, and they all go back to the girl's house, and the doctor cures her mother! :) I wrote this for some newspaper in 5th class. They really liked it. I told mum if I ever got paid I'd give her royalty for it.

Then there was ANOTHER very similar one about a boy who had to go in the dark across the river to get medicines for his mother, but it is dark and all the ferrys have finished their rounds. Then he sees one old man in the corner of the wharf with his round thatch boat, the kind they have in Kerala. He goes up to him and asks him to take him across. He refuses initially but the boy looks so sad and worried that his heart melts. They go and get the medicines, and on the way back it starts raining heavily. The little boat gets tossed about like a piece of paper in a whirlpool, but somehow the old fisherman gets the boy back home safely. He goes to his mother triumphantly and she runs out and hugs him and says- 'Why didn't you come home when you saw it was going to rain? Suppose something had happened to the boat?' et al. Then hugs him some more. Very senti.

How did I get started on all of this? Oh yeah, this was mum's style, and dad used to tell me stories like Valley of the Blind, Lord of the Flies and Macbeth (he used to recite 'Fair is foul and foul is fair' and describe the three witches with relish to a sleepy kid!! :-/ ) to make me go to sleep. I secretly think his idea was to do everything to not let me go to sleep. Needless to say, he succeeded brilliantly. He is a master story teller. He lingers over the tiniest of details and gets you exasperated enough to forget about any sleep that might've been trying timidly to creep in. He twists and turns the story about till you're eyes are as big as saucers and adds these dramatic pauses before a finale. I mean, Lord of the Flies?! A bed-time story for a 9-year old?! A story about how 15 children returning from a school trip crash in an uninhabited island, and after learning how to survive, develop factionalist instincts, get separated into groups, war against each other, are prepared to kill each other for power, forget all about helping each other survive in the inhospitable surroundinging, forget about staying together to be able to escape? That book is a morbid satire on the world of men, acted out by children. No wonder I've turned out the way I have.

The other one I remember most clearly is Valley of the Blind, on which the movie 'Guru' is based. This man crashes into a valley where all people are blind and cut off from the rest of the world. Initially he is feared then mocked. But then people start realizing the powers he has over them, and start worshipping him like a god. He falls in love with one of the women there, but she happens to be the daughter of their chief. He is ok with the union; his only condition is that he should be blind too. He decides that is a bit too much to be asked of, outwits and outruns all of them and somehow gets out alive to tell his story. Which not surprisingly, no one believes.

Whew!

Aren't they the cutest? :)