PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

It never felt quite okay to peep into the well near my home, that triangular vessel of mystery, because anytime, I was told, the arms of an octopus residing there could strangle me, taking me with it, into the depths of darkness. Certainly, that was the longest-living nightmare that they had managed to inculcate! The crocodile in the black waters of the washing machine was short-lived comparatively!

Blue sky, for me, didn’t hold just the white, puffy clouds or the birds up there! Not when Dubai or London was up there. Why else board an airplane?

That particular teacher in school, who had dark rings around her eyes evoked fear in me; dark circles meant no sleep. Could she be really awake all night? Today, I look at myself, and I am amazed at how life chooses to answer some doubts-and wish they never arose in others now!

Ironic, isn’t it?

Definitely, children were born when that wedding knot/chain was tied. Why did some people not become parents, then? Surely, the knot should be tightened?

Every scientist should have a test tube with fuming colours, win a Nobel or be a part of textbooks, such a ‘futureless’ profession, who’d take it up? Obviously not me!

The devil is a ball of fire: And he keeps looking at me so that he can enter me when I yawn. Maybe this is where,’ An idle mind is the devil’s workshop’ originates from.

I can also remember the disappointment when my dad’s friend Dileep visited us for dinner, seeing it was not actor Dileep I’d been waiting for so long that I ignored him for the rest of the evening!

I remember the desperation, that sense of defeat when all my Zs and 5s were coming out inverted. I cried and complained for around a year. I had given up. My teacher had only complaints and believe it or not, she rang up my mom to share her worries about my future in school. Don’t get me started about the morality of teachers who are overtly worrisome!

Amongst all the wildest thoughts from my old self, however, I still admire the maturity with which I viewed death, something I fail at today.

Everyone dies someday. So why not treat everyone with that consideration? Like this would be the last time I’d talk to them? Today, when I’ve shut myself to emotional attachments, no strings attached, what does it mean to look back and wonder if my childhood was that stupid?

That feeling of not giving a damn about people, slapping someone decades older across the face when he jokingly tested my grit(a luxury owing to my age), challenging my lower KG teacher whenever I got the chance, not writing anything down simply because I hated her, taunting my upper KG teacher for being slim because she blamed my thinness on not having food, returning the principal interviewing me with the question of “What is your name?”,  fighting onstage for the mic with a professional singer on my aunt’s wedding day, with all those people laughing at me; but honestly, who cared?

Remembering all my courage to dance, take part in dramas(mostly as the evil step-sister or the jealous, egoistic lead) , and continue dancing till the UP section, even when I knew this was not my cup of tea! Except for the DVDs from then, today as I crawl up into my safe zone, I kind of forget who I am!

My pride then that I’m proud of today and the prejudices I’m glad I changed, maybe childhood was not that shallow after all; a simple convolution of pride and prejudice!