Cogito Ergo Sum

Monday, October 01, 2007

i have this six year old neighbour and i was for him his best buddy who lived next door. he would wait for me to come, plastic bat and weathered ball in hand. i would humour him helping him with his drawings of both our families standing in front of charcoal mountains outside our common red roofed home with a pebble laid path emerging out of its door, waiting to get clicked by a cameraman on the other side of a brook that meandered between us and him. carefully detailed with bhaiya's maggi hair and my half tied pony. i would pretend to be interested in his conversations about his school plays, his home back in assam, his tennis and dance classes and how he likes to eat only the skin of his fish. there was this day when we were racing with his cars and i was all glum because of something unpleasant that had ruined my mood a while ago, which also meant i was losing very badly. thinking that the constant beating i was getting from him in his silly car races was the cause of my new found depression he dropped his cars, and out of genuine concern put his arm around me and added words of consolation-"ye sirf ek story hai". profound interpretations of life's situations were not a rarity with him. over time however, gi joe and spiderman fights grew tiresome and spending time with him meant too much effort. conversation began to dwindle and i would come up with clever excuses as to why i couldnt join him for the basket-ball game he had invented for us to play inside our homes (which was by the way, throwing a ball into an empty bucket placed at a distance). he had to make do with a little pat on the head, pull of the cheek and "kya kar rahe ho?"

now he just walks in, announcing 'hamara tata sky kharab hai', displaces me from my room, grabs the remote and sits hypnotized for two hours in front of my television screen- looney rabbits and talking sponges are more than perfect substitutes...

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