Hide and seek

I seek from them, my strength, happiness and love.

They are the sweet kids of my father,

and they play hide and seek all the time.

Some can hide well and some cannot.

Some hide faraway and some close by.

Wherever they are, I cannot forget them,

for they are all my own siblings.

Winning or losing does not matter,

what matters is whether they are

in the game or not, for it gives me

hope that I will find them one day.

Sometimes my heart longs to see

a few who always try to hide.

But they say that when I grow old

and when this game gets boring,

my father would come and take me home.

There I can rest on my mother's lap

and watch others play the game.

A little kid

Kashyap is a little kid -

• who likes to turn his way to the cry of a meow and say hi to it. The cat stumbled upon the sudden greeting of a human turns dumb till he leaves. But the little boy wanted the cat to say "hi".
• who likes to make his birthday party with the help of his family and call all his friends to his home. But his home is far away and only his sister lives near to him and she doesn't like to celebrate birthdays.
• who likes to whistle and wake up the dogs in the early morning. He would say "Good morning!" to them, but they would be lazy and ignore him.
• who thinks that he is a superman and takes up everything. But finally he finds that he is a normal human and struggles to finish the things he takes.
• who likes to fight kung fu with his elephant brother. But his brother has grown weak and his elephant trait has long vanished.
• who likes to fight with his sister saying "You are my monkey sister". But his sister would never say "You are my donkey brother".
• who likes to stay with his mother and work for her. But fate holds him tight and only lets him see his mother work for him all the time.
• who likes to make friends with all good people. But an old friend taught him that not everybody will be good to him and not everybody can love everybody.
• who likes to cry if somebody insults and accuses him. But his family would run and console him.
• who likes to live a good life with the help of his great lord Rama Chandra. But his lord never cared to look at him even once.

Partly Cloudy

"Partly Cloudy" is an amazing short film by Pixar Animations. When I watched it for the first time, I could not stop watching it again. Even after that, I watched it many times. If you have not watched it, you can watch it here.

What strikes me the most is the theme of friendship, the film portrays. It reminds me of my own friends. That is why I like to watch it again and again.

It starts with an innocent dark cloud who is lonely and doesn't have good creative skills compared to other white clouds. With some effort, he creates a small alligator. The important thing to note is that he likes the things he creates. To him, all his creations are good. According to that world, birds carry these creations and drop them at right places. And for the birds, his creations are not so liking.

After he is done with his creation, he waits for some bird to come and carry it. But being at a lower level than other clouds, and being a dark cloud may be, none of the birds come to him. This situation reminds me of my old days in my school. I joined a new school in my 4th class and continued till 10th. I used to be the most silent person. And for one or two years, I never had good friends. Also I was not a clever guy and being very silent, nobody used to talk to me. I used to be fat too. I guess, these traits scared people off. And may be because of that I still crave for friends and people to talk.

Going back to the film, a weak bird finally approaches him. Though it is weak, it decides to work for him. He was very happy that finally a bird came to him. He makes friendship with the bird and the bird too makes him a friend. The bird bears all the pain of his creations and cheerfully works for him. The bird is the ultimate symbol of this film. I can compare it with all my good friends who stay with me in spite of my painful bugging and caring. I still remember my sister Shiny telling me that she introduced me to her old friend as the "new bugging IIT friend!". I was so happy for that. It never mattered to me that I am so bugging and caring. She was the first to understand me and I was perfectly fine with her introduction.

Back to the film again, the bird becomes too tired and seeing that the other birds are having good time, it decides to leave. This scene is very common to me. It reminds me of all those friends who "used" me and left. I too cried like the cloud many times. Back to the school days again, few years after joining, people found that I am good at maths and started making friendship. They are all false friends who befriend me because they want something from you. And when their need is over, they will leave. I had to learn this lesson the hard way. I used to feel very bad when a friend leaves. Now I understand how foolish it is to feel like that. Still I allow people to "use" me. But when they leave, I pity them. Thanks to Granny for teaching me this lesson. I hope one day she'll understand what friendship is.

Once again going back to the film, the twist in the story is that the bird doesn't really leave. It goes to another cloud for help. And our black cloud doesn't know that and starts crying. This teaches two lessons, the first is that true friends never leave you and the second is that true friendship is valued by everybody. The second lesson can be inferred from the fact that the other cloud tries to help the bird bear its friend's pain. I never had any friend who left me and came back. I hope I will never bring such situation, like that of the bird, to any of my friends.

Finally I want to say that friendship, like any good relation, needs understanding and bearing of pain. Friendship doesn't mean that the friend will bring heavens down to you. Neither does love. Friendship is also a form of love. And hence you can bear the pain happily, unlike an unwanted relation.

The unforgettable month

This month will ever be remembered by me, for all the happiness and sorrow it brought. It started with the new year celebrations. I was in my aunt's house then, enjoying the party there. There was a children dance programme in their apartment. After that we played housey. And when the clock ticked twelve, we had the new year cake cut. "What a nice way to start the new year", I thought for myself.

Just after a week, came Kirti's birthday. Ramya came up with a secret plot to disguise us all, including the big cake, to surprise her dear friend. Everything went well and we finally ended up eating the whole cake. Later we went to CCD, where the birthday girl turned to a just born girl (:P) and acted childish. Like the kids who do nothing more than what is told, she ordered what we requested and did not order for herself. And later she complained when we were eating, which was very funny :)

After the first week passed, acad work got more prominence. It was not until Saarang that fun had its sumptuous role. The starting ceremony of Saarang was awesome. It was presided by BMK. He amused us with his grand performance. Sometimes it looked like a badinage of musical instruments. Gummadi, Subhashini (good sister) and I went to the starting concert. Slowly many other friends joined us. This was on Day 0 of Saarang.

On day 1, I was very lazy and didn't go for any event. But day 2 was very interesting. I went for pottery workshop and watched dramatics for 3 hours. After that I went for the Shaankar Eshan Loy show on day 3 evening. Those guys really rocked the show. We were dancing, may be it could be called jumping, all the time. I went alone to the show and got scared by the long line for entry. Quickly I found some friend (Rahul) standing midway and I joined him :) After more than half an hour of waiting, I entered the theater. There were hordes of people inside and I was lucky to find Slinky(god), who cleverly reserved seats beforehand. Not to get bored, there was Ramya to fart at times during the show. The show was rocking and it went till 10:30. I got completely exhausted after the show and went back to my room.

On day 4, I got back to my routine life. I enjoyed so much during Saarang. But life cannot have happiness throughout. And hence came the sad day. It was on Republic day (26th Jan). When I was buying a gift for my friend(Subhash), I got a call from my father telling that my granny expired. Like anybody, I tried to forget it. But it's not that trivial :P I slowly got upset and also quarreled with a good friend. I just stayed more than a week with my granny during my winter holidays. It is not so simple to build a relation or to destroy it. I still miss her. She used to be the chatter box, never ending. And I pray that her soul rests in peace.