A make believe, a nightmare and an adventure

Movies can have a profound influence on you. When you are a kid, they can make your imagination go completely berserk.

While I was growing up, our range of entertainment options was limited unlike now. Some weekends were picnics to nearby picturesque spots armed with hampers of mom’s delicious home made food and other goodies and on most weekends it was either a concert, drama or the movies. If it’s the movies the option of choosing it will go to my elder brother, Veera, short for Veeraraghav, who would flip for Bachchan and Brucelee movies, big time. There were several instances when I, under the influence of some movies, indulged in make believe antics.

After I saw the movie LoveBug, I nicknamed our vintage fiat, the one that is small, cute and bald, Herby, and have long conversations with him throughout a make believe race on a track. I think it had some kind of effect on the vintage vehicle except that he seems to have adopted my eldest brother, Raj, short for Rajshekar, now as his favourite. The orange car is still around and stops mid-way if someone other than my brother tries to drive him!

The other instance was a nightmare I had when I saw this old classic tamil movie screened at some random get together with a projector and film roll! It was called the “Pachai Malai Thirudan” ( Green mountain Thief..hehe). Anyways it must have been the effect of all the icecreams I hogged instead of food. There is this shot where a huge ghost like `Raakshus’ transforms into a Gandharva. Somehow this scene stuck to my head.

In the middle of the night I woke up howling with tears and tried to wake up Veera, my elder brother who was sleeping next to me, imagining him to be a character in that movie. No avail though, my brother blissfully slept on, as only brothers can do. Suddenly I had this horrible feeling that something evil was coming towards me. I got up like a shot, jumped out of the bed….went racing down the stairs and banged on the front door, pleading with the caretaker outside, to open the door and help me, claiming something was chasing me.

The caretaker was rudely woken up from his slumber but still had his senses about to tell me that he cannot open the door as it was locked from inside. I tried bravely to pull up a footstool and reach for the door bolts but as soon as I got up on the footstool an eerie feeling overtook me and I fled up the stairs again and straight into my parents’ room which was all along, adjacent to the room were I slept ! The minute I entered my parents’ room, I felt a sense of peace engulf me, whatever was chasing me had stopped doing so. I felt so calm and rushed to the cool white sheets of their bed and buried my face and even now I can recall the serene feeling.

My mom moved in her sleep and fearing I would wake them up, I rolled under the bed, however at that instant my dad half woke up and mumbled to my mom, “I thought I saw someone at the side of the bed… is someone hiding under the bed? Now where did I keep my pistol?” What I heard scared the living daylights out of me and not wanting a confrontation with my dad in the dead of the night with explanations being demanded, I scurried out of the room and settled myself into my bed and to my complete indignation, my brother continued to sleep peacefully. Ofcourse my mom made out my small figure dart out of the room and came in to check on me. I was determined not to narrate my adventure and pretended to make a huge protest at being woken up from deep slumber. Ofcourse the next day my whole family had the time of their lives when Veera getting the story of my strange behaviour from the caretaker, narrated it with many exaggerations like how only brothers can!

The next instance is probably the most hilarious one of all, in fact I had sent this across to Uncle Pai of Tinkle publications, for their memorable narrative series, and by selecting the entry for publishing, Uncle Pai made me dream of writing as a career, when I was in school. I didn’t really see myself interested in anything else with a few exceptions like Physics and the Dramatics Club. We had just seen two movies in consecutive weeks, one
was “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World” and the second could be “The good the bad and the ugly” for I cannot quite recall the name, it could also be some other movie which had a lot of horses in it.

Anyway the deal was this. I was so impressed with the men on horseback, racing away so swiftly that I badly wanted to imitate them. There was just a small problem, where would I find a horse? Just then my eyes fell on this short and stout cow, whom we nicknamed “mottai”, (his horns were shorn by our vet, as the cow had this habit of charging with her head down). I quitely went over to her side, stood on a ledge nearby and swung myself over gracefully…doubt if I can do it with the same grace now…

The bewildered cow stood still for a while. In the meantime I untied her from the post pretending the ropes were the reins, at that same moment she just bolted out of sheer fright and wanted to shake me off to the ground. I hung on for dear life with my torso dangling on one side, with a leg slung over on the other side, two hands holding on tightly to the cow’s neck while the ground, a blurry brown now, was rushing past, inches below me in a mad frenzy. She came one full circle covering vast expanse of ground, for what seemed like an eternity and finally shook me off. I had a hard landing but even before I could grimace it was my turn to bolt with fright to the backdoor of the kitchen, which was within sight, as “mottai” kept her head down and was charging straight at me, at an accelerated pace.

P.S : This post and quite a few others in the nostalgia section is dedicated to my three nephews and two nieces who are going to have a ball with this trip of mine down memory lane.