Mom's Nightmare

She kept pushing; still the doctor kept saying push a little harder. She took a deep breath and then gave the push with her hands holding the sides of the bed tightly. 

 

“The head is out” the doctor exclaimed, keep pushing he continued. She kept pushing until the whole body was out. The doctor holding the child informed the mother it was a boy, by then she was already exhausted but the news did make her happy, as she felt her prayers were answered. She had prayed for a boy this time to Lord Ganesha to complete her family. What she did not know that she was going to regret that later in the life and keep reminding the boy of the same. 

 

 Apparently the boy was born on Ananth Chaturdashi of Ganeshotsav. He was the only boy to be born that day in the hospital. He had grown up drinking buffalo’s milk as his mother found herself back in the hospital after coming home from the delivery. It is said that the boy is lucky that his mother survived to live and tell the tale.

 

What was among the rumors that he might have picked up the habits of the buffalo, but drinking buffalo’s milk often prevented him from getting into fights when anyone challenged him for one saying “Maa ka dhooth piya hain toh samane aa” (if you had drink your mother’s milk, than come forward) and he would then walk off saying bhais ka dhood piya (I had buffalo's milk) and turn his foes into friends. 

 

Growing up the boy gave the early signs of humans being related to chimpanzee as he would be often found sitting on the top of the cupboards and climbing the walls (with the help of his back & legs) between the passages that was used for entering the rooms. His mother can still recall how he made her living almost miserable with all his antics, the list of complaints that others would have. His aunt could very well open the Pandora’s Box when the child’s name is mentioned. He even made her run behind him, he thinks that she should be thankful to him for losing weight in the process. There have been so many feats that could be recalled about the boy. He broke the refrigerator’s door when he was being chased by the SisterHood Clan. 

 

Wasted a whole container of flour by raising it above his head, turning it upside down and getting hurt in the process. Got his head stuck in the window grill as he was showcasing his skills. Started a small fire in the house which was quickly doused off. He still thinks that his best act was when he broke the tube light with his badminton racket as he played an indoor badminton game in the hall. His name is associated with the highest number of bizarre incidents in the Family Book of Records. The boy had a good side too. He was one of the early ones who started praying to god and doing an aarti as he tried to imitate his elders. 

 

He also started shaving early as he wanted to grow big, later he realized that he was been fooled as the shaving kit turned out to be a toy given by his Dad. The boy showed his early signs of dealing with money by asking for pocket money a trend that he started in the family. He even invented the “paper ball cricket” (which involved the ball made of papers and tied by rubber band and the bat is made of cardboard) in which the sisterhood clan also took part. Being the youngest and living with the sisterhood clan he would always have to listen as everyone around him were speaking 16215 words per day while he could just utter 15669 per day. No wonder when he grew up, he was quite a listener!! He was also told by the clan that he was the “adopted” one but he knew it was one of their tactics to distract him from his mission. He has the family rabbit tooth that refutes their claim.  

 

As he grew up, he was often seen lost in deep thought trying to understand the world, the universe and in the process gain wisdom and wished to become a saint. He wanted to take sanyas but he was aware of his responsibilities. So he decided to do the next best thing of becoming a Cyber Yogi Baba (Hamari Koi Branches Nahi Hain) He was aware that he had caused too much pain to his mother when he was growing up. So he decided to ask her how to make up for it. He asked her to tell him “the one thing that would make her happy and proud of her son”. She replied that she did not want anything for herself and the only thing that she wanted was the boy to be happy.

 

The boy was stumped, all his wisdom could not help him decipher what she meant. It was only by trial and error method did he came to know that what she actually meant. That would be to cause less trouble or be good in hiding them from her and taking good care of her. The boy took pains to do avoid getting in trouble (still trouble has a way of finding him, after all they are friends). As a result of which he would often hear the much stated phrase once in a blue moon. 

 

Somehow the boy thinks that it’s his mother’s fault as she should have been clear on what she wanted from Lord Ganesha, did she forget that he himself was a mischievous child (I am not his reincarnation).  

P.S. In case you are wondering what prompted this post, well today is the day when her nightmare began and shows no signs of ending…

Looking for Answers

I happened to have made an entry in the journal saying that looking for answers is futile, its like one never gets the answers when one is looking for and often ends up finding them when it could be of no use or doesn’t matter as one moves on.

I happen to have the book “The Fifth Mountain” besides me that I started reading. Funnily enough the note from the author talked about related to what I had written about.

Reminded me of this post.

P.S.: I was looking to read other books by Paul Coelho but none were available except this one.

Take A Stand

Mayur ended the call on his cell phone; went inside his house sat on the sofa stretched his legs on the table and spread his arms around the sofa.

“I thought she would listen to me, and agree to make the changes on whose name the flat is going to be, but she did not….” He said to himself.

After a moment of deliberation, he said “What difference does it make anyways? Once I marry her, I’ll get a flat and a share of her wealth. All that I have to do is tie a mangalsutra around her neck and rest of all the expenses would be taken care of by her parents. Once married, I will convince her to add my name instead of her as the owner of the flat”.

Never in his wildest dream he had seen this coming, where he would see himself moving into a flat from a slum and get a slice of huge wealth without spending a penny. All he had to do was marry a girl, who was constantly being rejected because of her dark complexion.

His face broke into a smile; after all he was the one who was going to have the last laugh.
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Such marriages do take place where the girl belongs to a well to do family and the guy is inferior in respect of status. Most of these alliances takes place as the family of the girl find it hard to get a boy of their status in the community or the reasons could vary from the girl been highly educated, being of too dark complexion or for other reasons.

Not all such marriages that take place are based on “Get Rich Quicker” route there are sometimes genuine individuals involved too.

Our society norms are such that once you grow older, one is expected to get married and start a family of their own and if they don’t do so, then rumors starts spreading on the probable causes for being single.

The lackadaisical attitude of the girl’s parents who treat her like she has become a burden on them and if she is not married after a certain age, people will start wagging their tongues!!

What is the point in getting a daughter married in such a way which appears nothing more than a business deal?

It would do more good to give the girl more freedom and letting her live the way she wants to, who knows she might find love in the future instead of giving her away in such a manner where dark clouds looms over her future, which can only be predicted after marriage.

On top of that, where is the self-respect of a man who cannot stand up for themselves and prefer to depend on their wife’s kitty. The man would end up utilizing the wife’s fund for more than often instead of finding it through other means of resources.

In such marriages, there is a role reversal where the bride takes on groom’s role and the groom plays the bride, providing other amenities such as a flat to live in, in case the groom does not own one or help him set up a business.

Such marriages do go through a litmus test of the society wherein the groom would be constantly reminded how his life has changed due to his marriage (this will only hurt the individuals whose motive was not money, a male bruised ego can take bad turns), as for the girl too, life is not going to be easy especially when the shameless relatives talk about her how her marriage got fixed in her presence.

What is the point in getting married in such a way? so that the parents feel that they have fulfilled all their duties? or the girl to think that this is her fate and that she should live with it?

There is more to life then just settling down and starting a family, something that we, Indians seem averse to.

The society norm needs to be broken when it starts to strangle the people for whom it was built for….

The Threat SMS

Last month, around 9 in the night, I was working on the PC when I received a Threat SMS on my cell phone which was lying besides the monitor, the message read something like this: 

 

Excuse me, Don?t dare to call up on this number,
Or else u would have to face sever consequence from police
And I will finish you off 

 

The first thought that came to my mind that someone was playing a prank with me, as the message came from an unidentified number thinking that one of my friends had changed his number and this is their way of letting me know about it. I did not bother to call up the person; instead I decided to send a message asking the person’s name. One or two hours had passed since replying the message. I got a second message from the same number, this time saying: 

 

Stop all this nonsense

 

For a moment, the thought came to my mind that may be it’s a girl who is getting irritated because of some loser sending messages continuously and she might have accidentally send the message to the wrong number which would be mine in this case (the thought of a guy being behind this did not came coz in such cases they would prefer to call and swear expletives or the message cannot be expected to be so polite if this was a genuine case). I still had my doubts though…. Giving the benefit of doubt and still thinking that someone was pulling a fast one on me, I decided to send a second message asking them what their name was and they probably send the message to the wrong number. Again there was no reply soon. I was staying up late night playing a newly downloaded game on my cell phone when I got the third message from the same number which went like this:

 

What is Mobile?

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  Neeche neeche kya dekha raha hain
Hath main kya kabutar pakda hain

 

It was 1:30 in the night when I got this message; I was now 100% sure that one of my friends has to be behind all this. I know two people who stay up late and even narrowed it to one as he worked in the evening shift and is also known for changing numbers frequently. I decided to call but I did not know what was coming for me next. The voice said “Hello”. I did not say anything for a moment as it did not sounded like any of my friends. “Who is this” I asked. 

 

“I have been getting a lot of abusive messages from you for the past two days. I am warning you to stop all this” the voice sounded like someone who was older than me and sounded disturbed. That made me take the call seriously and I explained the person how I thought that someone was playing a prank on me by sending the “Threat SMS”. He again told me to stop sending the messages and asked me whether this is a good time to call anyone? I once again explained him how I had just received a message from your mobile and asked if whether he was sure that the number sending him the messages was from my mobile number. He spelled out my number and I told him how that is simply not possible. I asked him his name and he said “Rajiv Jain”. 

 

I gave my memory a push to recall. I did not know anybody by that name. “Why do you want my name” the voice said with fear that could be felt in his voice. He told me that he would call up the next day in the morning to talk about it. I kept the phone down saying thanks. By the time I kept the phone down, my sister was standing outside my room listening to the whole conversation. I told her and Mom what had taken place right from the start. 

 

My sister started grilling me “Try to remember, you haven’t uploaded your number to any sites” She went to say how foolish I was to call up the number something that she does not even when she receives a message saying Happy Birthday from an unidentified number. I went back to my room thinking about what just happened, how something like this could be possible. When it comes to gizmos and gadgets, I know a lot of stuff especially on how it can be misused. So I was pretty sure that it was not the case here. Either the other person is lying or there is something else going on here.

 

As I was asleep, I told myself there is nothing to be worried about and there was this gut feeling that things are not like they seem to be. My instinct has been right on many occasions and I decided to go with it. The next day I was expecting a call from the person in the morning, which did not happen. I had donned my detective cap by then and decided to investigate the matter. 

 

My first task was to find out which network did the cell number belonged to which was easy all thanks to the internet. I came to know the number belonged to a new cell network operator launched recently. That helped me narrow down to one of the suspects behind this mystery. I decided to call that friend of mine and inquire whether he has got a new number; coz I remember very well of him telling about changing to the new network as it was giving away a free umbrella for every subscription. He denied it and asked me what made me that question. I went about telling him about the incident right from the scratch as it was narrated before. 

 

My friend asked me you did not get afraid by such message? I said what is there to fear; after all I have not done anything wrong. He told me maybe someone might have pulled a prank on me and asked me how does one complain about it. The only thought that came to mind was complaining to the cell operator about such an incident taking place. Soon the topic changed and I realized that my friend’s voice was different. He had just woken up and was not keeping up well thanks to the cold and fever but was feeling better. I was in my room reading the paper in the afternoon when the thought of the person not contacting came to me. Minutes later, I got the fourth message from the same number saying:

 

Hello don’t give miss call

 

I did not even bother to reply thinking that if he is indeed getting so much troubled, he would call me up. I was sure that if I came to know that it was someone I know then he is gone, dead, and kaput. Sometime later the phone rang; it was from the same number. I picked up the call and this time the voice sounded different. The person on the other side kept threatening me saying that I am sending him messages with expletives, giving him miss calls and that if I did not stop, it won’t be good for me. I tried to pacify the person saying to cool down and listen to me first before he starts abusing me. He still kept threatening me saying that he has connections with the underworld and the police. That just did it. 

 

I stopped being nice and told him how I have also connections and tried to reason with him why I would try to send him messages when for the past couple of days I have not send it to anyone? I told him he was trying to make a fool out of me by saying abusive messages were being sent from my mobile. I told him that is not possible and that if he is so dead sure I’ll file a complaint with the police and then see what happens.

 

He was still not done, telling me that he would file a complaint. I again asked for his name, this time he told me it was “Rajiv Mehta” and again try to make him understand that why would I do such a thing in the first place? Soon his tone changed he kept asking me “Pechana nahi kya” the voice on the other side said. “Pechana nahi kya” the voice said again. This time I actually took notice of the voice and I said “Ma****” and yes it was him. I made sure I gave him an earful. 

 

It was the same suspect whom I had called in the morning. He wondered how I came to know which network the number belonged. I came to know that I was not the first one but the second victim. The first one happens to be one of his girlfriends; who just refuses to talk with him when she came to know that it was all a prank. The next thing I know, I was being asked for some mushy messages so as to cool her down. 

 

Thanks to his cold and fever his voice sounded very different than it normally is. That’s why I could not nail him the other day.  

 

P.S. I am waiting to meet him so that I can beat the shit out of him for pulling such a crap. BTW, my friend did not get that umbrella as he brought the new number through a friend under a different scheme.