Verses - Band Interview

Q. What ’s the story behind the name VERSES?

A. When people first hear our band name, they immediately get the impression that we might be a religious band and when they listen to our music they think its satanic or anti religious or whatever. But we do not have any religious or satanic content in our music. When we decide to pen down the lyrics we look to touch upon all aspects that are affecting the world today. If you carefully observe our lyrical content you will see that it’s all about our hypocritical world, end of days or judgment day if you like to call it. So hence it is for all you fans out there to decide what Verses is for you.

Q. And the current line-up of the band is?

A. Roshan D’Souza – Lead Vocals

     Sagar Gururaj – Keys/Backing Vocals

     Vinod James Issac – Rhythm Guitar

     Suraj Dutt – Lead Guitar/ Backing vocals

     Amith Kumar – Bass Guitar

     Yadhunandan Nagaraj - Drums

Q. Where did you guys meet? How long have you know each other ?

A. Roshan, Sagar and Vinod know each other from their days in college. But it was the Sandeep(ex guitarist), Sagar and Vinod who started the band. It was purely co incidental that the concept of starting a band came along. Sagar was in conversation with Sandeep about getting his Bass guitar repaired, Vinod over heard the conversation and was like ‘Bro I didn’t know you play the bass, let’s jam sometime!!’. One thing led to another and “Verses” was formed. Roshan who was also a good friend to everyone joined in later to carry on the vox duties. Then Verses saw a lot of lineup changes with Amith taking over the bass duties when Sagar decided to switch to Keys. Suraj (ex Innerskin and Velvet Trap) replaced Karthik (ex guitarist who took over from Sandeep) on the lead guitar. Our ex drummer Bitupan also had to leave due to some personal reasons who was replaced by Yadhunandan. With the current line up the band has touched upon another dimension and has won various accolades for our achievements all over the country.

Q. If you had to pick a genre for you music,what would it be? Who are your major influences?

A. ‘Verses’ plays Melodic Death Metal, a genre which is unique on its own because of the melancholic touch to it and a genre which is mostly untouched in India. Our International influences are Dimmu Borgir, Cradle Of Filth, Behemoth, Between the Buried and Me, The Absence, Dark Tranquillity, Arch Enemy, Kalmah etc. The Indian bands that we like are Kryptos, Acrid Semblence, Demonic Resurrection, Guillotine etc.

Q. When did you finally decide to form a band?

A. What inspires you to make music together? Our band was formed way back in late 2008. Most of the band members are from the same college who used to share a common interest in music and decided to do something about it. The like mindedness of these friends was the reason for the birth of ‘Verses’. What inspired us was to introduce Bangalore and rest of the country to something that they have never come across and the touch upon the genre which many have left untouched which was Melodic Death.

Q. How do you go about writing & composing songs?

A. Song writing/composing mostly happens when everyone sits together in the jam room and comes up with different ideas and patterns for the song. When the song writing is in process, everyone in the band just knows what they are supposed to do and all the ideas just fits in with no nonsense and just music taking over. Sagar always makes sure there are melancholic passages in the song, Suraj and Vinod come up with out of the world riffs and rhythm patterns, Amith comes up with innovative bass lines that always blends in perfectly, Yadhu comes up with some amazing complex drumming patterns and are always well structured and hard to keep up to, Roshan comes up with the vocal structure with his amazing range in screams and screeches thus completing the process of song writing/composing. Lyrics which is an integral part of our song writing process, are always written by Roshan and he decides the themes for all the songs.

Q. Are there any main themes to your songs ?

A. Our world is filled with so much of hypocrisy with people fighting over which religion is superior to the other. Take our very own country for example where there’s almost no room for people of different religions getting together. People still live by their own pre conceived notion and always try to prove its right when the whole world can see that there is no one who’s more wrong. People live in constant fear and there’s always the question of war lurking around. We need a change, a big change hence these are some of the issues we try to address and choose as topics to our songs. Our recently released EP ‘Threshold’ is filled with songs that addresses our hypocritical world and for a change waiting to happen.

Q. Which songs do you perform most frequently? Do you ever play any covers? We as a band started off playing covers like most bands did when started playing and then decided we will not be playing anymore covers.

A. That is when we decided to write our own material and have stuck to it till today. Our setlist includes the songs from our EP which are Threshold, Call for Salvation, Damnation, Under the cursed moon and A Broken tale. The songs Threshold, Call for Salvation and Damnation are the ones that we frequently perform. 

Q. How do you guys rehearse and practice ?

A. When we enter the jam room first we set up our equipments, we check the sound and make sure everyone is sounding fine and properly audible. We pay a lot of importance to how we sound so we never start playing until the sound is set to our liking which is also the case at our gigs. We always make sure we play all of our songs at the jam room first and then work on the newer materials.

Q. What has been your biggest challenge as an upcoming band in India ?

A. The biggest challenge was during the initial days when we had just gotten into the scene. Winning over the audience was the hardest thing to do as we had very little idea about how we are supposed to sound as a band. The scene was dominated with some amazing bands here in Bangalore and hence for a new entrant like us it was extremely difficult. But we stuck to our task and kept on playing gigs after gigs and not bothered about anything else. It was a learning curve for us. We did not want to win any gigs but wanted to learn from other bands and that is what we did. After that winning just became a part of our learning curve. We started winning a lot of gigs, headlined a couple of fests and before we know it we had already established a pretty good fan base. We started exploring the scene outside Bangalore and played a lot of gigs at places like Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Goa etc, and now we are proud to say that we have a very strong fan base across the country.

Q. How long have each of you been playing your respective instruments ? (leave the vocalist :P)
A. Well our keyboardist Sagar, we can say that he was born with the keyboards in his hand as he’s been playing the keys from the past 12 years. Suraj picked up the guitar when all the cool kids were playing the WWF card games, which is from the past 10 years and Vinod has been shredding the guitar from the day he got into engineering, from 8 years ago. Amith has been playing bass since cargo jeans went out of fashion (lol) which is from the past 10 years, again a pretty long time. Yadhunandan has been playing the drums since he could hold a pair of sticks in his hand, from the past 7 to 8 years. 

Q. What is your take on the western music scene in India ? And by take, we mean literally TAKE.

A. Interesting question. Western music scene in India is still at a development phase but quickly

catching up with the trend. Rock and Metal is starting to show its face here in our country. Many international acts have toured India and have gone back home knowing that people actually know who they are and what kinda music they play. It still isn’t good enough to say ‘yes its happening here’ but can easily say that it can only get better and better from here on provided Bollywood continues to make shit music like they are now.

Q. What do you have to say about the rise of “easy sweet mix music” or Pop ? Do you think it is fine, as long as the person who is listening to it is comforted by it ?

A. To be frank we are not against any genre of music as everyone would have listened to pop quite a lot in their life (so have we). So as long as the person listening to it is comforted by it good enough. Just make sure you don’t go around blaring it out on people’s faces.

Q. Finding one’s own sound is a long gone-by thing in today’s genre-plagued scene. Do you guys think you have your own sound? What does it take to find your own sound?

A. Yes we do. And that is what makes our band so unique. We did take a lot of time to find our sound and figure out what ‘Verses’ sound like and trust me it wasn’t an easy task. It’s not always the genre you pick that makes your band unique, it’s how innovative you can get with that genre that makes you stand out.

Q. Any last words ?

A. We want to thank for interviewing our band. We would also like to thank all our fans who have been with us from so long and supporting us through thick and thin. Hope you stay with us until we last. Please do buy our EP entitled ‘Threshold’. You can send us an e mail at verses.india@gmail.com and order a copy. Keep supporting the Indian Metal Scene \m/

Finding Your Roots

By Sahil Mehta

Photo credit - Vishakha Jindal

When my mom called me up on the weekend to tell me that they had sold the house and would be moving to a new one, it did not immediately register in my head. I had been gone a long time from home. 8 years now since I had lived there regularly. These last 8 years were dotted with a few visits to the “home sweet home”. Visits that got increasingly shorter as the years went by. Indeed it had been over 6 months since I had last gone back, back to my hometown. Hence, the news about shifting fired a blank in my head.

Mom wanted me to come back the next weekend and help with the shifting. Not help really, my parents had got used to my absence - better than I had to theirs’ when I was a child. No, not help! She just wanted me to come and get my stuff from my room and throw away all the toys and games and clothes that I didn’t need. She said they would help someone else build a new life. Always so practical, they had brought me up with such values and it had gotten me a long way in life. I told her that I had a busy week in office with loads of deadlines to meet and would probably be working overtime every day. It was not untrue. We were in the midst of launching a huge product, a product which could very well change the way people lived in the future. It had been my brainchild and when I first proposed it 3 years ago fresh out of one of the bigger engineering colleges in India my bosses had been very impressed. They gave me my shot and three years later it was just about ready. Three years spent working day and night, meeting deadlines and coordinating things. Just like the week ahead. I explained to mom that it would be difficult for me to get away and that a lot was riding on me. I knew my mom would understand. Moms always understand. They understand better than we do more often than not. They just don’t want to hurt our “educated” and inflated egos by saying the truth. Anyways understand my mom did. She said she would put my things in boxes and that I could sort things out whenever, no if, I had the time to come home. I told her to just give away everything rather than carry the extra load. Always practical! The conversation ended soon after with a customary “hello”, “hi”, “how are you” with dad. It wasn’t really that long ago when I used to spend hours and hours talking to dad trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. Now the conversation ended in just under a minute almost always. Those days were behind me. In one week I was going to be the talk of the town, on the fast-track to stardom. Dad would like that. I went back to work.

That week was a blur of shapes, colors, sounds, tempers & emotions. The product was to be launched on Wednesday, as all auspicious things in India are. Tension and planning dominated Monday and Tuesday. This was the biggest launch for not just me but also my company. It was of a magnitude that if even the slightest thing went wrong, it would leave a 10 feet deep crater in place of the 30 storied building I worked in. My career would be dust not to mention. Wednesday was as frantic, as I spent my time in making arrangements for the guests in the press-conference, making sure that there was enough press-coverage and nervously checking all features of the product to check if everything was working fine. I had two shots of tequila to steady my nerves. It was the first time in over 10 years that I touched alcohol. I had it only once before, with my best friends when I was in school. I hadn’t thought about them in many months. As it was I need not have worried, the launch went off smoothly but that was only half the battle won. I slept that night in the office and so did most of the other staff. Everyone was up by 4 a.m. next morning. All nervously waiting for the paper to come out. And it made an entry worthy of a film star. A loud thud on the main gate which certainly shook up everyone! I remembered how I used to get up early in the morning and get the paper everyday back home when I was a child. Someone opened it, slowly as if opening Pandora ’s Box itself. But like I said I need not have worried. All reviews were good. One paper even went to the extent of saying that we had discovered fire and reinvented the wheel all over again. I don’t remember much of the celebrations that went on all through the morning. It was all chaotic. A few hugs, loads of handshakes, infinite pats on the back; I remember there being a cake and the office looking like a 10 year-olds birthday party venue. But more than that I remember feeling uneasy inside! I remember thinking about what I was going to do next and not feeling glad at that the thought. The rest of the day was spent in preparing reports and all on the launch and on the reviews. It was the last time I would have to do such menial tasks. I was destined for bigger things now. Friday was the official and formal party of success. It was like my debut in the cutthroat, ruthless world of corporate biggies. I was introduced to the high and mighty of society. Never a free moment as I was whisked my one boss or other to explain the technology to the rich and lazy idiots who couldn’t bother reading the newspapers. More than a few gave me advices on how to stay on top. Music, money and alcohol flowed alike as over-made up female colleagues of mine came onto me like I was a magnet. It was everything I had imagined and more when I first started working. Yet it didn’t feel right. I put on a big smile and a few bad jokes which passed well enough in the light atmosphere yet something was missing. My parents called to congratulate me. It was noisy in the hall, so the conversation was short. But I don’t remember them even asking if I was coming home. All they said was that they were proud of me. They were happy for me and the life I had made for myself here. But I wasn’t happy. Three years of working with a single minded determination for this had made me a workaholic. I knew then that I needed a break.

An hour later I found myself at the airport. The benefit of living in the age of jet speed technology is that you can make up your mind very quickly and change it sooner. I was going home, not to the miniscule apartment this crowded city had offered but to the place where I had grown up. As I waited for the flight I pondered on what made me decide to take a plane and go home all of a sudden. It had been a spontaneous and instinctive decision that much was sure. But why? I had trained myself to fight instincts and do the right thing all through college when it made me bunk classes, fall behind in studies and in general feel miserable. I had slowly and slowly trained myself to do the sensible thing and not give in to temptations. Then why all of a sudden had I decided to go home? The responsible thing would have been to go to office tomorrow matter-of-factly and show my bosses that I was still as work-oriented as ever. Now they would feel that success had got to my head. Nevertheless what was done was done. I thought about fighting my instinct again and cancelling the ticket but the thought was hardly a flicker. Something was pulling me back home and I didn’t have the heart to resist.

Photo credit - Sahil Mehta

The flight was a late night one. It would reach Jaipur, my hometown at about 1:30 a.m. I hadn’t told my parents that I was coming home. There had hardly been any time to tell them really, it had all happened so quick. Anyways I wanted to keep it a surprise. I did call up my oldest and closest friend. We went back a long time, right back to pre-school days. There was a comfort between us that I never had with anyone else. We had never had any argument over anything, not in living memory. He understood me well, as well as I understood him. I had kept in touch with him all through college but since joining office the calls had become less and less frequent. He was nowhere in my “recent calls” list. I called him up, told him I was coming back; don’t know how long I’ll stay and if he was free sometime maybe we could catch up. He said sure, asked me how the sudden plan and when I was reaching etc. etc.

The flight was 2 hours long. I had an economy class ticket, so was hardly comfortable. Sleep eluded me, and I fell into deep thoughts about how I was living today and tried to compare it with the past. I tried to think about what it meant to be selling the house. But it still didn’t really click. Everything was blank. Slowly I tried to draw out the memories that I had of that place. It was a slow flashback and it started backwards. The vacations from college when I spent my time hurrying meeting relatives, friends and catching up on movies and food; high school and those two years of hell that I went through while preparing for engineering; the years preceding that, which was when I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life; and still earlier playing cricket in the driveway with friends and going out for movies. I remembered my parents and the way I grew up. All the things that me and dad used to do; how we used to corner mom together on various issues; how I used to always ask mom first if I ever needed anything. I wondered how my room would be. Mom always wanted to clean it up and get rid of the posters. She had had her chance to do that in these last 6 months. Time passed quickly in the land of nostalgia.

The flight landed just 5 minutes late and I checked out the airport reasonably quickly. No baggage at all. I came out the terminal and was wondering whether to take a taxi or auto when I heard a familiar voice call out my name. My two best friends were waiting for me at the airport at 1:30 in the morning in 5 degree centigrade temperature. Just like the good old days. Nothing had changed them, both were still the same and soon I too was my old self. Gone was the formal tones and fancy vocabulary used in office. It was the same swear words and silly jokes that marked my adolescent years. We were three 25 year olds behaving like 15 year olds. There was so much catching up to do. We didn’t directly go home; we went on a long drive, picked up ice-creams in the middle and chatted like women do in kitty parties. I do not remember what we talked about, it was mostly nonsense as usual. But I remember how much I laughed. I laughed as I hadn’t in many a years. It felt good to be back. At about 5:30 in the morning though I finally succumbed to the call of my house. I asked my friends to drop me home. I promised to call them in the evening to set something up.

Photo credit - Sahil Mehta

I entered my house just as the first light of the sun was breaking through. Everything seemed so familiar. I had struggled to picture it my mind on the flight but now everything came back in a flood of memories. I had come back this late (or early) once before also. That had been the day of my farewell in school. What had been forgotten for so long now seemed so fresh as if it was yesterday. I bounded up the steps with the same energy as I had when I returned for the first time from college. I rang the bell. It was the same sound I had heard countless no. of times before. The ding-dong melody. It reminded me of the days when I used to stand next to the TV while watching cartoons in the evening. And how I would switch it off and run away whenever the bell rang in anticipation of my dad coming. He hadn’t scolded me for a long time now. My mom opened the door. Her face was a mixture of surprise and joy. It was the same expression which I used to have when I saw mom coming back from work in the evening. She was so surprised that the first thing she asked me was if everything was alright. I touched my mother’s feet. I never used to do it earlier, at least not too much, but today it just seemed right. I joined my parents for tea in the verandah. A tradition that had lasted over 2 decades. It was one the longest morning tea sessions in my life. I talked and talked. I enquired about their health, told them about the product, about my role in it, about my future prospects in the company. They had seen the product launch on TV, but listened anyway. My dad gave me a few suggestions to make it better too. Just like the old days. No matter how hard I tried, I was always a step behind dad. It was better that way anyways. This was all so familiar. The tea winded up at about 11. I went to my room to freshen. All over the house, I could see things being packed. It seemed odd to find things missing in so many places. I entered my room, dreading to find everything gone. It was just as I had left it.

Photo credit - Sahil Mehta

The same rickety bed on which I had spent countless hours studying, watching movies on my laptop, sharing jokes with my friends and just daydreaming. The poster of Sourav Ganguly, who I idolized and worshipped as a god right from his debut to his retirement and below it my first cricket bat, covered with dust and looking forlorn. I had outgrown it many years back but I had preserved it. I shared an attachment with it that went back to my first memories. I had played with it for a long time. It introduced me to my first love and I could never let go of it. You know, every child has dreams. We let go of most of them for more achievable things and call it growing up. But sometimes that one dream remains which you just can’t let go off. This was mine. I had wanted to be a cricketer ever since I could remember. I had loved playing so much. I would forget everything, time, hunger, weather, everything. It was pure bliss for so long. Then I started growing up. I still remember the day when I made the choice to pursue my academics over cricket. It had all gone as I planned, I was successful today, but I could just never let go off that desire. My mom had tried many times, always unsuccessfully, to get rid of that bat. There was no way that I was going to give away that bat. I don’t know if there is a higher power above us or not, but I was suddenly sure that if there was one, he brought me back to save my precious bat.

I fell down on the bed and relaxed. Relaxed until the practical me took over and told me get on with it. I started slowly taking out my old stuff, one item at a time. I sorted things into two groups, the ones which I would keep and the ones to throw away. The first few items found their way into the “DISPOSE” group but it was much harder to let go than I had imagined. The past soon caught up with me and the rational me ran off scared. My first fancy dress costume, my pre-school uniform, the tie from farewell with messages from my friends, the photo albums with all my friends and family, my stamp collection, the scrapbook with photos of my favorite cricket stars, the books I had grown up reading, my first computer which was incidentally my second love,  everything thing lay in that room. It was all my life scattered on the floor in front of me and I had to choose which parts of my life I would take with me in the future and which I would throw away. How do you do that? How do you prioritize between two memories each as sweet as the other bitter?

Seconds turned to minutes and minutes to hours as I pored through all my material possessions, reliving the memories and experiences associated with each of them. I did not even bother trying to sort them into the two groups. My mom came to ask me for lunch, but when she saw me sitting cross-legged on the floor poring over old photo albums with the entire room in disarray, she left wordlessly. She returned with a plateful of food and kept it on the table. She left me again to my solace. When she returned 3 hours later to check on me, the food tray was still untouched. I spent hours going through the photo albums. They were full of my extended family, full of cousins and uncles and aunts and cousins of uncles and aunts. They had all doted on me when I was young. Now I recognized the faces but struggled to recall the names. Where they were now, how they were now? I had no clue. So many of my cousins would have been married by now. I hadn’t attended more than a couple of marriages in the last 3 years. I was probably an uncle to so many kids now, but unlike my uncles I hardly had time to visit them. All the faces in those albums had taught me something. I had remembered the teachings but forgot the teachers. This was what my life had become. I was an ungrateful and selfish man who did things only for his own good. I knew then I had to change things. I knew then what was missing. I figured out why I felt uneasy. It wasn’t that I was a workaholic. I just didn’t belong there. I belonged in here, in these photo albums. I belonged with my friends, my relatives and mostly my parents. They had all made me the way I was. I may have achieved a lot of success but these were the people who gave me the recipe for success in so many small insignificant ways. And it wasn’t just my family and friends, so many others were there. my driver who drove me to tuition, the domestic help who gave me something delicious to eat whenever I was hungry, the postman who got me the stamps everyday for my stamp collection, my cricket coach, my teachers, the postman who brought my results, the computer repair guy from whom I learnt how to fix my computer, our family doctor who made sure I got better on time, the restaurant waiter who got me my coffee before other people’s orders. And this city, it had given me so many opportunities. 

In aiming for the stars I had forgotten where I came from and who I was. But this trip back home helped me rediscover my roots. That abyss about my feeling for my house suddenly disappeared. My house was the foundation upon which my life existed. I had built a lot of memories and stored them in the sub-conscious but all those memories led back to physical things which were housed in this building. Leaving this house would be leaving behind my past. It would be as if most, if not all, of my previous existence would be wiped out. I was in a very pensive mood at dinner that night. My dad could sense it. It was as if he was feeling the same way. He asked me what was troubling me. I kept quiet for a few seconds and then blurted out “Can’t we keep the house?”. It was a childish plea and I could sense the desperation in my voice. No one answered. No one needed to. I knew the answer even before I posed the question. I felt embarrassed at having lost control. But it was my last ditch effort to find redemption after years of neglecting my home, my friends and my family. It was my way of apologizing to my parents for not being there, over these last few years. That one moment will be one that changed my life the most. In one moment all was forgiven. My mom and dad cheered me up with stories from my past. We would have gone well past midnight had it not been for the fact that the movers were coming in tomorrow. This was our last night in this house. It would be the last of many peaceful sleeps that I had in my bed.

I got up the next morning, Sunday, all set for a new beginning. I knew today what things I wanted to keep and what to dispose off. I picked up all the photos, all the cards, and a few gifts from the people whom I treasured. The rest was all to be given away. The material things didn’t matter. The memories they made were there in my head & the lessons that they had taught firmly in my conscious. All I needed was to make sure that the people associated with those memories were there in the future. I resolved to do that. The movers came and took away the furniture. I went with dad and gave away all the stuff that we wouldn’t need to charity. It felt good to give. Soon the walls were bare, the rooms empty. Soon it would be time to say goodbye. I met the people moving in. A young working couple and their four year old son. They were both graduates from top B-schools working at top positions in big MNCs. They had recently moved to the city. Their pay allowed them to afford a bungalow and other comforts at such a relatively young age. It all seemed picture perfect until you saw the sadness and loneliness in the eyes of their son. It told the very familiar story of what is our “professional and work oriented” generation. I said my goodbyes to my house and as they walked in I felt as if my past walked out but my future was walking in. A lost man, who did not realize that life had more to offer than just material comforts. That future had to change. With a last symbolic gesture, I took down the nameplate from the main door. The house now bore no signs of us ever having lived there. It was completely empty except for that cricket bat which I had left behind. My past had taught me a most important lesson in life. It was time to let go of it. It was time someone else made new memories with that bat.

Photo credit - Sahil Mehta

Earned Regrets

By Harshita Bhatnagar

Photo credit - Sahil Mehta

I lie awake late at night

Gazing at the heartless stars

Shining in glory, far away

From realization of the earth’s pain.

I pass them a silent curse

And walk inside to dream.

The sun knocked at my window

And stung in my eye,

I push up the covers leaving it insulted

Of having broken my serene dream,

And dragging me

To the heart-rending reality.

I lift my cup of coffee

And sipping through it

Find it tasteless and devoid

Of the sweet flavour of sugar.

I dump it and see the crystals

Mocking me from the bottom.

The calendar fluttered behind me

Pink and new and unrecognised

And then it dawns on me

That I’ve stepped in yet another new year

With as many suns and stars and coffee mugs

As the year that said farewell.

I walk to my desk deciding to pen

The memories of the year gone by.

But the pen froze my heart and I

Choked on all the words that I didn’t have,

Of enjoying a starry night

Or smilingly basking in the first light.

Oh how foolish I had been

To not realise the mute spur of the stars

And the sun’s silent promise that

However long the night, the dawn shall break.

And that life doesn’t give up on us.

It is sweet but just not stirred well.

Playgrounds and Little People

By Aradhna Mangla

Children aren’t just kids. They’re Little People. They sense more than you think they will and are a lot like monkeys, who imitate and learn. They grow into Older People, who are not very different from their younger selves. 

Photo credit - Prasanth Akki

Playgrounds for children too are just a simplified version of the world an adult would see. In fact, many psychologists first observe children at play in order to understand adult behavior.

However, children are a lot like wet clay, that could be shaped into anything over time. The sand pit and the swings give away a lot about a person, however, a lot is left to be guessed.

Yes, many traits usually manifest themselves in early childhood. But people’s natures are subject to change, and many a times, our childhood friends grow up to be very different from what we expected them to be.

By observing a child at the playgorund, you can tell whether a person plays fair or not, whether he’ll pitch in when the group must pay for breaking someone’s window, or if he’ll back the group in a fight.

But it is also said that children are like sponges. They absorb much, but hold little. 

Children are blessed with the power of forgetting and many of their traits will not survive to adulthood. Its hard to say then, how a person may turn out to be. Becoming an adult corrupts the mind with many things. “Reason” and “Logic” teach you that its not good to wear your heart on your sleeve or to be honest all the time. You learn that marks don’t mean numbers, they mean money.

Some things do survive, like scars and their stories, serving as a markers on our journey towards adulthood. 

Little people must assimilate years of experience in order to become Older people, with each birthday marking a year more until they can change from one playground to another. The bigger the better.

The Things That Mystified Us As Children

By Aradhna Mangla

When I was a child, I would never tire of asking questions. But I would just not stop when I would be in the car.

Looking out from the rear of the car, with feet dangling off the backseat, I would torpedo my parents with endless jabber, and being the nice parents they are, they would tirelessly humor me. (I’m lucky I did not get given away to an orphanage really!)

Sundar Photography

A lot of stuff held wonder for me as a child and I’m sure many of you will agree too.I grew up in an age where we didn’t have personal phones, personal computers came in late and ipods were rare. And actually, we didnt care!School and then the playground (And the dreaded homework!) - This occupied our days. But we would never be too tired to question things. Even when our parents forbade us from doing something, the first thing that would come out from our mouths would be a big, fat WHY! I have always loved cooking, and when I was a midget, I would try to peer into the pots on the stove or try to stir them. I was always dumbfounded by cakes, I couldn’t understand how a liquid-y white mass could become a glorious, spongey cake! Now, of course, I know the scientific reasons behind them, but as a child, it was nothing short of magic for me! Cars too posed aother enigma. Having watched Flintstones, I would always presume that it was my Dad who padded on the road and made the car move. Imagine my confusion when I saw that there were no holes on the floor to do so!

But these questions are born of lack of knowledge. And as one question was answered, another would spring in its place! The mind is so much like a muscle. Albeit one, that we train too little. (I’ve read this somewhere!) Why is it that very few things surprise us anymore? A person jumping through a ring of fire hardly elicits the same response from us as it does from a child. If we started to collect shiny rocks as chidren do, we would be called silly. We would say that we know the mechanics/physics/logic/arguments etc behind things. Has growing up, diminished our capacity to gaze in wonder? I guess thats one question we can’t answer in riddles.

Just Kidding

By Pragyananda Mishra

When I was a kid, 

The honking school bus was my ultimate driving machine, The fear and loathing of Zee horror show made sure that I don’t wake up for a pee. The only time I devoured 3 chapatis was when mom served the left-over mutton curry @dinner. The ideal Sunday was cartoonscomics and cricket. The securest place (where no god-damn-ghost could enter) was sleeping between paa and mom. Subjects like dictation, craft and moral science were somehow a fearful proposition; the only thing that I bothered to wipe my hands and face with after a meal was my mom’s saree. Evening prayer was an effort to battle mosquitoes and keep singing in unison at the same time. To avoid interruption of Rangoli - I kept the toilet door open and did the needful. 

Photo credit - Chakradhar Nemani

Big Babol (and big fun!) cards were something more than merely precious. The only plea/excuse at exams was a loud cry. Knees and elbows seemed to be the infinitely skin rich parts of the body. The birthdays were all about gifts and “whistle blowing”. The PTA meetings always ensured that my lunch was served only when my father came back from work. A very late night sleep meant going to bed at 10:20 PM after being bored by the TV commercials during the Friday DD movie. Superheroes came in dreams and lasted for 8 hours. Bravery was

rushing 5 metres into the sea and coming back escaping the waters. Sachin winning the match

for India meant a glass of Pepsi at the next meal. Being sick meant sitting on the best chair with mom by my side serving apples and soup, brother tuning Cartoon network and papa saying “okay you won’t go to school tomorrow”. Train travel meant a ruckus as I often ended up

holding hands with the wrong parent. Clearing Contra and Mario stages meant pride among friend circles. Ass meant a beast of burden, rubber indicated an eraser and cats and pussies were recited in aplomb in rhymes...........

Dylan’s-Times they are a changing never was more true.

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Pragyananda Mishra
20 something-year old taciturn hobbledehoy; I try to win but a loss is always heartening. Presently bewildered and still not sure that 0% of everything is better than 100% of nothing.

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CHILDHOOD

By Clive Pereira

Memories that once were . . .

Childhood : a simple time where your toughest challenges are eating all your veggies and getting good grades. At the time it seemed like it was the hardest gig in the world and you could not wait to grow up, but then you did and you began to see the world in a completely different light. Looking back you see that nothing is better that being a child. The innocence, the utter disregard for anything besides you and your toys, food given to you when you want, and pretty much everyone fussing over you. If you haven’t figured it out... yes I was the youngest of the lot. A little pampered I must admit but none the less I think I turned out ok. Your childhood is

something you can never get back, no matter how hard you try once you grow up, you grow up. No longer can you imagine the bed sheet on a few chairs to be a castle, no longer is an upside

down chair a horse chariot which you use to slay the dragon and save the princess from for the forces of evil. If I must say the most missed aspect about my childhood is neither the toys nor the extra attention, it would have to be the sense of imagination. At that age every object you see can turn itself into something magical, something extraordinary or something out of this world. The possibilities are limitless and the stories are intricate as ever. Neither physics nor any science can explain them but yet you relished every minute of it.

Photo Credit - Prasanth Akki

Childhood memories are not without their dull or less sparkly moments. It’s these moments which make the good ones sparkle even more. There are those times where you felt like there was no hope whether it was a bully or a family feud. The important thing to keep in mind is that it’s the good times that shape you, but it’s the bad times that make you. Don’t forget the bad but look back on the good.

Every good thing has to come to an end, and your childhood being one of the best was no different. The day it happened was a memorable one, it’s was the day you looked at a bed sheet and all you saw was nothing but a bed sheet. When we look back at all out childhood memories sparkling or otherwise we look back at a time which made us who we are.

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Clive Pereira
Interested in adventure sports and experiencing urban culture

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Childhood Recollections

By Tikuli

( http://tikulicious.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/recollections-from-early-childhood/)

“These are the quicksilver moments of my childhood I cannot remember entirely. Irresistible and emblematic, I can recall them only in fragments and shivers of the heart.”

Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

When I was a little girl I had crayons and imagination  but today’s performing geniuses only seem to have laptops, Video games, X-box, portable music players, Television and Internet. While I took pride in my collection of pebbles, marbles etc kids today flaunt their gadgets. Six year old Suhas is addicted to his iPad. His life revolves around it. He throws a bizarre tantrum

when told to keep it aside and parents give in just to calm him down. Now I am not against technology but I feel that there is a loss of innocence and wonder in today’s children.

I asked little Raghav if he read the story book I gave on his Birthday and he sheepishly replied. ” No, it’s too big. I saw the movie on Video.” Similarly, Abha finds it easy to read some recommended story on YouTube in 6 min rather than “wasting” time on a thick book. 

Photo Credit - Amrita Paul

It broke my heart but that’s the trend these days. Children prefer the immediate gratification. 

Vaibhav’s life is like a chat room. He has hundreds of friends on the three social networking sites he is member of. Virtual life gives him a kick. I asked him if he would like to visit the science center and some other places on a Sunday, he refused. Reason- He had fixed some poker game challenge on Facebook and had to catch up with his friends. His blackberry continues to beep at all times. “It’s comforting to be connected to those who love you , you see “, he says with a warm smile. I asked him about his family and real-time friends. “They are boring”. Like Pavlov’s dog he runs to his cell every time it beeps.

I did not want to go into the details of how technology has dug its talons into our the very core of our being but sitting on the grassy slope on this beautiful winter day I remembered how we precious those simple joys of our childhood are. I watch ten-year old Ria, oblivious to the flowers and birds around her, tugging at her mom’s purse for the mobile to play. 

I don’t think we can blame the children for getting lured into this tech trap. It is parental responsibility to create a balance. I think life was beautiful when it was simple.

I miss so many things I did as a child. Things I long to do but inhibitions stop me. I posed a question on FB today, "At what age does going nude cross the line from joyful to uncomfortable? And, does that age then represent a certain kind of turning point in life, in our relationship to joy?" I had read it somewhere and it stayed with me. Speaks volume doesn’t it?

Some of the beautiful memories are fairy tales from the backyard where I buried my treasures, the joy of hiding little things which at that time seemed priceless. The shells, colorful pebbles that were so painstakingly collected and carefully placed in old shoe boxes.

Running barefoot in the rain in the lawn , on the terrace, in the field , carefree and brimming with joy, splashing water with the toes full of mud and weeds. Making paper boats and watching them zigzag through the water streaming through the lanes.

Climbing on the trees and sitting for hours observing the world beneath, legs swinging to some unheard music.

Playing marbles, hopscotch and other local games till I was forced retreat to the comforts of home. Dirty sneakers, elastic running from socks, a bruise here and there, hair ruffled ready to face the howler which would split open along with the front door in shape of my mom.

Making tents out of sheets and blankets over the furniture and escaping into a magical world lit by torch, pretending to be gypsy child. Here a whole new world waited to explode. Boxes and bottles of magic potions , trinkets which could charm any heart, rag dolls and colors and a candy box with gummy bears, jujubes, lemon drops, candy sticks and much more. Sometimes

there were half eaten cookies too. 

Those moments of sheer bliss when I wasn’t so wise to the rulings of the world. Playing chess with dad, listening to his childhood stories. Those summer nights when the electricity would go and we would sit in the darkness playing “Radio station “ where I would be the radio station playing music, commercials and dad would in between say ” change the channel” I would voice over everything and his warm laugh would fill my little heart.

The day I learned to whistle from the blade of grass life suddenly changed. It was fun to make music in the most natural way. I also learned to make a musical instrument of sorts from dried mango seed. It was a cultivated talent to make different sounds from these lovely instruments.

When the silk cotton tree bloomed and the cotton puffs sailed along with the breeze I would run after them and collect them to fill little pillow/quilt for the doll. It was fun to catch a drifting soft cotton, resembling a snow flake, and softly blow it away. Blowing a Dandelion puff would fill the air with little dancing stars and make the heart skip a beat.

I loved making soap-bubble and ran with the bubble wands, made of wire hangers or straw and threads, as the breeze made it dance to its tune. It was a dream fantasy to watch a delicate bubble escape from the wand and waltz along the breeze with millions of rainbow colors.

Crayons ,water colors, pencils and papers, colored chalk (have you ever nibbled on the chalk or got sprayed with a duster full of chalk dust) would keep me warmed for hours. My box of wax crayons and later the oil pastels was a wonder world where each color told a story. I found immense joy in coloring and later watching my boys color their world with imagination was pure bliss.

Another thing I miss is the fun I had racing down the road rolling the old cycle tyre with a stick. There would be races in the lanes and by lanes as we maneuvered the wobbly tyre and ran at top speed to beat the others screaming with glee. Same was with bicycle races where one usually emerged bruised and sometimes with torn and muddy clothes. Tyres remind me of something I long to do even now. Hang and swing to the improvised swings made with thick old tyres. It was The Thing to do on a summer day and sometime when I watch the village kids screeching and screaming while they swirl around on the swing my just want to rush and join them.

Those were the days when one didn’t care about the our sexuality, dresses, looks, time, season, anything. The dirtier the better. A little disorder in the dress was the joy of being a child.

I did play the so-called “girlie games” with dolls and wooden kitchen sets but I was never stopped from those “strictly for boys” games and often returned home with a booty or a bruise.

Summer nights were spent on the terrace watching constellations and yearning for a shooting star. These days one hardly sees a star in the smog ridden city sky. I remember taking my elder one for walks and sitting under the star lit sky in Ranikhet during our visits there. Summer evenings spent under the shady Neem trees chewing a blade of grass and catching the glimpse of clear blue sky from between the branches was something I long to do. It was a time to watch the drifting clouds and spin stories around the figures one imagined.

Winter had its own charm. There is an insane joy in scribbling on a steamed bathroom mirror.  This is something I carried from my childhood and when my boys were big enough , we left something on the mirror for the other person to figure out. A drawing, a slogan, a note, anything. It still is such a fun. I still finger draw on fogged windows of cars, on fogged glass doors , so do my kids. It used to be fun to roll a paper and smoke an imaginary cigarette pretending to be Don Corleone as the water vapor from the mouth condensed due to cold.

Wading through the creek, hopping after the frogs that croaked all the time during rains, wiggling the earthworms with thin sticks, digging holes (just for the sake of it), catching a lady bird and watching it run around all over the hand-made life worth living. Who cared about heat and cold, rain or dust, summer or winter? Life as a kid was all one big carnival of color, sound, light and dark.

I loved to run along the train as a small girl. Trains are fascinating. I would hear the whistle and run out to watch it emerge from the bend billowing the steam and then it would zip past shaking the earth below my tiny feet. I loved travelling in the train too. On our yearly journeys to Pune I would stay glued to the window watching the kaleidoscope out side, the changing terrain, wind slapping against the face, the people, local food and the joy of straining the neck to watch the train turn around a bend. It is sight I treasure.

Sneaking away from home for an adventure is something we all loved as kids I am sure. My boys did it too and now I know that mothers have sixth sense and eyes at the back of their head and everywhere.

There is so much we learn and enjoy in every stage of life but those things we did as kids never return. I made sure to do all the fun things with each of my son irrespective of what people would say about a young woman with little boys rolling down a grass slope or running from the shelter of one tree to another on a cold rainy morning in a hill station along with a little boy. Breathless, shivering, laughing and yet glowing just like kids. I wanted them to treasure moments which will be lost in time for good. 

We are still a bunch of lunatics ( my boys and me) but we are all grown up now with so many issues about being oneself. Some day I want to relive my childhood, do whatever my aging body permits. It’s a sad truth that we are all victims of growing up.

Play with your inner child sometime, let go, shed all inhibitions, don’t grow up so fast ..growing up is overrated anyway..

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