Who has time to dream?

Hardly has happened anything, good or bad, in my life that I never dreamt or thought or imagined of. On the other hand, looking back as far as I can, if not every dream, atleast all the recuring ones have made reality. Everything, every thing from A - Z that happened, every little goal or landmark achieved, from playing cricket to being an engineer has been a dream....... These days my life seems to have come to a stop or stale, nothing much has happened in the last few days, no progress in any direction. Perhaps because, today, the best answer that I have for the question on my dream would be "Who has time to dream?". Unfortunately, with this ugly answer, not too much is going to happen too. Shame on me to breathe along side dream chasers still trying to find one !!!

One night with Lucky

I know a young pretty lady by this name, Lucky. I was fond of her, loved her, always wanted her to be with me, my family and my friends. It was not just me, even my friends liked her as much as I did, if not more. We liked spending time with her alone or even as a group. Although all of us had met her quite often in our lives, we knew very little about her.

That was a long weekend for us, Good Friday it was. Usually, long weekends in US were meant for long drives, visiting new places and far-off friends.. But this one was a little sluggish, we had no plans, nothing happened on Thursday evening. We killed Friday without doing much activity, we just had some rest. All of us got a little bored by afternoon of Saturday. We were tired of rest but nothing good came to our mind. Finally, after few hours of discussion ;), we decided on Atlantic city. My friends insisted that we take Lucky with us on our trip.

Atlantic city is a nice resort town on the Atlantic coast, closest to our house in New Jersey, 2.5 hours drive. It is famous for gambling, casinos, resorts, board walk, funnel cake and night life. Now you know why we badly wanted her to come with us. I think we convinced her to come with us.

Some of my friends were on their first trip to the city of casinos. So, they were pretty happy to set out to see a new place. Lucky, I believe, should have been there more than once. As the car knocked the doors of the city, the stream of tall casinos glowing in lights enlightened their faces.

We parked our car in a casino. Parking rates in casinos are very cheaper as compared to New York City for obvious reasons. Not just the parking rates, the suite rates were also cheaper as they encouraged people coming and staying there. As we entered the casino, we found the board games to be more expensive to play. As it was already 20:00 hours local time, without spending much time there, we just walked to the next casino.

I found the rates little affordable in that casino, got a seat in a roulette board for myself, thou not the most comfortable one. My friends along with Lucky were there with me and I started playing with 30$. I devised strategies and had logics to play long and safe - just to stay enough time in the game for the money that I put in. By then, a friend of mine had already lost five or ten dollars in slot machines. I won a few and lost a few bucks but I remember walking out of the board with a profit of 13$. I moved out as I was cramping for room, the guy next to me did not give me enough space for me to access all the squares ;-(. By then, almost all started playing around that table.

I moved to a Blackjack board. To my knowledge, that is one game where the odds are slightly more favourable to the player than the casino's dealer when compared to other games. Having said that, one can lose quick money in BlackJack in quick time as I did. I lost a big chunk in few minutes.

I then moved back to Roulette board again where I was with Lucky. Meanwhile, couple of my friends had had early gains of fifty or sixty dollars each but then lost not just their gains but also their capitals. Minutes hand in the watch moved a little faster, so did our money. Almost all of us ended up losing atleast 100 dollars each by 3:00 the following morning.

Running out of money and time we decided to leave. We drove back home with mixed feelings. We knew we were too silly spending all time and money gambling. We did not go about visiting the other casinos, we missed board walk, the delicious funnel cake and other night stuff. Our atlantic city was confined to just those four tables. The only consolation was that the few hours that we spent there were exciting and thrilling, although at a hefty cost.

When we reached home, it was already past 6:00 in the morning. All of us were tired, we went to sleep without realizing that we were missing Lucky. I guess, she moved away from us as soon as we reached the atlantic city. She just had a free ride from us to reach the nice city ;-).

i luv u teacher!!

Again, we travel back in time machine to my school days. As an above average student with poor handwriting, I moved to my sixth grade. We had our new english teacher. She also had the additional responsibility of handling our class. As I remember today, she was a young pleasant looking lady. However, she was not pleasant in her work. She was one of the very strict teachers I had seen. She was very harsh on us whenever we had not done our home works.

She was bothered about my hand writing and her wooden scale bothered my hand knuckles. Comments like 'Ugly' and 'Untidy' became more common in my english note book. Beatings and re-writings became part and parcel of my life. She made me consious about my writing, I started concentrating on my handwriting skills. I was improving but then that was never going to be enough.

Once, I was asked to write a complete essay in a four-line note book. If you are wondering what I term it as four-line notebook, it is the note book that every kid uses in kinder garden to practice alphabets. For some reason, I felt shame about it and I was not even ready to ask my father to buy me that note book. So, I went empty handed on the following Monday and gave the usual excuse of having completed the work but forgetting to bring it. She sent me out of that class and the next day she followed it up with it as if she had set a reminder on her watch. I did not have any update for her so I was asked to bring one of my parents the following Saturday for the parents-teachers meet.

Those days in my opine, a call was either for academic and/or behavioural reasons. That is, whenever a student fails or when the school has a concern on the student's behavior. So, I did not let my parents know about that. Then, as usual I had to go out of the English class the following monday. My father came to know about this, thanks to one of my close friends. I was blasted left and right at home.

My mother took a permission from office and accompanied me to school. They discussed about my handwriting. Bothered if my teacher would reveal my long pending home work, I was weeping all the time. As everyone does, I loved my mom than anything else and she did me even more than that. When she saw me crying, tears rolled down her eyes too. I still remember that moment. Then, they sent me to my seat and continued their discussion. Nothing reached my ears about that either from my teacher or from my parents after that. But slowly my hand writing improved, it became more presentable and neat. I do not know if any other teacher had or would be able to give such individual attention to a student.

She got married and left the school when I was in my ninth grade. I think she moved to Assam with her family. I scored relatively well in my higher secondary public exam. People who know the significance of presentation and hand writing skills in a public exam would understand the significant role she had to play in that little success I had.

As it usually happens with every teacher, I had cursed her for too many reasons when she was around, when I had to thank her, she was not around ;)... konjam senti

Samosa for Pen' s cap

I was then in my fourth grade (Once upon a time :)) when my school tea vendor served my favorite onion samosas and tea for teachers during breaks. Some of my friends buy samosas from him during lunch. My parents, as I remember today, bought me everything I needed but never gave me any money. I guess, they thought i might misuse it (Who knows, they were intuitive to know that I can never be a better money manager in my life). For this reason, I never had a chance to buy and taste those samosas :-(

By the way, did I ever tell you that it is a co-ed school and sitting next to me, then, was a nice young plumpy girl ;-). She had this uncanny knack of continually losing pens, not just her own but also the ones borrowed from me. On one such occasion, I told her that she either return my pen or pay 10 INR (Indian rupees approx= USD 0.25) as compensation. The next day, she came to school with a naked pen, yes it was mine; the cap lost. I asked her for 2 INR as a compensation for the pen's cap. She just had one 5 INR note. I hesitated to collect it from her for I was not sure if it is right to collect money, and more importantly, the amount was too much for me to handle. But I finally managed to gather enough strength to collect the money. I was really excited about it, I had that in my right pant pocket and my right hand was busy the whole morning session guarding the money.

With the long ring of the lunch bell, I, with my friend, rushed to the tea vendor. We bought enough samosas and enjoyed them at leisure for lunch. As we were waiting for our class teacher to come and precede the after noon session, our physical trainee approached my seat. He took me to our principal for getting money from my class mate. I got nice scolding and beating from my Principal. I was only weeping and apologizing for the next two hours of that day. I think it was considered as an act of indiscipline and unethical.

I don't remember seeing the tea vendor in our campus after that incident. I believe he was stopped from selling samosas to students. My parents were posted of the incident and my parents' hands, mouth and the wooden scale were busy that Saturday.

For many days, I wondered if this act of mine was considered as an indiscipline act, how about collecting breakage fees from students for pipettes and burettes. But, in these transactions with your fellow humans, there is more to it than just money, isn't it not.

Checking my pen's nib....

This forum will be a space to share my life's experiences, in the way I see them, with you. And hear your thoughts on me, my life, views, writing...... anything.

I hope it comes in handy for people who cherish living more than once, here's mine for them to read through and live them. On the lighter side, for people who are interested in me ;-) these blogs, I presume, will throw light on my color and soil. However, the reasons to take to blog writing are pretty selfish, to improve my writing skills and to feel proud of being able to write something that every one would read. But, if some one gains anything from this other than me, trust me, I would be floating in ecstasy.

I have read blogs of quite a few people now and most of them have been truly inspirational. So, before I close my pen, "Thanks to all fore runners and, of course, U"

- Sar scribbles to check his new pen's nib......