Amit Goes Blogging

People who have described my writing as straddling the fence will see a reason for it. I am afraid you would be bogged down after reading this. Discontent has been my lifelong companion, going down all the way my earliest memories as child. Nothing could prevent the feeling of being short-changed at the end of every activity. I always had to encourage happiness to justify the desirability of action. But, on the inside, I was an unhappy traveller following an unsolicited itinerary. People were just tolerable. Obliging them mind-numbing. I had made an unstable peace with the fact that we are condemned to live and also tasked with making living enjoyable. Kids of my age derived great satisfaction in eating raw guavas stolen from the neighbourhood. But, when I set my teeth into the hard crust, I doubted whether the risk and the effort involved in the ordeal were worth it; was the resulting joy any close to expectations. When were we overjoyed when seeking joy? Playing cricket in th...

As children, we end up performing such rare feats of bravery that have no parallel in our adult life. The games that we play, the conditions that we play in, the rules that we frame at these games match the valour of knights, only in place of a dagger, we had a heavy plastic ball or a rubber ball and instead of killing we had to injure that came very near to killing if you could see someone writhing in pain. It was a game of seven stones. The stones were arranged vertically one on top of the other. Boys divided themselves into two teams and would throw the ball, by turns, at the pile of stones and scatter them. If the other party caught the ball before it fell on the ground, the team lost a point. Otherwise, the team that had scattered the stone would rearrange them. It was not as simple as that. We had to arrange them while dodging the ball hurled at us. Sometimes, when the 7th stone was about to be enthroned, the ball would come aiming at your eye and blind you for the evening. ...