Just Jo

(That’s Minna Rose and Anthony, my sister’s kids with the Christmas tree)

So the Christmas is over. And like any other after-festival days, I feel gloomy and sad for some reason. It was so enthusiastic and pleasant yesterday. One of my sisters came over with her children. I arranged the Christmas tree with the kids and put all decorations. Made the crib, hung a star and lit up everything. By the time I finished, it was already the evening. I called up my second sister, wished her Christmas greetings and in between came my third sister with her husband. Just as we spoke, I had the best Christmas gift which was a phone call from an old teacher of mine.

I had mentioned the name of Renuka teacher here in my blog before. She used to teach Physics in my highschool. She took special care of my singing and had even spent money for my music coaching while I was preparing for the sub-district youth festival competitions. Without a proper training in music, without a Godfather or a person to support my music, I stood no chance of winning in the light music competition, because even the “light” music had to sound “karnatik” in order to secure a prize (I don’t know how much that situation has changed these days in the school youth festivals). So Renuka teacher sent me to a music teacher to teach me a light song and I won the second prize with an A grade and 5 marks (meaning I and the person who got the first prize had the same marks).

After a long time, I met her again in the school and she had become the school’s principal by that time. We talked and she told me that she remembered a few lines of a poem that I wrote for a school competition, which was years back. She even recited a couple of lines and asked me, “so did you find out that girl yet?”. I laughed and was surprised, because I was beginning to forget that I used to write poetry. And that particular poem, I never remembered that at all. And it taught me one thing – the moment you get past your seemingly stupid romantic notions of life and try to measure it with logic, intellect and all that, you turn out to be a robotic material and life in that way sucks, really. So never ever kill that child in you who dreams about talking to a fairy who stands at the tip of a flower bud.

So this teacher called yesterday and it made me so happy to talk to her after so many years. She said she wanted to call ever since an article about me appeared in Mathrubhumi newspaper back in 2005, but couldn’t get the phone number. Then she got my mobile number from another friend of mine, but I had changed it before she called in that number. Finally yesterday, she got the number from the same friend and she made my Christmas eve full of joy…

I went to the midnight mass, perhaps after a long interval of 6 – 7 years. There was nothing to gain spiritually from a crowded church. The church was all packed and people were partly sleeping or staring at others or at their own finger tips, scratching their backs etc to keep themselves awake, except for the other part of people holding their hands together and chanting the prayers. But the church was good, socially. I could meet some of my old acquaintances here and there and pass on a couple of words with them.

On the way back home, I had to piss off my friend, whom I accompanied to the church, over some silly arguments. And that got me thinking, what is the use of building up all that politically-correct, logically-perfect arguments when you cannot really manage the connection between a friend and yourself? Sometimes, it would be good just to give up your thoughts and listen to what your friends have to say, even if that is plain baseless accusation on your character, if that would make them happy.

This thing called emotion is really very strange. What hurts me more is not when somebody hurt me by hurting me, but when I hurt mysef by hurting someone else.

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