In The land Of The Dreamer

January 1, 2010 at 12:01 AM (Uncategorized)

Yo! Dreamer.. I am writing this because you wanted me to write something about our childhood times. Whatever I remember will be captured in this post for the entire world to see. Please correct me where ever I am wrong. 

We both landed on the planet during the same year… 1984. I was just a little older. The person I am talking about is Basty Sreenath Shenoy. As a quick introduction, this guy is one witty person. He can talk about any topic ranging from cars to politics. Yet, he is one devotional guy. He has complete belief in the existence of God and performs puja everyday without fail. His nick name is ‘Dreamer’. I know what might be running in everybody’s head right now. Why was he called Dreamer? Well I am not so sure but what I remember is, this guy used to get a lot of scary dreams when asleep. Every time he saw a scary dream he used to wake up screaming and he wanted his mom to sleep beside him. Hence the name Dreamer. 

We have spent most of our childhood days together. Almost every time during our vacation, I used to stay in his house in Mangalore. There were 2 families staying in his one big house. The other family had 2 sons Samarth and Abhay. This guy Abhay being the eldest was at most times in his own world. Samarth was the same age as we both were. Dreamer hated Samarth and vice versa. These guys just wanted my attention. I was caught between the two of them. Since Dreamer was my direct cousin, I was more close to him. There was also one more guy named Ashwin who was a neighbor. Even Ashwin used to spend a lot of time with us. 

We used to play a lot of carom. Both Dreamer and Samarth were excellent with carom. All 4 of us always used to have tough competition. Other than carom we used to read a lot of story books. Dreamer had a huge collection of story books. Out of all these, Tinkle Digest was our favorite. We used to read a lot of Tinkle Digest. I guess this was one of the only books I enjoyed reading. If we were not reading story books, we were doing a lot of sketching. This guy Samarth was very good with coloring. He used to use a different sketch pen and the pictures looked neat and balanced.  There was a craze with trump game and we did not miss out on this. Everybody, including his other friends used to carry one pack of trump cards. 

During breaks we used to drink lemon juice. These guys had an Ice candy maker. What they did was fill it with lemon juice and keep it in the freezer. It then was like eating candy. We have eaten a lot of such ice candies. Other than candy, there our favorite junk food… Rotato rings made only by Modern Kitchens. This was what I loved to eat. It used to be in the shape of a ring and hence the name. It used to be very spicy. We used to put it onto all our fingers like a ring and then gobble it up. 

We used to see a lot of television as well. Zee Horror Show was one of our favorite serials. We used to see it in the nights. It used to scare us to death but we used to pretend like it never was scary. During the day, we used to watch Tom and Jerry. It was our favorite cartoon. We used to laugh our hearts out. Other than that, we used to see Philips Top 10 in Zee TV every week. There was this song ‘Tu cheez badi hai mast mast” from the movie ‘Mohra’ which was our favorite. We always wanted this song to be at the number one spot. After this song, Akshay Kumar became our favorite hero. Then there was a movie ‘Mein Khiladi Tu Anadi’ once again acted by Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan. We loved the songs “ole ole” and “Churake dil mera” from this movie. But we hated the song ‘Ek ladki ko dekha’ from the movie ‘1942 A Love Story’ which released around the same time as Mohra. For weeks together, the number one and number two spots were given to the songs from these two movies. We used to be completely disappointed when the song from Mohra was not number one. We both were big fans of Jackie Chan and we loved watching his movies. 

I remember the time when Steven Spielberg had created another master piece ‘Jurassic park’. We had seen this movie in New Chitra theatre. This was one of the first English movies I had seen in a big screen. Then, on another occasion, we had been to a Kannada movie named ‘Annayya’, Ravichandran being the hero. There were two theatres close by and other place had some action movie. We both wanted to see that movie but Dreamers mom insisted that we see this Annayya because the poster of the other movie looked like there was lot of violence in the film. We did not enjoy this movie at all because it was a romance movie and we hated romance. We wanted some good fighting scenes. 

In the evenings we used to go to Kadri Zoo and Park. It was quite close to Dreamers house. Dreamer had a pet dog named Snoopy. It was a very friendly dog. Snoopy always used to follow us where ever we went. There was a zoo on one side and the park on the other. We used to tease all the monkeys in the cage. We were particularly interested to see the King Cobra. We loved sitting in the train ride. I still remember once occasion where one Aunty scolded us for bringing a dog inside the park. Her point was it could bite her daughter or any other kid. We did not give a damn to what she said. Snoopy never ever troubled any other person. 

On other evenings, we were taken to Panambur beach. It was fun playing in the water. We used to get completely wet. We used to make a small mountain using the wet sand and build a tunnel. Our aim was to have the maximum number of tunnels from the same mountain. We also brought our naughty thoughts out. We were experts at making traps. We used to dig a deep hole, cover it with leaves and branches and then slowly fill it with sand. And then we used to wish someone would fall into the trap. 

Then there was Eden Club. It was very close to Dreamers house. This was a sport person’s paradise. We used to go there to play table tennis and sometimes Badminton. This was where I saw Squash for the first time. The main reason we used to go there was to the restaurant. This was the place where I was exposed to the delicious Chinese food. Our order was very straight forward.. Sweet corn Mushroom soup, Gobi Manchurian and some noodles. We loved eating Chinese food. Even today, my first choice in any restaurant is Sweet corn mushroom soup. As they say, old habits never die. 

Once every year, there is a fest that takes place in Mangalore known as ‘Karavali Utsav’. We always visited this fest. Our main attraction was the ‘Torro Torro’. This was a giant wheel which rotates horizontally unlike the Giant wheel but it also used to swivel up and down which made it a more thrilling ride. We also used to enjoy the Giant Swing and the Giant wheel. Then there was food as usual. We loved eating Cotton Candy. It looked like colored cotton but tasted very sweet. It was sticky too. Even today, I love to eat cotton candy. We also loved the Mensinkai bajji (Chilli Bajji), a dish prepared out of a giant yet not so spicy chilli. 

On other days, Dreamers mom used to take us to the Tagore Park. Our main reason to go there was to enter the Maze. It was a puzzle where we have to enter from one end and find out the exit. It was fun solving it because we sometimes used to get lost finding out the exit. But since we had been there so many times before, we slowly figured it out and it became a piece of cake. 

I think I have already written a lot about our childhood days. I can go on writing and may be end up writing a book on this topic. Those days were really great. It won’t come again. With this sentence, I will finish this topic.