Musings On a Whole New World.
Something which I wrote when I was 16... It even got published in my city's most popular news paper. One day when I opened the newspaper, this article was there with my name. Felt good.
The memories of my first visit to the US are still so fresh. It was the first time that I realised my body had been immune to sound pollution. I can still recall how my ears craved for noise - any kind of it. Whether it was the sound of the car radio, cars honking on the street or the autos forcing their way through the water-clogged streets. My eyes wandered in search of over crowded auto rickshaws. But the environment didn't seem to be in cohesion with my knowledge of a typical day in Hyderabad. This place was different - it was a whole new world to me.
I sat contemplating, beside my mom, in the back of a yellow cab. Gradually, an instance from kindergarten crossed my mind. As I looked out through the tinted glasses of the cab, I spoke out loud to myself... "Pin-drop-silence!" I said and smiled. I had lived all my life in Hyderabad, went to the same convent school until I was 15 and had the same group of friends since childhood. Being the youngest, I was a pampered child. You know, like a frog in a well, who has no clue about the life outside...
On my way to our apartment from the airport, I thought about all the times I dreamt of coming here. When I was in kindergarten, Hyderabad wasn't very popular with the tourists. So, one would hardly see tourists walking around. In fact, they were as rarely spotted as one would find the Indian mangoes in America. As as child, I was completely stymied by them and would wonder if their lifestyle, their thoughts, their feelings were like ours. Some of the older kinds would even tell us they were from Mars. This sophistry seemed to rock the classrooms of our kindergarten.
Childhood was amazing. The most difficult part was deciding the colour of the pencil for the number-8-shaped cat we learnt to draw.
Contemplations are like 'virtual' Time Machines. IT took me some time to switch back to the near-silent road, which reminded me of my teacher Mrs. Fernandes. Whenever she was upset with the class, she would take her spectacles off and say, "I need pin drop silence" - this she expected from a class of fifty tiny tots who couldn't even spell the word "silence".
I wondered how happy she would have been to be here, in this place, which to anybody who had stayed all her life in Hyderabad, was a perfect epitome for Mrs. Fernandes phrase.
The memories of my first visit to the US are still so fresh. It was the first time that I realised my body had been immune to sound pollution. I can still recall how my ears craved for noise - any kind of it. Whether it was the sound of the car radio, cars honking on the street or the autos forcing their way through the water-clogged streets. My eyes wandered in search of over crowded auto rickshaws. But the environment didn't seem to be in cohesion with my knowledge of a typical day in Hyderabad. This place was different - it was a whole new world to me.
I sat contemplating, beside my mom, in the back of a yellow cab. Gradually, an instance from kindergarten crossed my mind. As I looked out through the tinted glasses of the cab, I spoke out loud to myself... "Pin-drop-silence!" I said and smiled. I had lived all my life in Hyderabad, went to the same convent school until I was 15 and had the same group of friends since childhood. Being the youngest, I was a pampered child. You know, like a frog in a well, who has no clue about the life outside...
On my way to our apartment from the airport, I thought about all the times I dreamt of coming here. When I was in kindergarten, Hyderabad wasn't very popular with the tourists. So, one would hardly see tourists walking around. In fact, they were as rarely spotted as one would find the Indian mangoes in America. As as child, I was completely stymied by them and would wonder if their lifestyle, their thoughts, their feelings were like ours. Some of the older kinds would even tell us they were from Mars. This sophistry seemed to rock the classrooms of our kindergarten.
Childhood was amazing. The most difficult part was deciding the colour of the pencil for the number-8-shaped cat we learnt to draw.
Contemplations are like 'virtual' Time Machines. IT took me some time to switch back to the near-silent road, which reminded me of my teacher Mrs. Fernandes. Whenever she was upset with the class, she would take her spectacles off and say, "I need pin drop silence" - this she expected from a class of fifty tiny tots who couldn't even spell the word "silence".
I wondered how happy she would have been to be here, in this place, which to anybody who had stayed all her life in Hyderabad, was a perfect epitome for Mrs. Fernandes phrase.
31-35, FNew
