Life, Laughter and Everything Else

Recently, an old colleague of my father paid us a visit. After he left, my father revealed to me an interesting story about his friend's father, who had been a Hindu priest. Being a man whose life was devoted to his duty to god and family, he led a life of simplicity and discipline. When he died, his own son remarked, "The old man wasted his life. No drinking, no pleasures, no money." When I look at my own life, the goals I set for myself, they are rather grand. Find my passion, travel and perhaps work overseas, live a life unobstructed by the burden and responsibilities of family, be a free bird. Though it is ironic that the generation just before me lived by an entirely different set of goals. They were brought up with the mindset of starting a family and working hard to provide the best quality of life possible for the family. Getting married, having children, working, looking after their old parents were all a duty, not a choice. Job satisfaction did not matter as

I am witness to a time, when the rain was a relief from the intolerable heat of the sun a wish come true that closed schools an inspiration for innumerable novelists and poets.  When it rained then, it poured. And it would coax nature  into releasing a strange scent. A smell so unique to it one reminisced of it as the smell of the monsoon. But the monsoon did not just pleasure the nose. A comfortingly cool breeze would blow against the body and escape through its gaps. Tingling, soothing, cooling body, mind and spirit. One would spent ages staring out of the windows listening to the clatter  of the raindrops against the zinc panels. the muffled gasps as water touched solid the wail of the gale. It was an orchestra whose volume reflected the strength of its ensemble. Sure enough small childish ponds  would appear on my lawn. On which I would float little paper boats. Not that they floated for long.

A few months ago, in the middle of my exams, I was the victim of a gas attack. Fortunately or unfortunately, this gas attack was internal or in other words as a result of gas generation from within. It seems like a trivial problem, I mean if gas builds up inside, it is bound to escape, either when one burps or when farts. For some inexplicable reason, mine just stayed inside like gas stored in a huge LNG container and gave me 2 of the worst days of my life. It was like a storm within and never in my whole life had I ever prayed to God to let me fart. The good thing was that this experience made me look at my eating habits. When you come from an Indian family, where you drink curry like you drink water, a healthy diet is unthinkable. In which case, the only option left was to eat healthy at school, which wasn't happening with all the nasi lemak, nasi padang, chinese mixed rice with 3 meat and 1 veggie and the frequent chocolate waffle that I treated myself to every now and then