A few days back a friend of mine from yester-years asked me to give him info on the gult land. Our eyebrows creased at this request and suspicious thoughts trickled in. But I will let that pass.
For those of you who do not know me, I am supposed to belong to the land which has seen it's share of demigods/goddesses like Chiranjeevi, NTR, ANR, Sridevi, Waheeda Rahman and the likes. That's it, you ask? Well the list is so big that it warrants a new post by itself - I shall oblige someday in the near future. Still don't have a clue? Use google search dude! So having established my suspect origins, I shall take you along on a wonderful tour of... well, let's say a nomadic trail.
Long long time ago and to this day live a queen and a king a.k.a mom and dad. They were childless and performed many poojas and ate copious amounts of porridge. One fine morning, many many summers ago, I popped into this world in the great Gult land, or as they say
was dropped by a stork through a chimney - thud! (
or was it out of an assembly kit from Sears? ) - My Dad refuses to divulge the truth, sigh! I shall dwell on that uncertain part of my life some time in the future. But first things first.
So having made a certain welcome entry into the world [at least that is what I am made to believe], my uncle did not hesistate a tenth of a second to nickname me "basta mooti" [mouth of a sack] and I cried out loud after that and made sure my parents had a lot of sleepless nights in the years to come [he he.. some revenge I got!] and no one dared to call me that again.
Before I could understand my surroundings and the people around me, I was ruthlessly carried away in to a state hitherto unknown to me. They called it Rajasthan - the princely royal state. I expected to be pampered there and pampered I was. Son halwa, Ghevar, dal-bhati-churma just to name a few of the dishes lavishly smothered with ghee (clarified butter - for you ABCDs!) were pushed down my throat. But as I was still comprehending the nuances of these dishes, I was again lugged and this time to the city of marble rocks - Jabalpur.
I put my earliest footsteps there and felt a sense of self-admiration. Little did I to know that this would become a reason for debauchery for adults then or that the same skill of mine would one day force me to get up from my bean bag for all petty reasons. So while the others feasted and used me as a soft toy, I bid my time waiting for the moment to exact a well-deserved compensation. Long before I could complete my plan to build myself a luxurious marble villa with the marbles of Jabalpur, I was whisked away, yet again, to Rajasthan. "Official duties", my dad quipped.
The optimist that I was, I built everything from scratch. My taste habits, my liking to surroundings, the keenness to play with sand instead of marble and so on. What an excersise that was and I still have trouble putting on weight till this day.
About time now that you should ask - What's the point of the whole story and the gult land reference? Did we ever tell you that there was one? Run along. Go on. I mean read on!
After a few more summers, I was ready to take on the guardians of education. The first day in school, ahem ahem. I got to eat a lot of toffees and chocolates after parting with few bucketsful of tears. The whole week was the same. It took a week for my teacher to understand my liking for chocolates. Academically we were never bad so often got away with a few instances of unruly behavior in all the 12 years at the same school - kindergarten through 10th. Umpteen instances of various punishments including facing the wall, standing on the bench, getting hit on the palms and the rear with wooden rulers couldn't dent our will to succeed. After all school is the place that equips you with the skills of a normal healthy living - fights (for rights), disrespect for rules (forgot MK Gandhi - non-coperation movement?) and last but not the least - swear words. Swear words - our vocabulary never suffered at least in hindi and english. This is the first instance where our mother tongue played second fiddle to our national language [and still does!]. The major part of our cinema knowledge so far was limited to Bollywood and Hollywood. Gult movies were there but they were too few and far in between. But I do remember some from my childhood memories some for the music, some for action and others for their comedy - Aatma Balam, Goonda, Kshana Kshanam, Aha Na Pellanta, Padaharella Vayasu to name a few. So you see we are not ignorant! But swear-words is a totally different story altogether.
What a gult and do not know proper gulti swear words! Was that your question? Sit down, I say. What would a true gult's swear-word oratory skills in Rajasthani or Haryanavi be? Gotcha!
The years progressed as I grew up. Trips to Jaipur, Ajmer, Delhi, BITS taught us more. Fifteen years of stay at one place had it's toll. I needed to acquire new skills. So yours truly moved on to a neighbouring state in the south. Baroda did treat us well. All the fun in hostel, the movies, the dandiya, the aamras, the people.. oh the list goes on and yeah the studies sometimes in between. We did well not to disappoint the parents. We passed and colors did fly!
All these seventeen years were spent now getting ready for the most eventful part of the journey - the college!
This warrants a sequel.. so keep coming back and you shall see it soon.
Labels: childhood, gult, gulti, life