Hopeless Love
Can you fall in love with 200 kids in just about a month..?
A month back I would have screamed NO!
But that was a month back, and now I am a useless pile of feelings, all thanks to these brats!
In this month I have spent more time with them than I have with my family in a year! And now, I have started dreaming of them too! I am pathetic, I know! I get up in the morning, completely disoriented, trying to figure out whether what I saw was really a dream or did it actually happen! You cannot blame me really, it’s impossible to not get obsessively attached to them.
Faiz comes to me demanding to know where I study. Delhi University, I answer. He informs me that he had put a bomb there last night on the order of the Prime Minister. “How many died?” I ask. He hasn’t let it off yet, he tells me; he will click on the remote the next day. He is kind enough to warn me against going there the next day.
This is right after the tinier ones give me a scare by jumping from insane heights and landing like supermen. Of course each time they pretend to be hurt, and I fall for it every single time. Like I said, Brats!
And then there is the unnecessary concern for me. The kids in Kilkari are obsessed with curing my skin problem, because obviously my skin problem is so much more important than any other thing that they have faced. So they come giving me free advice of every kind of home remedies. Yashwant (yes, that kid with the perpetually bandaged arm!) runs to the office and sneaks out the Pond’s Powder convinced that all I have to do is sprinkle it over my rashes and they will vanish. Yashoda orders me to have her mango telling me that’s the only cure. And why is it so important to cure my rashes? Because, these kids are insane! I am warning you, if you go there, you CANNOT come back!
Don’t believe it? Listen to this. A harmless birthday party in Khushi turns into a non-seasonal Holi. And yes, it was way too much fun. Which, is why you should stay away from it! No birthday party will seem fun enough after this. They turn the balloons they are given into fountains and water-balloons, and I am drenched and I am thinking, HOW will I go back to regular classes after the vacation ends?!
By the way, mangoes taste sweeter when you have it the way they have it. Make a small hole at the top, and just suck the juice in. Messy? Maybe! But, man is it good!
They all have nick-names in Ummeed. One of them is called Laddoo, the other kids tell me. So I go to him, this 5-6 year old thing (I might be wrong about the age) and ask him his name, and he replies, with a straight face, “Sameer Ali Laddoo”!
I go back home at night in the metro with a stupid grin on my face, like I have a teenager-crush or something, and all the other poor exhausted souls in the ladies’ compartment look at me like I have lost it! (Pathetic. Pathetic. Pathetic. )
And then there is their changing moods, oh dear! Yash is crying like his heart has been ripped off one moment, and he starts grinning like the mischievous thing that he is the very next.
Kajal swears she will never talk to me again one day. The next day she is hugging me (or strangling me, more correctly) like we are two separated lovers.
You cannot keep up, I am telling you!
Have I taught them anything at all in this month..? Uh...I really don’t know. Have they taught me anything? Erm...trust me, it won’t fit this one blog post or even ten!
I was in the misconception that if not anything, I have learnt about them and what it is like to be them in these few weeks. That also has been happily shattered.
One of the older ones (I am being all secretive because I don’t know if he wants it to be publicly discussed) tells me of this one time he ran away from the Home, across the country, with his friends outside, because he wanted to visit this place. And I ask all perplexed, “But where will you stay?? Didn’t you think of where to stay?” He gives me an equally perplexed look, and replies, “where will I stay?! Do you know how the big the railway station is there?!”
How utterly foolish of me! The railway station, of course!
Like I said, the misconception of knowing what it is to be like them!
They are infants one moment, and wise old men the next. They are smart and creative and moody and disruptive and they’ll love you like no tomorrow, and force you to love them back like never before!
Fyi, anyone who thinks they are any lesser than us just because they happen to be a few inches shorter, try playing their games! I tried playing the stone game that the girls play in Khushi. It took me embarrassingly long to even get a hang of it, and when I did, they were so quick and I was so clumsy, I didn’t even last a second. They tried their best to hide their disappointment in me and politely asked if maybe I should try some other time and stick to just watching today. (They are way too kind!)
You see? It’s hopeless love! And it has reached insane heights. And it has only been a month!
