Family of crazies

Very often people around me may question my sanity ... I would like to have them know that it is not my fault. It simply runs in the family.

Don't get me wrong, they are all very intelligent and accomplished people but genius has its draw backs like the cuckooness that comes with it.
My father who is a director of an esteemed college and was an armed forces officer in the past, this brilliant man with his love for education and reading, he is like my personal encyclopedia and that is not all! He sings too! and well at that (when he wants) BUT when he sings at home it is usually the worst songs that were ever produced by the film industry and are hardly heard of, these songs are such that one of my age has an issue believing that they ever even existed.
That is not all! He loves singing loopy versions of songs to little kids so that they believe that that is the right way to sing for them till the end of their lives.
Exhibit A - Me, I believed that the famous song "Jeevan ke suffar mein raahi" my dad taught it to me as " jeeTWO ke suffar mein raahi" and I would argue with everyone who would tell me otherwise. Right now he is sitting besides me making direct translations from Hindi songs into various other languages. He also puns non stop and is slightly sadistic when it comes to dealing with male friends of his daughter.

Next person of note on this list is my mother who is an HOD for Biology in an international school, she is also amazingly talented may it be painting, drawing or presentations, her talent has no equal. Her teaching skills are so note worthy that she has students whom she taught 10 to 15 years ago calling her and saying they miss her. As a student I know that this is a huge achievement as I forgot most of my teachers the moment I stepped out of school barring the few exceptional ones.
Now her students might find this hard to imagine but my mommy dearest has multiple tiny tiny tiny OCDs. These go something like this;
1. She must HONK the horn before every turn! Blind, not blind, the road itself turning, doesn't matter... turn = HONK
2. When she starts cleaning NOTHING escapes her sight! The curtains must be clean-ok, but my mom will scrub the curtain rings too, the plants must be brought into the house for beautifying the house-ok, but every leaf must be wiped clean.
3.She makes everyone in the house wash their hands at least 3 times before feeding us and loads of other times during the rest of the day.
4.She believes firmly that people don't understand her instructions clearly ( I blame this on years of teaching dud children-me included) she repeats the instructions at least thrice then she makes you repeat it after which she is usually still unsure and then does it herself.

Now to continue towards my darling brother, man! I don't even know where to begin with this one. He is smart, intelligent and most of all unbelievably creative in his thought process and imagination. He is wonderful in doing the things he wants to do and otherwise he is a lazy lump.
He sits non stop on his table and demands to be served food all the time, once the food reaches him the dishes piled around his desk never reach the sink. He can eat like a glutton and wipes out food meant for the entire family. He is sarcastic and mean and when deprived of food these qualities multiply. A gossip monger if there ever was one this bro of mine blames his love for gossip on the fact that he is just "looking for a story" and "inspiration can strike anywhere".
He also masters the art of Spoonerism eg; He walks into the kitchen to wash a plate, looks frantically for his bike keys to find them clutched in his hand, he can never remember to convey a message or even walk out of the house without forgetting something crucial. He is, as the British would put it, a real work of art.

Now I have a laundry list of defects myself but I don't see a need to get into that right now *grin* because the aim of this article was that I could ultimately say " Hey! can you blame me?"

Mornings.

I don't particularly like mornings. especially till my parents are still at home. There is far too much yelling and hurrying and panicking. It is a general hindrance to society, in my opinion of course.
In my household mornings have a very set pattern which goes something like this :
My mom wakes me up with a scream so loud ( I'm sure the neighbors stopped using their alarms ever since we moved in) that it jerks the living day lights out of me. All this usually because she can't find some thing. eg. a book, her sandles, her bindi so on and so forth.
Then my mother leaves like a whirlwind after disrupting everything. After this episode i manage so snuggle back into bed when my faithful little doggie companion takes it upon himself to take up the job of waking me up. The way he achieves this mission is nothing less than a subtle art. It starts with the thumping of his tail on my wooden bed right next to my head THUMP THUMP THUMP once I push his backside away he changes his tactics and and continues his attack from the front now I have his BIG black nose in front of my face as he pants away to glory, in this strategy he attacks my sense of hearing AND my sense of smell. As this drama unfolds I still try (optimistically) to sleep. I yell, I shove, I beg and I plead and finally my dog grants me the liberty to put my head back on the pillow.
As soon as I do so, its 8 o clock by now, which is the official wake up time in my house, my dad wakes me up and informs me that its late and i should be up and bright and sparkly.

This is how each of my weekday morning begins (weekends? they are even worse)

Anna Hazare and me

Well I keep promising to write my blog regularly with the humorous happenings in my life but this time I write to honor a man who is an inspiration to the entire nation not unlike the original Father of the Nation but only difference is the youth doesn't mind him.

I first came across him along with all my other ninth standard class mates, in our environmental education books. that's right, this esteemed activist which the whole country is currently in awe of was given about fifteen lines of lime light in an environmental course book.

I knew of his humble origins and how he rose from being a truck driver in the army to a man who changed the fate of a wasted village (Ralegon Siddhi). And that is all my text book told me. Yes there was also something about watershed development. It told me nothing about the fact that he had taken people who could barely keep their flesh to their bones due to high level alcoholism, to become voluntary workers building small water check dams and canals e.t.c.

I was never told that he was the one who began the Right to Information movement in Maharashtra which later became the base of the famous Right to Information Act (RTI) which the union Government passed and is seen as one of the greatest examples of peoples right in our country and India's proof of being a democracy.

I was never told that this man, in his relentless fight to give the common man his rights, has done all that our freedom fighters did. It began with reforming the people around him, fighting for the people, being arrested by the 'ruling party' and now the fast unto death. Why should he go through all this when we have already achieved freedom? Well because we have lost our freedom. After almost 64 years of Independence we have been made slaves to the greed of some of those who we choose to call our leaders.

I don't think I need to mention anything about the Lok Pal Bill because all the information is a news channel or a click away but since I titled this piece Anna and I, I should mention where I come in. I remember whining endless times that I wish I was a part of the freedom movement and when I turned the television on two days ago I thought that this was yet another useless protest but I was wrong and I continue to hope I am wrong about that because now I am a part of what I believe is my chance to fight for my country under the leadership of a man I was never told about but has the strength to churn a nation of sufferers into that of survivors.