joie de l'écriture

15 years is a long time. A lot has changed. Degrees of comparison as defined in Wren and Martin have moved from the classroom to the real life – taller, wider, heavier, (loser is not in the comparative form!). But some things in life are eternal and such etched are some memories that they remain with you forever. By the unwritten rules about childhood games, girls play with Barbie dolls and guys play with GI Joes. Girls play games that conjure images of cotton candies and frills and laces and ribbons and fairies with gossamer wings. Guys are tough, with caps and bruises and little men with guns hiding behind heaps of mud.

The advent of a computer in the 10X10 blue walled bedroom, that today could have fetched a fortune for sheer obsolesce marked the beginning of an age for two kids at home who were suddenly too learned to operate the gizmo. The best compliment that was showered upon the little girl was too much for her to take. She played Pac Man with both hands as opposed to the naïve way of using only one. This ambidexterity was a sign of a sheer genius in making. So beguiled was the young lady by the responsiveness of the machine to the cryptic commands that she equated art with the geometric traces of the turtle on the screen. Prince of Persia, albeit slightly overrated by yours truly, made its debut and was here to stay in the heart of millions of kids who manoeuvred the little prince clad in a funny outfit, fighting with a lone sword against the guards and the skeletons, drinking ambrosia, through dungeons and gates and mirrors and thorns, as the beautiful princess awaited her prince in no shining armour to come and rescue her from the clutches of the Jaffar. That was the era when a series of grey scale pixelated bitmap images defined superior animation. This was a chapter bookmarked in time.

15 years later, I reopened the book to find that the love for the game still holds strong. Today’s sophisticated animation techniques are capable of offering a virtual reality that can transcend the player into a completely different world. However, there is something mystical about the crude animations of the days of yore when imperfection had a bit of magical touch that delivered a gripping madness to the game. Prince of Persia was much more than a game. It’s amazing to note that it still is. It is one of those childhood memories you want to lock up in your drawer and simply keep them because they are indescribably special. A little folder on your desktop with a DosBox alongside just about does the job!

Confessions about life

The cane chair suspended from a hook in the flaky ceiling perfectly adjusted its swings between cold brass railings on one side and a flawless white wall on the other. Its creak faced a silent death in time and was reduced to a mild squeak before the chair stood motionless almost as if captured in a frame. The euphony of the wind chimes that swayed to the tunes of the breezy interludes to a standstill silent evening added dramatic overtones. The moon scattered its silver rays liberally through puffs of cotton clouds that drifted lazily in the sky. The jingle of the last soap on the television playing in the background was subdued not so much by the distance of the balcony from the television set as much as it was by the aloofness that she could so easily let herself into. Her feet dangled from the chair like those of a little girl on a swing. She rubbed her palms and then embraced herself in their warmth. Her charcoal black eyes glistened like solitaires. Her loosely tied hair, the colour of cappuccino whipped her on her flawless wheatish skin. Her vibrant face was illuminated by the glow of the halogen on the street and by the exuberance of the new day that awaited her an hour from now. Fireflies orchestrated with the stars that twinkled and shimmered like the trail of a magic wand. It was a night filled with perfection. It was a night filled with the subtle undefined joy of being in harmony with oneself. It was a night of finding answers to thoughts that were never crystallized into questions and therefore could never be posed. Her tryst with destiny that had shown her the glitz and the glamour of the city of dreams was to end with the last swing of the pendulum which swayed with the same monotony that had greeted her when she first arrived after leaving the cosy comfort of her hamlet nested in the hinterlands of the Himalayans.

This city gave her the unbounded joy of living on the cusp of dreams and reality. From the sanguine bricked houses to a plush apartment in the heart of the city was a long journey of 700 days interspersed with a potpourri of human emotions that chiselled her very disposition; a disposition she had to leave back as excess baggage before returning home as it bore nothing more than a niggling relevance in a life she was about to embark upon; a life characterized by simplicity and genuineness. She had refused to admit to herself how she had let her life revolve around green bucks what was traditionally considered one of the seven vices in her village. How often had she been struck by the irony of chasing ducats when the folklore she grew up listening to spoke of the malignancy that creeps in on chasing materialistic pleasures! She had started living a life of contradictions and although she didn’t feel particularly dismayed by her decisions, the guilt of failing to see the relevance of her childhood teaching in the rat race slowly caught up on her. Had she outgrown those days and their sweet memories or was it that she was seeking justice in her actions too afraid to be proven wrong? She found herself alone as she stared at the loftiness of the mountains, the depth of the ocean, the vastness of the sky and the completeness in the rainbow stretched across it. Tomorrow she was to fit that last missing piece in the puzzle and complete the jigsaw of her life. It’s funny what you search for sometimes only lies within you!