A Birthday made special!!!

This post is dedicated to my UG friends...

Location: VT Station.        Date: 24th January         Time: 9.45pm

The platform was bustling with activity. Coolies loading passenger's luggage, passengers frantically running from one coach to the other trying to find their name on the seat allotment chart. My friends were laughing and chatting as they got into the coach and pushed their luggage's below the seats.

At 10.05 pm, the train started moving. Everyone was saying their bye's to their families and friends. He held my hand, came closer to me and whispered "Happy Birthday". His eyes welled up with tears. Oh! My king...........my dad! I was feeling so terrible to leave my parents and go on a trip to Hyderabad. After all, the next day was my 18th birthday!!!

1 month back....

Location: Home

"Dad, I don't want to go on this trip. Its my 18th birthday and I don't want to be away from you and mom".  "Nivi, go and explore places. Its your first trip from college. Go and enjoy with your friends. It will be fun!!!".

Back to VT station

"Dad, I didn't want to go, but you told me to go and enjoy. You promised that we'll celebrate my birthday when I'm back......and now you are emotional", said my mind. The train left the platform. But the visual of my dad's teary eyes didn't leave me. The moment his hand left mine, the first tear drop rolled down my cheeks. Then it became unstoppable. I was crying as though I was getting married and leaving my parents house (I feel really silly today when I think about the way I cried). My friends tried to console me for sometime. But seeing that it was fruitless, they left me alone and started enjoying themselves. I cried till 11:45pm and when I realized for how long I had been crying, I decided to stop and go to sleep. Everything will be fine in the morning, I told myself.

I went to wash my face. When I returned to my seat, there was a huge gathering there. I wondered what had happened. I wanted to get through the crowd, when my friend caught me and said, "I'm so jealous of you!" I couldn't understand anything. And then suddenly, there was a spray of snow all over me and my friends screaming "Happy Birthday". I was too shocked to react. They remembered!!! A cake was taken out and it was time for the birthday baby to cut the cake!!! With everyone wishing and smearing cake on each others face, I momentarily forgot that all this was happening inside a train.

Words cannot express the emotions I went through at that time. Other passengers, though we had disturbed their sleep, too wished me. It was the first time ever, that I had celebrated my birthday in the truest sense. And with that being my 18th one, it turned out to be even more special. With that, the night ended leaving many emotions and memories in my heart and mind. 

"Memories last forever,

and never do they die....

True friends stay together,

and never say Good-Bye."

Unreal world in the reel world!!!

Indian serials are so cliched.....be it the stories or the characters. 

All the mummyji's, dadi's, nani's and bahu's adorned in beautiful sarees and chunky kundan jewellery are shown to be very happy and go about doing their daily chores and also go to sleep in their heavy attire and makeup!!! The morning pooja is performed in the presence of all the family members and the 'ghar ki bahu' performs the 'arti'. All bahu's religiously fast for their pati's on 'karva chauth'. The male characters never seem to go to work and always seem to be embroiled in the domestic issues.

The male and female protagonists always seem to hate each other in the beginning. Then they fall in love, get married, go through a break up, fall in love with someone else, remarry and then destiny again brings the protagonists together!!! And of course, there is always an antagonist who wants to separate the love birds. And the poor audience has no other option but to become a silent witness to all these drama's !!!  

The new breed of serials which claim to be different unfortunately also follow the same pattern after the first few runs. If there is nothing the characters can do....there's a leap of a few years....new faces, new environment but same old story!!! If an actor decides to quit the show....an accident scene is shown and the protagonist wakes up in a hospital with a new face!!! And his family is mourning his death unaware of the fact that the person is still alive. What amuses me the most is that do doctors even perform surgery to change the height, physique and voice of the person?

These soap operas seem even more unreal when middle class people are shown living in a huge flat in a city like Mumbai and if the story is based in another city then their abode is a huge bungalow!!! Background music and cinematography plays a vital role in these shows. Loud background musics in case of a shocking news and the camera zooming on the face of all the characters, flying curtains n filmy songs for romantic scenes, a female singing a sad song in the background in case of a very emotional scene and the camera shakes when a person is shown fainting!!! A person is slapped 3 times during a confrontation, the door is opened 3 times (mostly when an antagonist enters or when a dead person comes alive)!!!

Indian television has truly become degenerated. But in spite of such stereotyped characters and overstretched story lines, most of these shows do well. Really don't know from where the producers and scriptwriters get the inspiration to write such mega dramas but I really wish they step out of their offices and look at the real world before penning more scripts and characters.