That surely looks familiar...

DISCLAIMER (for folks who dont' already sense it from the adjoining picture) - What ensues is homogeneous gibberish. Read at your own risk.

The alien kid is ready to sneak in through the chimney of the hood at one end of the room. He is about to undertake a daring journey across the seven bays. Ask why? With dreamy eyes and steely resolve, it says - "Because, it's there..."

Ready. set.. go...

Hey, what's here - that's a red bin with a pirate flag on it..

I hear voices. That sounds human.. no robotic..... hmm human! One voice is speaking Hebrew, the other Hindi... that's surprising!! They are talking to each other and seem to be communicating well...

Watch out!!! Missed the huge crystal that was shot at a precise angle by a whisker... It has just landed on the ground and turned into a serene samurai sword on a yoga mat!! I don't get this at all...

A blanket of calmness enshrouds me as I enter into the next bay...

The temperature drops below anything on the scale to make it the coolest bay ever... There goes a laptop with a robotic arm pricking a tray all over the place. As I make my way through a hurdle of glass plates, I sniff a gun - that characteristic smell of burnt sulfur... Fortunately I have one to defend myself against it..

I hear some voices again.. this time it's just one person... speaking in a language so foreign that the only thing I can sense that he is cursing...

What do we have next? A smile... just a smile!!! where's the rest?? Move on, you bugger!!

Then there's a minefield... a battleground of toxins, baker's yeast and the human cells trying to go one up over each other!!

I can almost see the pot of gold at the end of a tunnel (What's wrong with you??), when a deadly combination of crouching tiger and hidden dragon leaps onto me... Thanks to my alien agility, could take evasive action!!

But now, who do we have here? An unkempt head in flames clad in a white coat!!

I manage to get a glimpse of this burning head. Finally, 'That surely looks familiar...'
Hey Atomic!!

Friend, how come you are here??

That's a long story...

A threatening voice calls out - Stop this complete gibberish and hit the sack boys... you shall know more when the group meets at noon tomorrow!!

Ok ma'm. Good night!!

I hear a baritone clearing his throat in the distance as my eyes decide to change their stance...


Carbide

...

It's been about two weeks since I came back from my vacation at home in the foothills of Himalayas.

It was in this little hometown that I learnt to count using my fingers, to read a wall clock, wanted to break free of the four walls of a play school to wander into the world, met my first interviewer without knowing what he really meant other than a man who dressed in white from top to bottom and had the word 'principal' attached to him.

No sooner I had joined Don Bosco in Grade 1, than I came down tumbling the first flight of stairs quite akin to Jack in my world of nursery rhymes. It was quite a frightening experience to go to a new school and meet an avalanche of people rushing down stairs, fall head flat and end up with a bruised skull.

Thereafter, alighting a flight of stairs was the most challenging thing in school for me. The person who shouldered me through those difficult times was an angelic 'Anglo Indian lady'. She was the 'Lady with the hand' - the hand which I would cling on to for life. As the school bell rang, I would wait for her to appear from the teacher's room and every day for the first two years of my school life, she would take me through the dreaded staircases to the ground floor. She was Mrs. Glashan.

It's now close to a decade that I have left Don Bosco but this is a memory that has lasted untarnished through the shingles of time. I vividly remember her look, her watch, her sarees and her smile. It was in search of all this and more, I found myself at the doorsteps of my school in this new year.

The cacophonous hour of lunch break was on but a gossamer of silence enshrouded me. The familiar school board carried a little note. Mrs. Glashan had passed away in the morning.

The stairs were right in front but the fear of not having the hand to hold me was overbearing. I turned back.

Some losses are irrevocable...

Carbide