GUNTHROAT

It was 10 years ago that I danced to the tunes of ‘Thriller’, infront of a big audience (My friends in college would die of heart attack if they hear this. If they know one thing for sure about me, then it would be the fact that I am a pathetic dancer), it hasn’t been much time since I nearly fell into a sewage tank of a plywood company when trying to get away from the watchman, not long since I nearly got arrested for drunken driving when the driver of the car tried to clean the window with his elbow forgetting the steering. How many tourists visiting Goa have visited the historical Calangute police station???How many of you know real life unnikuttans who asks their grandmothers at the age of 3 whether they did tubectomy(yes vinu this is the new story I got from your chorifyin past). And most importantly how many of you have the most wonderful cousins who are your best friends for more than 20 years.

1 The whistle

I saw Ranjith chettan(he occasionally gets angry when I call him Ranjith, so for once I am adding the chettan suffix ) for the first time as I can remember outside Trivandrum airport when I was 4. In the taxi back home I gave him a whistle and said it can stop buses, we have been friends since then. We have done all the crazy things in the world .Impersonating the characters of the cult movie ‘orkkapurathu’ was one of our favourite sport. This artform named ‘pottankali’ has been our family’s sport for decades. My favourite memory of Ranjith is when he was hit by cycle at night. All my elder cousins were quarrelling with the cycle driver when I suddenly noticed Ranjith’s absence. I looked all around but could not spot him. Finally I saw him searching for his mundu(dhoti) under the cycle tyre. He has religiously avoided mundu since then. All my wonderful summer vacations were with him. We played everything from cricket to ice hockey. Our summer vacation usually ended with pooram vedikettu when we would stay on top of the tallest tower in thrissur with Praveen (ranjith’s neighbour who too became my very close friend) to view the visual extravaganza from 3 in the morning. Once we got the top floor all for ourselves (because Praveen owned the place) on pooram day and we literally turned that place upside down. It was most memorable summer vacation .

2 The chori...

He used to be an anathema to me in the past. We used to fight for everything from mock wwf to getting a side seat in an autorickhshaw. The most irritating of all my cousins is a mellow cat these days. I have seen so many dramatic transformations in my life and from all the people who reinvented themselves to be more acceptable , the vibe I got was they prefer to be the old villain and tell f*** u to everyone. I am sure Vinu is frustrated to death to be the good Samaritan.

What should I say about my eldest nephew(who saw this world and its ways before his ammavan)???I don’t know when he started to pour into my serene life like a hailstorm and stand on my nerves like a bulldozer. He might be the first person to whom I would have addressed all the swear words. We were never good friends till we started practising pottankali(where we again fought to get the lead role.Incidentally ranjith always had a compromise putting him up as the lead). But destiny made us both engineers (think of the situation when worst enemies get stranded in a deserted island, they have to make peace to survive right???) forcing us to cooperate. But I took revenge by making him jealous of all the glossy stories involving women (which were all exaggerated and mostly concocted) in my college. Palakkad was so devoid of women that his unease and enthusiasm to my fake stories earned him the title KADI.

3 Appu(nothing describes him better)

How many of you are lucky enough to live the American pie series(the later and more bitchy ones). Think of the fourth part (the naked mile, especially the first scene), that is almost the story of appu. Almost all the hilarious things in that series have happened to this young man. This conclusion was proved time and again with strong evidentiary backing (instead of just word of mouth publicity). He is one person in our group whom we truly envy. His attitude and guts are ineffable. I can’t count the number of times he played the elder in our group. Appu never was the youngest or the novice in our group, he still guides us poor ignorant humans in an array of subjects. Most of his stories are more hilarious than the others, I mentioned here. But unfortunately I cant post it here. He was and remains to be an enigma for all of us.


If I write on about the fun we had as a group, it would soon outnumber the posts I have put in this blog. Each day we were together deserves to be called legendary (to borrow Barney’s dictionary) . Our relations were tested time and again by the fragilities of bigger family tensions. But we were lucky and strong that we survived. Sometimes God makes gifts for you even before you are born. My parents, my sister are among those gifts. I am lucky to have one more gift in the form of my cousins (forgive the cliché, but its true).