HOME...

"Next week, this time, you would be in college. And i would lose my favourite person in the whole wide world, you know pulling your leg and talking to you or rather listening to you and seeing your drama and special effects for even an ant walking! :P " - Amma. (Let me add, am i the universal victim of leg-pulling?, even Bertie Wooster would not have been subjected to such leg-pulling by Aunt Agatha). Well this is the dialogue i heard when i got up today morning and it somehow unnerved me. It also made me happy because it just reminded me of what i am to my mom (Take that Varun [:P]) and to my family in general. As my grand mom puts it, it just takes me to be in the house to give everyone the feeling of being at home [:)]. It is always a different world when you are with your family and living in that world is just a bliss - a bliss never to be forgotten, a bliss that will always remain etched in the deepest chambers of your heart, living with your loved ones with whom one does not realize the passage of time and who have no problem with any stupidity that you do (in my case that is pretty much the case [:)]) . Having to live in a hostel is a different experience altogether but as I always put it, hostel life combined with living with parents is the best life I could ask for.

Yawn...Enough of the serious talk. Being back home after a grinding schedule in college and that too in the middle of the semester has its own perks. Let me just say that getting pampered is not something i would complain of especially when it comes to pleasing my sweet tooth! The only thing that is frustrating me is the rain. Any plans of making amma loosen her purse strings might not work this time. Any of my family members should hear this and i had most probably be grounded for a week for having even thought of something so innocent [;)]. Their only argument can be " a summer vacation full of shopping extravaganza has not tired you? Well it has, the some of us are really tired :P " The only person who has not come shopping with me has to be Varun. Or come to think of it, i did get a huge present from him recently [:)]. The best presents that i do receive from him are books and novels. At least now he gets me the books i want to read unlike in my 8th standard when he got me books like 'Mein Kampf' and 'On the Line of Fire' thinking that i needed to switch from Hailey and Archer to non-fiction.

During my summer holidays, half of which was spent in Hyderabad, I had a blast. It is a great city and conveniently situated was my dad's house. Every afternoon my main job was to call appa and ask him to send the car so that me and amma could just roam around. Since i live in hostel and apparently deprived of a lot of things, i put on my charming self and got amma to buy a lot of things for me. Appa usually gets me anything that i say but amma is more of the miserly types, as i always tell her. I was surprised that i did not have to do a lot of coaxing and pleading and that she was much too eager to get me all that i wanted. Well this is what i say as one of the perks of living in a hostel [;)].

Food- Come back home and you are bestowed with all your favourite dishes. Umm.. My mouth is watering now. Every day i get to decide the menu, but the longer holidays prove to be a problem because then food apparently gets repetitive for the family (not for me, as those are my favourites). Even yesterday i had one of my preferred dinner and i had to keep on running between my laptop and kitchen so that i could have spoonfuls of it in between. That is another perk.

Of all things, the comfort that i would be most thankful for is SLEEP. I mean, no more getting up in the morning to attend class at 8 and that to everyone in my family is my height of laziness! Well you cant blame me or the scores of thousands of other students who share the same opinion as mine. At home all that i have to worry about is getting up in the morning to say bye to amma and then lock the door and then again back to bed till amma calls me from office in one of her vain attempts at trying to wake me. I should point out that i do not throw a tantrum. It is just that i don't like to get up from bed unless and until my emergency services are required somewhere immediately. Though it must be said that whenever I have some work of importance i do make sure that i am up and about completing that work, much to the surprise of everyone. At home though, there is nothing worthwhile to be done rather than just lazing around and so i pretty much stay in bed, though amma does get really angry when she catches me reading a book right after i wake up (thank God that I always leave the book that i was reading the previous night on my bedside table) without even brushing my teeth!

I could go on like this forever but above all these there is something that i enjoy the most when i am at home and that is spending quality time with family. Recently i saw my all-time classic list of movies- Manichitratazhu, Punjabi House, Kakakuyil.. and how i missed my entire family at that time [:(] . All those Sunday evenings when the entire family sat glued to the television sets watching nice malayalam movies, those jokes we all had a hearty laugh about and all those mimicking of mallu comedians that appa tried to do but ended up failing pathetically (though i will give him credit for the Chief Minister's mimic). All the virtual football i played with Varun which ended up in wrestling, all the couple dance with appa which almost ended up in me breaking my bones and all the disastrous cooking experiences with amma. All that was fun. I miss all that *sob sob* [:(]. I guess this is all the baggage that you will have to carry when growing up, or that is what amma says.People say that you cant always be a kid and have all the fun you want. But isn't life supposed to be what you want to make of it and i don't think that there will even be one person who would not want a dash of fun in it. Just a nice pleasant chat with important people in your life, a word of comfort to the elderly (which i keep on doing to amma and i make sure that i add that she is a senior citizen [;P]) and as far as i am concerned just goofing around here and there and doing some mischief around the house just to see that smile of 'OMG..This kid' in amma's and appa's face and that face of 'GROW UP' on Varun's face...That will do. Here is to having great times with family....