Poetic Me

Today morning my roommate played old Carol songs of Boney M which made me nostalgic. Christmas days have always been the best days of my life. Each year during Christmas, i go to my mother’s house which is at a country side. All my cousins stay there and it’s a time of real fun. We cousins gather together and make a huge x-mas tree and a small crib. Usually the honour of being the xmas tree went to the least productive nutmeg tree( Jaathimaram). I, being the youngest, along with my sisters decorated x mas tree while the electrical decoration was handled by my cousin brothers. By almost 6 in the evening all preparation would be done in my ancestral house and then it was time for carol.  We brothers would leave for the x mas carol. The carol starts at 7 pm in the huge parish, which is dominated by Christian families who migrated from pala, kottayam and it is divided into many wards. Our ward consists mostly of my first and second cousins houses and a hindu tribal colony beside our rubber plantation. X mas carol in such places can be considered as trekking. From one house to the other distance by road may be more than 1 km so we cross rubber plantations, climb rocks in between, jump across the stream, cow dung pit etc.The first person moving in the front will be blessed with a lamp ,rest all move in an intuition. We always take drums from the tribes for the carol.Though the sound which came from it can hardly be considered to be music every one enjoyed banging to it. During one x mas, when I was in sixth grade one guy in the x mas party came up with a carol song "jingle bells", as i was the only so called English medium everyone turned to me. I remember telling them that this is an old carol song written by an eminent British poet called Jackie Shroff (the only name which i was confident that these people won't know about),a name that I knew thanks to the 9:30 films played on all Friday in Doordarshan. I told them it will take some time for me to recollect the song,so with the six standard boy’s creativity i started "inventing" my own lines.I  knew the tune and it was enough for me to gather up some lyrics to suit the tune. Finally i came up with this one:-

"Dashing through the snow"

"Gliding through the snow"

"We are on the way"

"heeyahoova ho"

I taught my cousin my first poem, and told him the last line is Latin and I can’t recollect its meaning. He was fast enough to teach others, so as the carol moved everyone hummed this tune.  Then we had to cross  a stream to reach one of my cousins house.The Santa, as he didn't want to get his  dress wet ,gave his stick to the fellow behind him and after lifting his dress a little up jumped across the stream which was small enough to jump across. After this everyone stopped humming. I was worried  as i thought i might have forgotten the lines after surviving the jump a cross the stream. The carol party reached my cousins house and in front of the mud laid courtyard Santa started dancing. Every one remembered the first two lines

"Dashing through the snow"

"Gliding through the snow"

and stopped for a while the Santa added

"we are on the way"

"HERO HONDA HOO"

Everyone seemed to be happy as Santa could recollect the lines. I thought it was the best lyrics which even Jackie shroff could think off and kept mum. That song became their monopoly and every one asked me to study a different song so that we can use it in next year’s carol.

Next year a guy came to my school who studied in anEnglish medium school in kochi. so he was star as he even corrected our teachers spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Like every one i also tried to be friends with the new hero. In the morning interval we used to gather around him and he used to tell us about his life in kochi. He had a computer at his home .He told me that his favourite car is Ferrari Enzo when the only car that i could think of is maruthi esteem. He told us that in kochi he used to watch non veg video cassette.Its only after reaching NIT i understood what he meant by that. So before next x mas it was my chance to ask him to teach me one carol song to teach my fellow carol mates,he never used to listen to any carol song as it was out of fashion at that time and he taught me world cup song by Ricky Martin .( A very good name and better than Jackei shroff) he taught me the song but i was little ashamed that i couldn't understand his English. But tune was enough for me. Again the best days in my life came and we were making preparations for carol party to move. I told them that its time for a change we will sing  a famous song by Ricky martin. Few people recollected a news about him in Deepika newspaper. The party started and my creativity was on work, i taught them my own lyrics and some part which i could recollect. As we moved along the rubber plantation we saw the other parish carol party moving in the other side of the plantation. They had plans to enter the tribal colony which belonged  to our ward. And this was a serious issue which always ended in tantrums from both side.The other side had an extra band team. What we had was a rented drum with which we couldn't bring out any Sangathi. They asked me to start the song as we feared that with the band they could impress the tribes in our area. I started and everyone accompanied :

Here we go

alealeale

GO GOGO

ALE ALEALE

we repeated it for some three times, what we saw was the other band moving across the road to their place leaving the tribal area for our Santa to visit. People say that they backed coz we shouted GO GO GO. When the carol ended everyone praised me for bringing a new standard to their carol. Everyone was near me and i was the centre of attraction. I somehow managed to  change the topic and told them that my favorite car was Ferari enzo and i used to watch non veg videos atleast twice a day (before and after food).