Sethi Sahib and Kripa Ram

Well Time roles back to CIRCA 1990, the time of German reunification, and Beginning of Gulf war and the time when Sethi Sahib was 10 year old stud with "to hell with the world kind of attitude". It didn't matter who unites or who fights as far as Sethi Sahib's summer vacations are not disturbed.

Anyway to come back to the main story, in such exciting times enters a 9 year old man from south of India in Sethi Sahib's life. Thy name is Ram, Kripa Ram. A straight from social science textbook representation of people from south India. Dark Body, Bright Dhoti, and shining chandan Tilak on his forehead. Well that's how he looked when I met him for the first time and believe me I immediately went home and for the first time in my life open my social studies text book with any kind of genuine interest. I Saw that picture of Dravidian guy from Madras and was so happy to find the living incarnation of the chapter on Tamil Nadu that I was sure I am not going to lose any marks from at least this chapter. Who says education should not be interactive.

But Next day Kripa Ram was like any of us. His House warming Pooja was over and now he dressed and behaved like all of us. That was kind of shocking for me and once again I got this nerve wracking feeling of scoring low in Social Studies exam. But I overcame this soon and me and Kripa became good friends in n time.

Kripa Parents like all other South Indian parents in Delhi had these two dreams. Firstly Kripa becoming an engineer and going to US and secondly but the most important one of Kripa scoring passing grades in his Hindi exam. So they encouraged this national integration between North and South of India without realizing the dangerous time they had in store for them because of this act.
His house was thrown open to me anytime only on the condition that I would always speak eat drink and piss with him in Hindi.

It doesn't matter to me as long as I had access to his vast collections of Hindi comic book which his parents had bought him in the vain hope of him learning the Hindi

But left alone Hindi, Kripa was not even interested in speaking Tamil or speaking anything at all. He used to roam around in the house like a zombie making strange noises from his mouth. Every time something came out of his mouth it sounded like a 20 year old rickety truck being turned on a winter morning. But Kripa was fun and lived in his own Utpoic world.

He was passionate about his collection of miniature figurines from the cartoon Series "He Man." He had some scores of manikins representing all the characters of the cartoon series and we use to leisurely spend hours of our summer times making those dummies fight and animatedly destroying each other while his grandmother slept peacefully in the next room

But one day Kripa got really bored of the daily stuff and produced those engine warming voices from his mouth which meant that lets add some more actions to our play. It's just too boring to simply throw the toys here and there thinking they were flying or running after each other

Sethi sahib agreed to this and we decided to introduce some real life elements to the whole play. The first step was to build a huge Fort for the toys. Kripa gladly opened all his brand new text books for the cause. We build a huge fort for the two toys enemies using Kripa Ram newly bought 5th standard books. Not satisfied with it and to add more colors we pasted newspapers on the walls and floor and to add real life fun to the surroundings used comic books as hidden bunkers for the toys. To us the whole 300 square feet drawing hall was converted to a war zone but for some one from outside it looked like watching a Discovery channels programme on worlds largest scrap house.

Mean while Kripa Grandma slept peacefully in the other room, unaware of what transformation was going on in the next room.

We were high on adrenalin by now and wanted more action to happen. Kripa was not satisfied with the paper and books war zone for his toys as he wanted some live and real action. So he decided to introduce an element of fire to the game play. Story line was that "RAM Man" or the hero's friend would be caught in a fire in his castle and our Hero 'He Man" would come and rescue him.

So we lit up few newspapers and kept "RAM Man" Figurine inside it waiting for Kripa ram to come with "He Man" in his hand and douse the fire.

But by the time we could realize the entire living room had caught fire. Kripa Ram text books were burning bright and so were his collections of Comic Books. Mean while Kripa ram decided not to perform the heroic act of dousing the fire and save his "He man's" friend as it was much more fun to watch live fire inside the living room. We both went and stood on sofa set and watched Plastic Figurine of "RAM Man" melting away in the red hot fire of Kripa's book. The whole room was full of smoke and we were jumping on the sofa set trying to catch the flying newspapers turned black by the fire. Boy! We were having fun of our life. It was liberation time for us. Kripa Ram had burnt his Holiday Home work, his text books and all the Hindi learning material. We felt the same high which the legendary Pink Floyd would have felt when they compose the song "We don't need any education".

And suddenly to our surprise there was huge splash and massive wave of water came running inside from the living room's entrance. We were all drenched and so were Half burnt books and Toys. And when we looked outside we saw Kripa's Grandma and score s of neighbors inside the house screaming and shouting loudly and throwing buckets of water inside the room.

Me and Kripa were pulled out and were given a thrashing of our lives. And we felt nothing but sheer amusement as we still could not understand why this whole fuss about the simple child plays. After all boys were just having fun.

Sethi Sahib's entry in Kripa's House was banned forever. Kripa's parents arranged a Hindi tutor for him instead. And we became like the Poor Boy , rich girl kind of lovers in Bollywood movies who secretly meet in garden and parks because of parental opposition to the relationship.

Finally after a year Kripas parents decided to take him back to Chennai as the north influence on their only child could take more violent turns in future and thus in times of no emails and n gmails, Sethi Sahib could never meet Kripa Again.

If Kripa you ever read this, then please contact me soon .Man I seriously need to light up some big fires again!