Geometric dreams

Last week, I got Mira her second instrument box set (PSI brand) because she complained the Helix set I got her last year did not have pointed needles to make drawing easy and perfect. I had argued with her against the need for a new one every year. But she told me Ashwin was on his third box - a Camel I packed along with his belongings from Chennai to Dubai, the Helix set as he began school here and early this year a PSI set. As a boy careless about his things, he had lost some of the tools in the Camel which had the perfect compass and divider ("east or west, India is the best" I learnt) while he complained the Helix compass was too blunt to get a perfect circle. Need I say the house is filled with numerous boxes, pouches and school bags which are in various stages of being used.
Each time I looked at their Helix set, I remember how much I had coveted it as a young student in school. Some of my classmates whose dads worked in the Gulf had such boxes. As for me, my dad had picked a hand-me-down box with a few tools missing from some chap in the village who had passed out of school. It filled me with self-pity as I looked at the box (a similar fate awaited me as regards school textbooks, many of them in tattered condition) but Dad believed in spartan living and was against wasteful expenditure.
My only ray of hope then came in the form of an uncle who descended on the family house every two years or so and gifted me and bro a set of clothes and (for me) a necklace in African beads that made me cringe each time I wore it - 35 years ago, it did not seem fashionable wearing anything out of the ordinary or what the rest of local residents  did not wear.
Uncle and wife stacked an almirah in a room in the house with all the goodies, including cutlery, pens and whatnot, and which we dared not look at. They were brought for his children studying in a boarding school in the capital. Anyway, I seemed to be in luck one afternoon when uncle, reclining on the bed like the Buddha, asked: "Do you have an instrument box?" Something in me prompted me to say no; I did not consider the set with me a complete one or as my own. He directed his wife to give me a box. Just as it landed in my hands, my cousin sister brought my rickety box for his inspection. "Look, she has a perfect box!" she cried and held out the protractor and scale for his inspection. "Oh, this looks good," said my aunt, and she hastily took away the brand new shiny box from my hand and put it back in the cupboard. And with that ended my hope of owning something new and foreign.

Birthday

The best thing about birthdays these days is the flood of greetings on social media especially Facebook. But for those who do not care to leave their birthdays on fb, there's no such joy. One has to be satisfied with old vintage friends  - the ones who celebrated a few birthdays in your company in dreary hostel rooms or classrooms. It's so ingrained in their brains that they can't forget your birthday is  coming, and don't need a Facebook alert to remind them.

From a friend who sent an audio clip of a Hindi song on WhatsApp to my daughter Mira who gifted me her savings apart from chocolates and a card she made, this birthday has been made special by vintage friends.

The others who wish you a happy year ahead are businesses that do business with you. So this year I had Qatar Airways, Jet Airways, my personal banker, and stores like New Look and Home centre (offering double shukran points) wishing me a happy birthday and use their services! That's some solace.