The Ego Surfer

My friend Kumaresh quite suddenly treaded into the movie industry. He just got into the groove and got caught in the web, before he could say “Bandha” (which was the name of the first movie he produced)! Kumaresh was a flamboyant character who always set the ambience afire with his inscrutable personality and his inimitable humor. That was how he caught the eye of a rapacious film industry personality, in faraway Houston, who tried hard to tie him into the film industry and use his software money to fund insipid and sentimental yarns from Kodambakkam. And succeeded. One thing led to another and Kumaresh, already one enamored by glamour and glitz, which was evasive in the software industry, fitted into the image-conscious industry like the pieces of a puzzle. A year (and a few million dollars) later, when I met him in his film office, he was clad in a kitschy printed shirt, masticating a meetha pan. He sported a longer moustache that gravitated toward his proud chin, had a “chandana pot...

I can remember weird things in the murkiest corners of my mind. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of things that I have forgotten from my childhood. I still remember the whiff of fresh air at dusk near the “Ala maram” of St. Anthony’s Higher Secondary School, Thanjavur; my “Palingu” sessions with Kandasamy and Charles at “Selvam Colony”, Arulananda Nagar; my walk back with Sushila, the maid, from Shankara School, RA Puram, my first bicycle and my first cricket match at Chepauk. I even remember the day Manish, my fourth standard classmate, drank lukewarm rose milk at my newly constructed home in Thiruvanmiyur. And about Swami, my dear friend of primary school years, my escapades with him are as fresh in my memory as my mom’s Rasam that I devoured over last night. But why do I so inexorably sham ignorance of all those crystal-clear memories when a cousin or an old high-school friend rekindles them. Am I afraid of my past? Or ashamed of it? What is the reason for this fake Alzheimer’s?...