Sniff of Romance!

There are songs that automatically yield a scene/image in my head when I listen to them. I think that happens with everyone more or less. So anyway, every time I hear 'My Funny Valentine', I always imagine a rainy day .. not those crappy wispy rains but proper ones. The kind of rain that replenishes .. everything. I see myself half-sitting on the side railing of the balcony (of my pretend studio apartment), listening to this song in (that very expensive thus never be mine) surround system and just watching the rain fall.

The earliest memory I have of rain is the flood in .. well .. either '88 or '89 .. I remember that the water got into our house and we had to stack the tables and chairs etc. on the bed. I remember being carried around from room to room.

I remember making paper boats and floating them on water during and after rain stopped and the garden was just .. knee deep in water. I liked that house. I liked the people we lived with next door. I remember mama and choto chacchu flirting with Papia aunty from next door. I loved Mishu to bits and God is cruel because He took my soul-mate away when I was just seven years old.

Watching Pan's Labyrinth this afternoon, I was overwhelmed for a while. Ammu used to read to me the Russian folk tales - of Ivan and Baba-Yaga the witch. I remember wanting to be Ivan when I grew up. The books (bangla ones) would write the name as Ee-vaa-n .. Later on (much much later), I heard that name being pronounced at Eye-van and I was in denial for a while, thinking that just can't be. I used to read a lot when I was younger and after fairy tales my reading followed adventure stories. To this day I can safely say that my favourite book of all time, the book I would take to my grave would be 'Treasure Island'. Since I was told today that no, I don't have an adventure bone in my body (and with valid reason, I'm sure), I think it's all justified why I read so much of them in my childhood (sort of like living through someone else's life because you, yourself weren't capable of it). The other day I was reading a list of known folk tales (fairy tales) and realised I never really liked the Brothers Grimm collections (Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella etc.). The nicer ones were by Hans Andersen and his best work is The Little Mermaid. I cried when I read it at nine. In fact I remember crying when Frankenstein's monster killed Victor Frankenstein and then kills himself. I remember crying a lot, for both of them and I hated the feeling. I wonder if I re-read Frankenstein after eleven years whether it'd effect me the same way as did back then. I could write on and on about Little Mermaid though.

Having sex with vampires would not get you pregnant. I never did finish reading Dracula. I was fourteen when I realised that vampires used sex to get their prey and that whole neck biting became a secret erotic bliss (as oppose to horrific when ammu first told me about them).

The reason I could never bring myself to take illegal drugs is precisely all this. My once very wise mama never told me not to take drugs but told me a secret that kept me away from substance abuse. Among other things he (unknown to him) taught me to draw a love heart pierced with an arrow and the blood drips down into a container (the image was drawn by him on a card he gave to Papia aunty .. mama was like .. eighteen then .. Jesus!) .