Thursday, October 2, 2008

Happy Birthday Dear Gandhi

Hi to all.. Long time since i blogged..
(Cliche! Every blogger must have used this line!)

Anyway, today being a holiday, i found myself sitting idle, so decided to blog.

As most of us know, October 2 is Gandhi Jayanthi. This post is not about what Gandhi did, rather its about what he had. Read further and you will see what i mean.

It goes back to my Kindergarten days.

Well, when you start school, you get access to a pencil. I too got access to an pencil. One day i saw a film, in which Rajinikanth keeps a pencil behind his ears.

No. This is not Rajnikanth. This is some photo i googled. In those days, most shop owners would sport a pencil or pen behind their ears and a patta patti. Then you might have seen the ubiquitous bus conductors with pens behind their ears.

So as a child i found a place to keep the pencil which was much cooler than keeping it in a pencil box. So naturally, i tried to emulate them.
But i ran into a problem...

See what i mean? My ears were not able to hold the pencil! My Cheriamma( mom's sis) used to tease me as having "Ana Chevi" (elephant ears). Initially i didn't think much about being called anai chevi, but only when i came to know that i couldn't keep a pencil there, it hit me very much.

I couldn't stop crying...

Then it happened, that my Achacha (Granpa) asked me why i was crying. I said to him that i have elephant ears and couldn't keep a pencil behind my ear.

Granpa showed me the photo of Gandhi we hung in our house and said, "See the photo. Even Gandhi has ears like you only!"




And from that day onwards, i always had a soft corner for Mr.Gandhi. And one more similarity is that we were both born on the 2nd day of the month.

But there had always been a small doubt nagging my mind, whether Gandhi really had Elephant ears or was it the artist's interpretation that made it look like that.

So when i got my internet connection, the first thing i did was to search for Gandhi's real photo. A childhood photo if possible. So did Gandhi have it really?







See for yourself.. :D


PS: I found later in life that, having elephant ears, rises your CQ (Cuteness quotient) :D