Dad had just returned from Jubail that month, after having given life in that behemoth prison, fondly called Saudi Arabia, a shot. For Aashrai and me, who were still young and carefree back then, it was dad coming home! We couldn't see the long term effects or the great work paradigm shift; we were perhaps too young to realize the consequences of this decisive step in our lives. On one hand, it was decided that day that the remaining of my schooling would be done in Adyar, in Chennai, in Madduland... On the other hand, dad coming home meant lots and lots of goodies! I remember that that was when I got my Sony Playstation II - which, most inexplicably, is still in perfect working condition, stashed away somewhere safely below my Tele and DVD player in the TV cabinet. The most unforgettable aspect of dad's homecoming, however, were the chocolates... Ferrero Rochers and Toblerones in tonnes, Snickers, Bountys and Mars in scores, Hersheys in its various forms and a gazillion more- in a rainbow of chocolate hues soon littered our shelves. They would serve well to satiate our sweet tooth during the next few months.
Amidst this great pile of swell chocolates, there was The One. It is most strange that I must forget the brand of this chocolat de la chocolats (maybe bro remembers; I must ask him) but we both knew that it was The One. The one chocolate to rule them all. The master Yoda of the Jedi order, the Bruce Wayne of the Batman series, the Tolkien of 20th century writers. So, bro and I forged a gentleboys' pact that we would both share the dark chocolate delight in equal proportions and, as average human psychology would dictate, we decided to the best for the last.
Days passed and then weeks. Weeks cohered to form months, and every day we had a chocolate bellyful, always staring longingly at the shahanshah, albeit never yeilding to the dark temptation. Soon, we were almost out of all other chocolates and our stomachs sensed the coming of the legend, and made way. D-Day came with astonishing rapidity and the first rays of the sun woke up bro, and he in turn, very faithfully, woke me up... And then we ran. We ran to the kitchen cupboard and opened it greedily thrusting our arms into the open shelf, groping and yanking at whatever was in our path. Unfortunately, we could find nothing but dried fruits, nuts and worthless Good-Day packets! Where had the awesome one gone??
After a few anxious and fretful moments of franctic search, we gave up. The good part is neither of us suspected the other of having taken it - the pact had been sealed. So going up to mom and granny, we enquired as to the whereabouts of the quintessential gift from the land of the arabs. Mom was quiet, but then granny coughed up the tale. The previous day, the tiny tot of a kid which lived next door had come over and had sat itself on the sofa. Apparently, it acted famished and had asked grandma for some food... Soon, it asked for chocolates. Morbid as this tale sounds, it did happen. Grandma searched and found only one chocolate remaining. Unwittingly, granny handed it over to the twit which subsequently scampered off to prey on its next innocuous target.
We have all heard of cliched quotes like 'Opportunities knock only once'. But never once did I give such sayings a second thought. Until that fateful day. Procrastination is sin, deferral - a blunder. Planning is but a futile exercise. The punishment for all these - the glowing hope vanishes, leaving you empty and desolate while you wonder, in retrospect, why you pondered so much when it ought to have been a spot-decision - spontaneous. Then again, on retrospect, everything seems so simple and all your mistakes seem glaring. But was it so obvious in the first place? Why didn't we eat that chocolate the day we saw it? Why did we believe that by postponement, we could make the event even more special? Why?
The answer, now, seems so simple; and yet so elegantly, it flatters to decieve time and again! Why we postponed making a meal of that chocolate is the same reason you defer making a phonecall to someone important. It is the same nagging feeling which frightens you everytime something important is going to happen. The longer you postpone eating that chocolate or making that phonecall, the longer it continues to remain a dream... and not something you goofed up badly. You long to make that moment special and perfect, when nothing can go wrong. You wait for that moment when everything is as perfect as they will ever be. Most regrettably, such a moment will never come, as 'perfection' as a concept is flawed. That perfect moment doesn't exist, and things will never get brighter than now. Shilly-shally does nothing good. It only means giving up before you even started. A walkover. A paradise is lost, never to be regained.
The most upsetting part is that time, being the healer he is, lets you forget these wounds and lessons and forgive your past actions. Soon you accept these losses as a part of life and fall back on the 'It was never meant to be' quip. However foolish it may sound, this is how the human psyche works. That day, that kid next door was trying to teach me a lesson. But have I learnt it?
