The thousand words behind this picture

Two stories are related to this picture of mine, one funny, and one strange. Let’s begin with the funny one.

Last month, I put this one up as my display image on Orkut, Facebook and Gmail chat. It received several responses, from “Is that you? So cute!!” to “This just can’t be you. I refuse to believe it.” Too bad if you don’t believe it, people, it is really me.

Well, then me and my chief thought up a con job, just for the heck of it. I put up my Gmail status as “Meet Uttam G Mengle, one year old.” When people on my chat list asked me who it was, I said it was my son Uttam who had just turned a year old. Surprisingly, it worked on quite a few people. But the funniest was when three friends of mine from college days got completely taken in. Responses ranged from “what? When did you get married? I didn’t even know!!” to “Oh, married already? What was the hurry?”

Roughly, the story that I fed my victims was this: I met this content writer named Nisha a couple of months after I joined the Asian Age and love blossomed, leading to marriage. The marriage was low-key because both our parents were against it and we even stayed at a mutual friend’s place for a while. Things started changing when our parents learnt that Nisha was pregnant and they thawed a bit. We soon moved into my house and Uttam was born. Nisha quit her job to take care of him, and little ‘Ooty’, as I called him, just turned a year old.

Those who believed it lapped it up and offered opinions by the dozen while me and the chief sat back, laughed, shook hands and patted ourselves on the back.

Now for the strange one, which my mom told me years ago. I recollected it when she commented on this picture on Facebook saying, “As I look at this picture on the eve of your 24th birthday, I can’t imagine when the years flew and my baby grew up.”

Althogh I am not particularly excited about being called somebody's baby on a public forum, it nevertheless reminded me of this tale. I was too young to remember anything now but what the heck. This was before my parents got divorced and they’d taken me somewhere to get my head shaved for some religious reasons.

The head shaving went off successfully, from what mom tells me, but sometime in the afternoon, I started acting funny. Refusing to go anywhere near my parents, I wandered off on my own, and no amount of calling out or pulling back could dissuade me. All the time, my right hand was raised and the palm half clenched, as if I were holding someone’s hand while walking. This went on for quite some time, leading a couple of local vendors to comment about “bhoot badha.”

Then, suddenly, I returned to normal and like a good kid that I hope I was, let my parents finish the rest of the religious procedures before leaving for home. It was only when we reached home that we learnt that my paternal grandfather had passed away.

The time of his death coincided with the time of my strange behaviour, and the first thing my mom remembered was that I was grandpa’s dead favourite and he loved to take me on walks.

To this day, she maintains that grandpa had come to visit me before leaving this world. Whether or not one believes this is a moot point. But as a lover of fiction, I feel this makes one hell of a story. What do you think?