Day 1: One gets a call from one’s teacher, highly recommending Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par. One watches the movie with friends and is happy to note that he is not the only one crying.

Later that day, one chews on the movie for long and is thankful for his childhood. His tinkering and doodling was tolerated.

Day 2: One makes mother and aunt watch the movie. Much to one’s relief, mother cries and they hug each other as Shankar Mahadevan sings, ‘kya itna bura hoon main ma?’

One is told that the first time his vegetarian mother actually killed a mosquito was to protect him.

One seems so focused on what he wants from the future that he forgets to be thankful to the past for allowing him the life he has had. True, there always seem to be people for whom nothing is ever good enough. But there is little we can do about them.

There have been several little joys that stick to my memory to this day and will very probably go to my funeral with me. Regardless of grander changes later in my life, these little shifts in my growth were never overshadowed. I thought I would share some of them with you, on this first day of 2008.

I have always wondered what people have against short answers.

In school, most of my classmates had problems squeezing ideas into a given limit of 200 words. When it was not about ideas and sheer data was what needed accommodation, they struggled with the squeeze again. There is only so much you can do to elucidate chapters of world history without giving in to the seductive bulk of it.

Even in college, I found word limits greeted with expressions of frustration and annoyance. For many people, being brief and simple actually requires more of an effort than being elaborate does.

A few weeks ago, I found myself talking to a bunch of college kids about the importance of visualising one’s goals. There was skepticism as usual. Some were convinced their choices don’t matter. Some wanted, more than anything else, to matter. One boy asked me if I thought he could do what he wants to do.

I told him it didn’t matter what I thought. If he thinks he can do something then all other opinions in the world don’t amount to zilch. All he needs is faith in himself and the universe. He looked better after that and offered to drop me home on his bike after the class.

When I was in Cuttack till three years ago, my grandfather got bananas for us all the time. By the dozen no less. After he had stocked half of the grocery cupboard with the fruit, he would call upon his able grandsons to partake of his gift. He expected ravenous appetites in us. We disappointed.

It was something of a horrific routine. Every morning, I would wake up to Ba (we call him Ba) calling out to us as he laboriously stacked the bunches in the cupboard. He is over eighty, yet his voice is both loud and high-pitched. It never fails to shock me out of sleep.

I am reading Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul right now. It is a book that doesn’t just touch you; it feels you up and gets you horny with writerly passion. I was so turned on that I started reliving the most passionate ‘write moments’ of my life. I’ll tell you.

My memories of my early days (in Assam for some part) on this planet are amazingly, almost unbelievably clear. I remember most details of my life from when I was barely talking. Brownish-yellow frog that sat on a brick right outside the bedroom window at night, scary bearded goat that always made me cry out in fright and run away, bored looking street dog that I lay on the cold verandah floor with — everything.