PS: Kaka, I love You.

In Orissa, summers are really sticky if nothing else.
U can feel the summer sticking you to the sofa back, to the mattress, to any non-cotton garment you might be wearing.
I was 4 when I think i first visited Kaka's house- Sana Kaka, the younger of my Dad's younger brothers!

Then a newly married, he was supremely fond of me. I was a plump kid and my contours made me all the more cuter and lovable (Quoting Him)
Being a lawyer, his house used to be filled with the tall bookshelves, which in turn had neatly stacked in them the Journals and manuals and other stuff. Brown bound books, with his name written on a small red-golden sticker stuck at the base on the book-edge.

On one such summer afternoon, panting out of asthma, i had rested my heavy behind on his tummy and staring at the tall shelves from there, rocking painfully on his tummy as he lay on the non-sticky cemented floor. Fascinated, i asked how the books got his name on them?

Ever so sure that i had in-born lawyering talent in me, he asked me if i would like to become a lawyer- as if that question was in fact the answer to the one i had asked?
[How he had spotted that in born talent is yet another tale, apparently when a Lord Jagannath Bhajan was playing and the singer was referring to him as his Black Wealth, i had said that it could always be interpreted as him referring to may be his Black Money and not the Lord. For some weird reason i was considered to be possessing tremendous analytical skills and was apt lawyer material, I can now laugh my teeth off at that!]

I considered, then reconsidered, wiped the phlegm oozing of the nose on the sleeves of my sleeveless frock and then replied in a negative.

"I can't remember all that is there in these many books, nah I can't."

My laze and disgust towards excessive reading never discouraged him however in encouraging me! Though he had quit persuading me once he realized that it was not paying much!

Two years back he realized I had applied for nothing but law entrances. Convinced that he couldn't have been the reason asked me to be candid, and all i could then say was that i want my name tag at the bases of those books!

He remembered the afternoon, and he remembered the moment.

I have never kept a restriction on what might inspire me and what not. Don't know if it was that day i decided to be a lawyer or it was the sickness and hostility that i had grown towards the study of science that made law look lucrative. Don't know why i answered that, that day. Don't know how he even managed to remember that i had such intentions.

Two years down the course i have seen so many journals (SEEN) that they have any last drop of fascination that might have been left since that afternoon. I don't want to own them. I don't want to have my nametag stuck to their bases.

But I m just glad I m in to Kaka's profession.
The belly rocker Kaka of mine.
I love you!