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| Here comes the sun... 13th August 1971, would see a legend being born to Mrs & Mr N P Sivaramakrishnan, christened as N S Padmanabhan (Padmananbhan meaning Lord Vishnu in his Lotus Stance), whom the world affectionately calls Poopsie. Poopsie has been derived from a feeding bottle brand which also means cute & loving and incidentally was the first word pattern I would recognize as a toddler). Being older of the two siblings, I have seldom missed opportunities to rag my brother Brijesh (nee N S Easwaran), 5 years younger, for which of course the trade-offs were generally a bruised face or a swollen eye. Schoolboy Blues... Don Bosco High School - Matunga, my alma mater, still has wonderful memories for me. I would summarize my school years as the best years of my life, wherein some of the worlds best teachers who apart from teaching me subjects ranging from English to Physical Education, exposed me to a plethora of extra curricular activities. Dramatics, Elocutions, Debates etc. became a normal passion after I got rid of this thing they called 'stage-fright' much before I could even spell it!!! I was fond of all my teachers, and I can still remember ALL of them. I also try to meet them once in a while and show them the latest version of this product called 'Me' - a product whose early designs were versioned by them. Jatin Paranjape (I can proudly refer to him now as a former Indian Batsman) and Suraj Shirsat were my prime schoolmates and our gang consisted of Rajesh Hemrajani, Tejas Parekh and Sivasis Sen to name 'a few good men'. College rags... Getting into S.I.E.S. College and pursuing a Commerce degree was altogether a different experience with the good ol' flirting & bunking days and the 'chicks galore'. Being as imaginative as possible to impress a girl would have more priority than to think over how to get the next class assignment done. We all go through this mess don't we? But I must say that I was fortunate to have my friends besides me, who would rather watch a good movie or discuss books and music for a pastime, rather than indulge in berserk anti-social activities. I was introduced to 'Rock Music' in college, and suddenly my Dad's LPs and tapes started making sense to me. Dad had an amazing collection of the 60's and 70's music with artists ranging from Elvis Presley to Boney M. The first Rock album I heard was of the Doors and the second was Deepest Purple. I instantly fell in love with that form of music, and from now on, all of my Dad's music collection would be termed as mine. I erased all his Pop music tapes, and filled them with Rock and started enhancing my cassette collection (those days CDs in India were myths for some and a very expensive affair for most of us) and got into inter-collegiate music quizzing winning a lot of accolades for my college. |
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