1. The Towel becomes a Lasso, a deadly weapon!
This fight happened at Sahakaar between Sandhya and Vidya. Now, they were both really spunky kids and the spirit and motivation to keep a fight going was well matched to both parties. I'm hazy as to what actually started the argument, but somewhere down the line, the damp towels (thorttamundu) became a cross between a lasso and a whip. If anyone has ever been crazy enough to hit himself or herself with a damp thorttamundu, he/she would know that it is kind of getting whiplashed (plus the fact that you would need psychiatric help). Our family servant Savitri bai was there and she raised a huge ruckus. My grandmother was asleep I think in the other room, Savitri bai went to hysterics that these two "porgis" would kill each other. My grandma went into even more hysterics, called my uncle and aunt.. and the rest as you know is history! This fight took Sandy and Vids to dizzying heights of popularity in the family circles.
2. Too much Salt is not good for you...
Gautam, my paternal aunt's son was the proverbial spoilt brat. When he was younger, he was a terror in the right sense of the word. Now it so happened that in Chennai, at Sudha Akka's place, he had some kind of argument with her. As Sudha was bigger and stronger, he couldn't do much. Plus, the thought of getting pasted by Girish (Sudha's younger brother, a good 10 years senior to Gautam) was not very appealing. So, Gautam decided to get devious. Sudha's friends were due in the evening, all college crowd girls. When they came over, Gautam like a good boy, decided to "help" out and got them a plateful of mixture, with spoons stuck in them. Well, the poor girls did not know what was awaiting them when they stuck spoonfuls into their mouths. Only the upper layer was mixture, the lower was all SALT!!!!! Talk about a devious genius!!!
3. Salt and water?
This was between me and my sis. We had one of our arguments (she was reading my diary I think) and I had kind of forgotten about it later. Most of the day we barely saw each other, but finally we did come face to face in the evening. I asked for a glass of water, which she gladly obliged (should have smelt a rat then!). I took a large gulp and whoa!!! It was like drinking Dead Sea water!! Salt galore!!! Knew my sister was a genius and horribly clever ;-) and I was well, taken for a ride...
4. Tennis balls bounce on walls...
This happened between Sandy, Shilps, Vinu and Myself. We were at Blossom, Marol, my aunt was asleep and Vinu being Vinu was being a pest and bouncing a tennis ball on the walls and well, all of us in turns. We were older, but no amount of asking to stop worked (he was kind of our favorite and the youngest, so understandably pampered). We threw the ball out, but the darned watchman gave it back. Finally, we got mad and began getting physical. Vinu was strong, so we did a kind of round-up, grabbed the ball and also gave him a nice pinch on the ear. That's it! Vinu got mad, said "katti" and stomped off to the bedroom. Later, my aunt came and said he wanted us to tell him sorry. Shilpa said sorry, Sandy and I refused, the fight threatened to blow up... but as they say, all's well that ends well. Some tv, games and ice-creams did the trick ;-)
5. Cycle chains and doors.
Vasuki building, I think Veena and I can never forget this one. Gautam as usual was bugging us, we told him we wanted to go our homes right away. He came after us with a bicycle chain, we ran for our lives, locked ourselves in. My aunt luckily came back from the market shortly and smoothed things over with some bhelpuris, ice-cream and I think a trip to the movies. Anyway, his stack of comic books was worth the fight.
5. Too many to remember...
I dedicate this section to the fight masters ...
a) Archana and Vinu.
b) Suraj and Krishna.
There are just too many to put down on paper here, so I ask them to fill this out in their comments for me. If you guys read this, please give me an account of what you think is your most memorable fight.
6. Too less to remember...
This section is dedicated to Vinod and Veena, who according to the entire family were model siblings and never fought ever!! Unlike us, who were labelled junglees and had the capacity to probably kill each other someday, these two were the quintessal hindi/tamil film siblings. Now, I don't know if they really did fight, if they did, please do fill this in.
The weird thing is that today, we all miss seeing each other so much, these fights have now become pleasant memories. Also, Vinu, Suraj, Krishna and Gautam are proof that the kids who fight the most, eventually grow up to be perfect gentlemen!
Shilps, Sandy, Vids, Veena, Vinu, Vinod.. I need your comments here.
