One of the best things that happened to us while growing up in India during early 90s was that we were not spoilt for choices. Life was much simpler. We had just one service provider for TV programmes those days called Doordarshan. There used to be two channels, one broadcasting national level programmes mostly in Hindi and the other one with programmes in Malayalam, the local language of Kerala.
Being a boy of primary school
age, one of the best series that attracted my attention was an epic portrayal
of Tipu Sultan, the fearless warrior king of Mysore who defended the kingdom
from British invasion during late 1700s. Episodes after episodes spoke volumes
about his valour that I could not watch the programme without having
goosebumps.
I was quite intrigued with
many battle sequences portrayed in the series. Nevertheless, there was one
scene where the Sultan was seen drawing his majestic sword that he used in many
of the wars. The music that accompanied was equally brilliant which immersed
the viewers into the real battle itself! All of these happened ages before the
world had even heard of the term virtual reality.
As many young kids in those
days, I loved to imitate everything that a hero did. Right after one of the
exciting episodes, I decided I needed to have a sword. Now, the biggest
question was, where could I find a sword?! A real sword was obviously out-of-question
for a ten-year-old boy and those were the days, as I mentioned earlier, when
the choices were quite limited for everything, including toys. The best thing
about those constraints were that you would find opportunities around you and
did not need anyone to define it for you. And boy! Did I not find the best
available sword in the whole neighbourhood? Absolutely!
Ever since I could remember
him, my dad was majorly into gardening. With great difficulty, he must have got
a plant named Sansevieria Cylindrica, a succulent commonly known as African
Spear. It had stems, green in colour which looked quite a lot like a sword with
round base and pointed edges. I promptly cut one of those stems and held it
high, even with greater pride than Tipu Sultan himself, admiring my newly found
weapon of power!
The next question was how I
could hang the sword on my ‘royal armour’ which was a pair of shorts.
Innovation came quite easily those days. Mom had kept a roll of jute thread in
the kitchen for the purpose of tying cardboard boxes for storage. I cut the thread
at a length that was enough to go around my shorts and did a perfect knot so
that the sword can be placed right through the loop where it could stay without
much support. Thus, a true legend was born, the Sword of Tipu Sultan of Kerala!
The sword lasted for a couple
of episodes. That was when the local Sultan faced a major challenge. Being a
plant, the stem of Sansevieria Cylindrica started getting dried up. After a few
weeks, the sword was quite skeletal in shape. I realised with pain that it was
neither good enough to fight the British nor even a stray dog that appeared on
the streets once a while. Obviously, a Sultan cannot continue his rule without
a sword.
My eyes went back to
Sansevieria Cylindrica. Within a few weeks, a portion of the plant started
disappearing. Swords were made one after the other. The reign of Sultan
continued without much of an issue, till the time my dad figured out what was
going on!
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