Captain Truth’s Summer Vacations of ‘05

June 2005. Age 6. Lucknow.

One fine morning during the 104 days of summer vacation (actually we only got 60, screw you Phineas & Ferb) I transformed into my alter ego — Captain Truth.

My parents were in no mood to take me to Shimla or Udaipur or any of the other fancy vacation spots Sujay or Swapnil or my other friends at school were being taken to. Well, at least that’s where they said they would be taken to on the last day of school. When you are 6, you don’t question your friends. Their lives and their parents are the definition of coolness, and you are but a shameful spot of misery destined for doom at your stupid home in Lucknow.

With half my vacations behind me, all books at home worth reading had been read, all games worth playing alone had been played, and all movie CDs played enough times to be scratched smoother than a peach. There was the question of the impending holiday homework but it could wait a few more weeks. The garden had been roamed, the terrace was too hot for a sane child to walk around, I couldn’t go out because apparently there were kidnappers picking 6-year-olds from Lucknow’s streets like hotcakes and you couldn’t play cricket inside the home lest a precious piece of glass shattered somewhere. For now, a 6-year-old had seen enough of his home and wanted to see something new, something out of this world.

“Mummy, what should I do?”

My mother, her dupatta draped over her head and chanting the sixty-seventh Aarti of the day glanced upwards from her book, her lips a flurry of silent incantations. Her eyes met mine and then returned to the book.

Just one human at home, and even she can’t speak.

“But what should I do?”.

She looked up again, this time a bit exasperated, lips continuing in silence. What proceeded was a string of dumb charades gesturing everything from reading to watching to playing. Once it had been explained to her that all her ideas were passé and that this kid couldn’t stand it anymore, she got up from her asana, perturbed at this interruption to her holy communion, and waved her hand — a sign for me, her little minion to follow her.

She’s probably going to play Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham again on the computer. I’ve had enough of that stupid lady’s “Bade Mazakiya Ho…”

But she walked past the computer without paying it any heed.

Ahh, the old stack of colouring books. How many times does an adult need to be explained that fairies aren’t cool and I have already painted all the pages with robots and cars?

But strangely enough, the books too weren’t spared a glance. She walked up to the cupboard, her mantras never missing a beat. She pushed a chair in front of the cupboard, and in one swift motion climbed onto it. Her hands reached yet upwards, towards a cupboard above the cupboard.

Whoa whoa whoa.

Hold on. These were uncharted territories for a 6-year-old. I realised that day that above my cupboard of clothes and toys, there was yet another cupboard that contained treasures no boy had ever seen. Apparently, 6-year-old necks don’t tilt back far enough to warrant such high views. What lay beyond the wooden doors was anyone’s guess — new toys? New books? Perhaps… no it can’t be, the cupboard monster?!

When mother-mine swung open the doors, no monster presented itself. What lay beyond was an array of boring brown boxes labelled with permanent markers.

Clothes. Wedding Clothes. Albums. Crockery. Sweaters & Jackets.

I squinted my eyes and twisted my neck to align my vision with the barely legible scribblings scrawled at odd angles.

But none of these ordinary boxes were destined for me today. A much smaller carton labelled electronics was pulled out by mother-mine and a layer of dust was blown away. The dust landed on my tiny nose, and I pretended to sneeze since that was what white people did in movies. Again, at age 6, I was too young to understand that Indians are immune to dust allergies.

Mother-mine placed the box on the carpet and ripped apart the brown tape keeping it shut with her fingernail.

One of these days she’ll realise how useful a long fingernail is even for kids and then I’ll get to grow my nails to 4 centimetres just like Vishesh Sinha from class 1-B has.

She opened the carton’s flaps and gestured to me to have a go at it.

A box labelled electronics, a hmm, a nod and a gesture towards the box. That’s all I was offered as a solution to my boredom. With these done, she left the room, by now well over Aarti 72.

As an adult, I must admit it was indeed an ingenious way to keep a child occupied. Give him a carton bigger than himself, and you have probably bought yourself enough time for not just the remaining aartis, but even the prasad offering and wish-making.

I walked up to this receptacle of wonders, its lip stacking up neatly against my navel. Ash had once discovered a wild new Pokemon nesting inside a similar box on TV. Could this be an electric-type Pokemon? I could surely do with a Pikachu in my life.

But when I pulled apart the carton’s ears, my innocent anime bubble popped unceremoniously. There was no furry yellow electric mouse waiting inside. Instead, I stared down at an abyss of black and grey plastic — a hallmark of durable Japanese consumer electronics in the 90s and early 2000s.

But disappointment is for ordinary men. And I wasn’t one of them. For now, I had become Captain Truth, a fearless explorer and conqueror of formidable realms! His conquests reached far and wide, he feared no man, no sea nor tide. And today, his plunders had rewarded him with a chest of unknown mysteries.

He dipped his chubby arm into the box, his fingers curled up in a crooked hook, trying their best to mimic Captain Hook’s shiny golden arm hook. On their way down into the deep ocean, they encountered slimy seaweed and ferocious water snakes (mostly out-of-use cables and wires, now that I think of it).

The RCA cables from an old CRT TV caught his attention first. With their ends coated with bright red, yellow and white resin, they were definitely an easy target for a kid, erm, I mean a seasoned sea pirate. Like mythical serpents, its body branched outwards into three heads, each serving a unique purpose.

His next dip inside the sea fished out a Philips remote control twice the size of his palm. The inscriptions on this wondrous relic from the past were markedly different from the Samsung remotes he was used to seeing in his home. There were new buttons like ►, ❚❚ and ⏹ which could only mean that this device could cast magic spells, right? Beneath the neatly arranged array of silky smooth buttons, worn-out letters spelt out VCR. See! He knew it, “Voodoo Charms and Rituals” — he had heard about such dark devices in folklore, but was encountering one of these for the first time.

Onwards to the next — a rusty old compass, whose needle had a sense of integrity lower than that of Animesh Gupta, an old nemesis from kindergarten who often ratted me out to the teacher. Why? Well, the true North was shown as North. But so was East. And West. Even South. It all really depended on how hard you hit it, and what gravity deemed fit. A tad bit disappointing, this one. But perhaps it could come in handy in a future voyage?

Captain Truth dug deeper — more wires, sticky and leaky batteries, spooled out cassettes — nothing valuable.

Ooh! A big one.

At first glance, he didn’t know what to make of it. It looked like a small tablet but lacked a screen of any sort. The front panel read “Casio” and the back had a sticker with verbose Japanese text and “Digital Diary” written in bold English letters.

A digital diary!? How does this magical contraption function? And what does it do? Where is the pen? Where is the paper?

His arms flailed the device wildly in the air with such excitement that the weary old clamshell lock gave way and it opened in half, like an oyster.

I snapped out of my Captain Truth persona, for I thought that I had broken it. Having never encountered a laptop in 2005, devices splitting in half usually meant that they needed to be sent for repair. Given that this came from the box of old electronics, it probably wasn’t that valuable but the prospect of getting scolded sent a nervous shiver down my spine nonetheless.

But I soon realised that this gadget was meant to be opened, for inside the oyster lay dozens of pearls — way more than Papa’s Nokia 1100 could ever dream of having. Three letters and a number did not have to jostle for space on a single key. Each letter and each number had a dedicated button. Heck, even the sidekicks like +, -, ÷ and X were living freely in this land. In 2005, the iPhone was still 2 years away — more buttons equalled a superior product. Tucked in a corner between the keys was a screen that was gargantuan by 2005 standards. It could easily show 3, or maybe even 4 rows of text at once! With my confidence reinstated, Captain Truth took over once more.

This device from the future must become a part of my arsenal — it could be used to hack into the enemy’s defences by entering commands remotely. It is indeed, the crown jewel in today’s loot.

With that, it seemed that the treasure chest had run out of objects of interest. More importantly, in the distance, I could hear the final Aarti and bell ringing. “…Tum bin aur na dooja, aas bharu mai kiski?”. This was a signal that mother-mine was about to conclude her prayers and would soon call me for lunch, putting an end to my explorations. Captain Truth must complete his conquest before that happens!

It is common knowledge that the exploits from pirate loot are used to reinforce ammunition and supplies for upcoming battles. Thus, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Captain Truth utilised his newfound artefacts in the siege of Castle Legozilla to rescue Princess Anne from the atrocious Team Rocket. (Why the name Anne, you ask? Well Famous Five on a Treasure Island was the last book I had read and Anne being the only female character in that book might have had something to do with it.) Also, Princess Anne had an eye missing for reasons unknown to the kingdom.

When Captain Truth reached Castle Legozilla, he observed that his arch-nemesis Team Rocket had held Princess Anne captive on the high turret in the East Tower. How did he know that it was the East Tower? Well, that’s what the spineless compass told him when he last consulted it.

Princess Anne was bound by a comically long and loosely tied RCA cable with red, yellow and white tips plugged into a female RCA socket — she could be electrocuted to death any second. But Captain Truth won’t let that happen.

He leapt over the alligator-infested moat surrounding the castle in one majestic jump, climbed the castle’s facade to reach the high parapet and swung over onto the East Tower. Almost there.

But suddenly, the world around him glitched, and he found himself back at the castle’s base. He tried again, over the moat, up the castle, onto the parapet but yet again, he found himself back to the bottom. An evil laugh from the top of the castle made it clear why this was happening. In Team Rocket’s hands was the Philips VCR Voodoo Charm and Rituals Remote and they were using it to rewind time for Captain Truth. Captain Truth looked around in despair — his ears ringing with the nefarious laughs of Team Rocket, anxious pleas for help from Princess Anne, and funnily enough, the approaching footsteps of Mother. He needed to act quickly.

He made one final heroic leap over the alligator pit and surmounted the tower again. However this time before Team Rocket could press rewind, he flung his spineless compass at them. It landed awkwardly on its stomach near them, its needle spinning wildly out of control. He had read in ancient scriptures that gadgets don’t like stray magnets, and sure enough, no matter how hard Team Rocket jabbed at the VCR, time flowed only forward.

Captain Truth took a few nervous steps towards his nemeses and when he was sure his plan was working, he flung out his Casio Digital Diary from the future. Now within range of the command centre, he hacked into the terminal, punching tiny keys resolutely on his weapon of total dominance.

DISENGAJE CURRENT ELECTROCUTOR

ENGAJE TERMINAL SELF DESTRUCT

Well disengage was quite a long word for a first grader, and there was no spell-check around. Cut him some slack, will you?

With both commands punched in one go (thanks to the massive Casio screen of course), Captain Truth pressed enter with his little thumb.

A deafening explosion shook Castle Legozilla. The command centre near Team Rocket had erupted in a giant ball of flames and they could be seen rocketing away in the sky like a shooting star. Captain Truth rushed to Princess Anne and unplugged the wires keeping her captive.

“Oh thank you Captain Truth” she gasps in relief.

Free from the wires, she embraces Captain Truth and leans in to kiss him (I’m telling you white people in movies are very impressionable on brown kid minds).

But what’s this? Captain Truth’s mouth is stuffed with a Motichoor Ladoo thrust in by his mother! (I mean our mother).

“Today’s prasad — your favourite ladoo. Come for lunch now, chalo, you have played enough” she said and walked away.

Captain Truth swallowed the Ladoo and turned towards Princess Anne — red with embarrassment.

“Where shall we go next Captain?” she chuckled.

“Well I have discovered an ancient land, full of awe-inspiring mysteries from eras gone by in the high high mountains above us. Mortals can’t reach there easily” (at least without a ladder or a mother). “Will you join me?”

“Of course captain!” Princess Anne chimed.

“Ahoy! But first, we feast!”