As a young boy, I had the privilege of listening to a lot of stories from my grandmother. There were a couple of stories that stood out for me, for the simple reason that I listened them the most.
One was the story of Chandrahasa. The special liking to this story wasn’t coz it was my namesake but for a fact that it had all the amazing ingredients that make a great period story. I do have to give the story credit as it gave me a lot of ideas and concepts that slowly built into my persona.
The one thing common about the stories was that they triggered my imagination much more than any other thing I did. I was never the kid very excited by toons or games, but was a sucker for grandma’s stories.
One common undercurrent of the stories was that of kids playing with Tiger cubs. This, I know now, was used to induce the idea that the kids were fearless and brave. Now whenever I heard about that I would be really intrigued by the whole concept of holding this amazing beast in your hands and petting it. So started my secret desire to pet a tiger.
To be honest I never believed that I had even a small chance for that happening. But guess what, when the opportunity came by, I wasnt going to sit around and let it slip away :P
Now thinking back, I guess it was just meant to happen :)
Ps: The story of Chandrahasa was my namesake but it wasnt thought up by my parents. The story of how I got my name is for another blog post :P