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04:50 PM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
January 22, 2015
Sixty six years ago in a lovely army house at 31 Cassels Road, Ahmednagar a mewling little kid was born in the bedroom with one doctor in attendance. At five minutes past one in the morning. I was four weeks premature and, according to my father, all crinkled up.
Even though we are a pretty hep fam, like I used to smoke and drink with my grandfather and talk about girlfriends, the elders had to do the religious ritual route and bung in a pundit who wrote out my life story when I was about 8 hours old. It is the done thing in our kind of clans and is then used to chart your future.
My nanny gave me a religious picture which is my talisman and goes where I go.
The pundit shot a few arrows in the air. He said I would be a lawyer but then there were no journalists in our times so I guess he hit the board with that. Same difference.
He also said my education graph would be like a slide in a water park (all downhill) and he got that pretty much right.
Then he said I would marry three times. Was that off the mark? Though it might feel like ‘that’ to Ambi at times when I am my boorish best we’ve been together 35 years and wouldn’t change that for anything. He also said I would not be the dominant partner and with that I agree. Who is?
He also said I would be very rich which kind of gives us faint hope whenever we buy a raffle ticket but so far stays dramatically unrealized.
He said I would have three sons and that one I am glad he missed the mark cos I got the bestest two daughters anyone could hope for and three ‘grand’ grandkids with the door not yet closed on that number. And two sons in law who more than make up for the three sons who went amissing.
The parchment also says I would have weak ankles and if that is all I’ll buy into it.
So, I am going to sit here today ripping the paper off my gifts and counting…
…my blessings.
That’s all there truly is to count.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
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