Tag: Rambo

  • Fantasia

    And while I did not have any imaginary friends, at least not any I can remember, the other day, when I was discussing Calvin and my penchant for quoting from the series, with a friend, who is an even better fan, since she can quote exact lines, while I sometimes tend to paraphrase, I suddenly seemed to be overwhelmed by a few memories from my childhood. Its like they were always there – the memories, and were just waiting for a context – in this case, Calvin’s super identities, to take me back to a fantasy world, utterly devoid of logic, but probably more fun than anything that followed.

    Now we’re back to the beginning
    It’s just a feeling and no one knows yet

    You might remember the Rambo fixation that I’d written about sometime back, the ‘superheroes’ who’re about to be revealed existed around the same time. The Rambo gear wasted away in batches, and so spawned a couple of mutant characters, which were war heroes too, but equipped with a different set of weapons. There was this Leo Mattel gun, that produced a roaring noise, until certain experiments with new, freely available ammunition (sand) silenced it forever. The second generation weaponry consisted of water guns which turned out to be very trigger happy by themselves.It didn’t help that they were usually loaded and since they used the loops of trousers as holsters, they tended to throw aspersions on the hero’s character – that he was still wetting his pants at that age!!

    I know some of you would remember the animated Spiderman series that was sponsored by Rasna. At one point, Rasna gave away free spiderman masks and my tale is eerily similar to Calvin gulping down chocolate frosted sugar bombs to get the beanie. Only in my case, it was kept safely until I finished that Rasna box. Since my love for superheroes wasn’t shared by the rest of the family, i couldn’t coax them into buying me the entire costume, which I remember seeing on a mannequin in Parthas, cochin. 🙂 So I made by own er, costume. There had to be a spider logo on the chest, but since I couldn’t get myself or anyone else to kill a spider, I used a small rubber octopus from an earlier era, tied to the chest with a string. Since I found my costume woefully inadequate, I made myself wrist and ankle guards with bajaj bulb covers, and completed the ensemble with my mom’s stitching thread, bunches of which disappeared regularly and reappeared on window sills, like those ‘mannat’ threads in temple trees. A super hero never cries, even if he gets thrashed. Since the real world identity was that of a photographer, this one was the only superhero to be snapped. No, its not going to be shared :p

    But just because they can’t feel it too
    Doesn’t mean that you have to forget

    He Man was the next to be created, I wonder if any of you remember the tiny comics that used to come in batches of four. Anyway, this costume was made with the liberal use of notebook paper and tape, with Dad’s permanent markers used to make the bold cross at the centre of the chest guard and a carved coconut branch for the sword. The neighbourhood cat was usually scared out its peaceful afternoon snooze by a branch wielding kid, poking at it with the branch/sword and willing it to become Battle Cat. It was soon discovered that attacks against He Man were considerably lesser if old newspapers were used instead of new notebook pages. The Masters in He Man’s universe tended to be evil and soon, even the newspaper supply stopped.

    ‘Film Man’ had to be the only original one in the series. One fine day, the drawer containing old film reels was discovered. It was also discovered that they tended to loop back when thrown onto say a window rod. They also made excellent wrist gear and even a goggle, though it did mean the superhero had to have a permanently upraised chin in order to be able to view his surroundings. Unlike films in general, this one didn’t have a happy ending, since many of those reels were important!!

    I’m sure may of you would have stories like these. Those were times of innocence, when super heroes seemed real, and life was an adventure waiting to happen. In spite of the thrashings that the super hero got, he was also comfortable in the knowledge that his parents were real super heroes who could solve every one of his problems, however large they seemed to him. And then he grew up…. reality happened, and suddenly, all he seemed to have were memories…

    Let your memories grow stronger and stronger
    ‘Til they’re before your eyes
    You’ll come back
    When they call you
    No need to say goodbye

    until next time, origins and sequels 🙂

    The song is one of my favourites. The Call,  by Regina Spektor from the soundtrack of “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian”

  • Rambowed

    I started reading a Pico Iyer book a few days back “Video night in Kathmandu”. I was hooked on from the first page because he started off with an icon from my childhood – Rambo 🙂 Pico Iyer writes about how in the mid 80s Rambo took over Asia – China, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, India lording over cinemas, inspiring local versions and becoming what the author calls (then) America’s single biggest export, and the most powerful force in Asia that autumn.

    I could identify totally with this. I still remember the trips to Guruvayur, the famous temple town in Kerala. No, I haven’t totally lost it. You see, the rest of the family went to Guruvayur with spirituality in mind, but for me, it was mostly materialistic, the kind of simple joy that a typical 7 year old finds in staying in a hotel for a few days, having ‘non home’ food three times a day, and most importantly, after convincing everyone on how intact his spiritual outlook is, manages to charm his way into getting himself a few toys. The strange thing was, the toy shops that abounded around the temple had some excellent collection of superhero stickers, labels for notebooks and various knick knacks that I could never find in Cochin. So I always made it a point to devote a lot of time to checking out the stuff on display before I made a purchase.

    [Aside: I also remember buying my first and only guitar there – a plastic contraption with Rishi Kapoor and Karz on the packaging]

    And that’s how I found a toy set that enthralled me for (I think) at least a year. It was a Rambo kit! And in the days that followed, several citizens of a certain university campus in Cochin claimed to see a creature that suddenly sprang out of the bushes and from behind the acacia trees, dressed in (what were formerly decent) t shirts and trousers, with dark green crayon marks on them, similar to the ones on the face, with a cloth around his head and carrying plastic bows, and arrows that stuck to conducive walls using vacuum, and with a plastic gun and a sheathed plastic knife inserted into the trouser loops. The outdoor covert operations lasted only a few days, since, after scaring an old woman, the creature was captured, hauled (bawling) to his mom’s presence and subjected to severe interrogation, and mild physical punishment which resulted in more bawling, and confiscation of weapons. The weapons were returned the next day, but the theatre of overt operations was restricted to indoors. More than a couple of decades later, these memories came storming back when I read the book, and as though the cosmos was conspiring, I got to know that Rambo (Part 4) was premiering that night on television.

    But though he had conquered enemies in Vietnam and Afghanistan, Rambo was yet to face an Asian force, that having been born in the late 70s, would prove a formidable opponent to the aged warrior – D, no, not the one with the shades and company, but my wife. Yes, you could  argue that she has shady company too, but I shall ignore that for now. And that was how Rambo lost his first battle, as D refused to  even entertain the thought of watching the movie, and an agitated fan helplessly watched Cloverfield on another channel. D had drawn first blood!! Maybe I should practice my bawling.

    until next time, marital laws!!