A few days ago I received this note message from a sulekha blogger, Bina Gupta

“please write one miracle story for the  child in you”

…..this one, Bina Gupta is for you and the child in me: ixedoc

Kids can be darn stupid – we all know that – we were kids once. Fantasies and fairy tales, toads that turn into princess or pumpkins that become chariots – silly, riotously juvenile; Yet who among us can deny we didn’t pray for a miracle or two when confronted with an algebra test on Monday, praying for lightning to strike the school down or illness fell the teacher? And how inane of us to believe in stories that cautioned us on how God saw everything and listed our sins – ouch, how awfully hot that stolen eraser suddenly felt in your pocket!!

I too, dreamt of the day I would become rich. Who didn’t? Grandiose were ambitions. Yet, one day, in 1962, I recollect sending a legendary teacher, a pencil sketch on my school exercise note book page and asking him to mail it back with his autograph. My father, of the postal service, shook his head and just muttered, tsk, tsk, as he saw the ‘to’ address. I asked him to stamp and post that envelope with the sketch. But, he mailed it anyway, he didn’t want to break my make believe world. Ground realities were different. Adults knew that. Kids didn’t know, nor cared to.

Six weeks later, one Tuesday, an impressive long envelope, embossed with a seal arrived, addressed to me and inside was my sketch, autographed along with an equally impressive typed letter of the legend's letterhead signed by one Dutta, Personal Secretary of the personality I had mailed my amateur sketch to.

I ran to the black pyramidal box, the ancient telephone of those days and dialed the rotary disc with my trembling fingers…daddy, daddy, I got the autograph I wanted…I received an envelope!!!

There was a long silence at the receiver’s end of the line: he was at a loss for words. He couldn’t believe a national icon would even care to read, let alone reply, and comply with a silly request from a small boy. But for me, young and audacious, I was till at the age when non-belief in Santa was sacrilege, and the belief that God poked the eyes of little children who disobeyed parents, a divine ordination…….nothing was impossible.

Today, nearly five decades after that momentous and memorable day, I hold the faded, much creased, dog eared yellowed notebook page with the  pencil sketch – I shudder and quake as I smoothen out the frayed paper and linger on the drawing and the royal blue ink autograph: A treasured memento this – from the President of India, S. Radhakrishnan.

Nearing sixty today I still believe in miracles – still believe that rainbow’s ends have pots of gold, still believe that I will make it big, real big. .............for me, like for Bina, Santa never dies….