He says his name ‘has a ring to it’ with the Count attached. Being his blog-sister, and an older one at that, I gotta indulge him. Hence Count Bawa it is.

The Count and I go a long way back, to the time I was taking my first tentative (if you can call it that) steps in blogging. He was one of the early readers (and still is one, by the way). One day back then apparently I had come to him in his dreams, as his teacher in college no less, and ordered him to eat carrots as they were good for his eyes.

I tell you, the things teachers are at liberty to do in dreams! I mean, I’d like to ask Usha, a teacher friend of mine, if she can go around ordering her students to eat carrots in real life. Before long she would have a revolution on her hands, a Carrot Party on the lines of the Boston Tea party of yore, with her students dumping sacks of carrots into the nearest river, though I kind of think the parents might side with the teacher on this.

Anyway, getting back to the Count, it seems it occurred to him at that point that anyone who comes in your dream (and orders you around to boot) gotta be someone special. So he promptly adopted me as his sister. I am reaping the benefits still. And what luck, all only for walking into a dream and forcing carrots on people. Oh well, let me not harp too much on carrots. This post is about Count Bawa and not carrots.

But.. it will thrill the Count to bits if I bring chocolates into the picture. He’d probably turn cartwheels and go ‘yahoooo’ in addition. Yup, he is that crazy about chocolates. If only he could he’d have a galaxy of chocolates at his disposal, not a spaceship though, for then he’d be soon ship-less having nibbled constantly on it, which is not so good when your aim is to hop from one chocolate star to the next.

Count Bawa is a big hit with pretty much everyone. They all think he is the cat’s whiskers, and come to think of it, so he is. Oh scratch that, he is not just the whiskers, but the whole goddamn cat. You see, he is crazy of them little fur-balls that go meow-meow. His other activities include calling you up on  your birthday and singing (now, don’t get scared, he sings a pretty mean Happy Birthday To You!), treating you to sev usal, taking you out for a Chinese dinner, buying you cookies, gifting you books for no particular reason at all than that it makes him happy, and even sending chewies as gift for your dog. But to me, his most admirable quality is the conversation one can have with him, and also the way he balances a pretty level head on his young shoulders. He is someone who is willing to listen to your point of view too, without getting all het up or being offended. That breed is pretty rare to come by among us humans and not just among the young.

Now let me see. Count, Carrots, Chocolates, Cartwheels, Cats. There is one more C, an important one that I missed talking about. Chameleons. The Count loves them and goes lyrical about its tail, the scales, the eyes and what not, while I shudder listening to him. Well, once in a while when I meet them by chance (ha, catch me going looking for them!) I do take pictures with my telephoto lens, from a safe distance, and post them on my photo-blog for him. One’s gotta do what one can for one’s bro. And what does he do in return? Posts pictures of the scary buggers taken off the net, on my Facebook wall. Brothers, I tell you!

The Count is taking part in the A to Z Challenge 2014 too. So what are you waiting for? Go pay the young novelist-in-the-making a visit at his blog page, ‘And I Write’. Tell him the Carrot Tyrant sent you, and ask him if he still remembers to take his daily dose of carrots. When you are there you will find he has another ‘C’ to his credit. He is a foodie and a darn good cook too! 😀

©Shail Mohan 2014

Some B-posts from the A to Z Challenge worth checking:

The Breasts Speak

B bedazzles Bollywood

B for Bloggers meet-My very first