Little do people know about the scrawny man who sits two rows behind me in class. The sunken eyes and dead expressions seem to deliver an extremely negative impression of a creature who can make some extremely bizarre, yet unique songs that you can find on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music. If not with his shiny black guitar that I assume he loves very much, he can be seen with his closest friend Gautami.
Tejas’ most interesting stories seem to stem from his house, where he is alone most of the time. He will begin by establishing that his house is near a lake. This is very crucial, it will explain the thick trees that grow near his house and seem to burst into his windows. Trees that are filled with huge bats that crawl about at night. Once he has established this extremely gothic castle like house in some corner of Bangalore in your Shantinagar mind, he will begin to tell you some amusing stories, like the time he had a surprise visitor in the bathroom.
One evening, he heard some noise in the bathroom and contrary to popular mindset decided to go inspect. He did not seem to find anything and he went back. The same night, as he was brushing his teeth, he hears the flapping of wings. He is now sharing the bathroom with a mother bird and her chicks. A confused Tejas could only think of how it was, “going to be so weird to poop in front of a bird.”
To excuse himself from such awkwardness, the next day, armed with sunglasses to protect his eyes and a stick in his hand, he went to the bird and shooed it away by violently swinging the stick. The mother bird ran away and came back only to take her little chicks one by one. A victorious Tejas discarded whatever was left of the nest and continued his business.
Apart from his house, he loves spending time with his father, who is the only person that can make Tejas smile for real (That’s right, all those smiles he laboriously displays are fake and forced- he tells me with a smile). His father, who he meets on the weekends, tells him some wonderfully funny stories- like the story about one of the first beedis in Bangalore being Mangalore Ganesh beedi and when their competitors came, they decided to call themselves Kerala Dinesh beedi. Tejas laughed after he told me this, so I might have just seen an original laughter, or at least I hope I did.
There’s ghosts in the way you move
And all I can do is groove
With you
You know that I see it too
You want me to move with you
With you
There’s ghosts in the way you move
And I am in love with you.
– Tejas Ramakrishna, Ghosts.
FreeRovingBovine 