Some Childhood Escapades - 1

Since in the past two blog posts I've been dwelling on some of my childhood incidents and I thought I may as well enumerate the ones that would underscore the fact that I was marked out to live out a life that borders on the weird and the unstable. As of today my sister who is seven years elder to me still survives so that she can affirm the veracity of the stories and that there seems to be no exaggeration in them. My wife who has heard of these from my parents knows about their authenticity but then others, since my parents are no longer alive, may assume that she has been credulous and accepted whatever nonsense I've given her. Whether it will be believed or not I proceed to relate them as they seem to be interesting.

ALMOST KIDNAPPED:

As a  very young baby I seemed to have been born in quite favorable circumstances.  Since there is in India, a preference to fair babies, perhaps people were partial to me because, as a very young boy, I was really very fair until I chose to lose all that during geological field-work which I largely did without a hat. I didn't quite like the idea of being too fair and would rather have had an average Indian complexion. As a toddler I was being wheeled around various places around my house in a perambulator - sometimes by my parents and at other times by our servant who would be asked by my mother to take me around the area.

And it so happened that one day the servant had decided to wheel the perambulator with me in it to some unknown location. There are two versions of the story : what I remember my grandfather and my mother telling me is that another derelict with a criminal record who knew that I belonged to that house came running and cautioned my parents that I was being wheeled away by our servant somewhere. From what I remember, the elders of my family went in great haste and found that the servant had taken me along Mysore Road and that he was given a sound thrashing.

My sister who would have been around eight years then recalls it differently. She says that someone came and reported that I was abandoned at Mysore Road and the elders proceeded thence and found me deprived of a gold chain and other valuable items and retrieved me.

Perhaps since my sister was a little older, what she remembers is more authentic.

THE FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL:

My first year at school was a rather happy time. I was admitted to an elite school - The Baldwin Girls High School at Richmond Town, Bangalore in kindergarten - what was called 'A'- Class and it was a co-educational school at the kindergarten level.  The very first day of school I was sent accompanying my sister. Those days  the route 16 used to ply from Gandhi Bazaar to Shivaji Nagar and we would board the bus at the West Gate of Lalbagh. Some of the 16 route buses would take a right turn at the Double Road - Lalbagh Road intersection and proceed along the Langford Road to Nanjappa Circle and thence turn left to Rhenius Street to later join Richmond Road before proceeding to Shivaji Nagar. I have a picture in my mind's eye that I and my sister got down at Rhenius Street and proceeded inside the school through the rear entrance.

Upon entering the school my sister told me sternly "Deepak! I'll now take you to your class and leave you there. After you finish your class, you come and sit below this tree and wait for me till I come. Do you understand? You wait for me till I come!! O.K?"

I thought I had understood her. Worse, she thought I had understood her!! And so it happened that I merrily attended the kindergarten class and we had a fun time with the class teacher whose name I vaguely recollect as Sabrina. Though I have only a faint memory of her name, I have a distinct visual impression of her - a lean spritely woman with a stern face and attitude which meant business. She was attired in a floral skirt and had thick lipstick. These images stick vividly to my mind. We had a pleasant class with dancing around in circles (Ring a ring of roses?) etc. and by 11:30 our classes ended.

Gradually all my classmates left and I proceeded to sit beneath the tree on a circular stone bench that ringed it. Soon I found myself alone in the whole wide compound. The school was strangely silent and to my perception no one seemed to be around. I don't know how long I might have waited, but for a child even a half an hour wait seems interminably long. I further had no idea that everyone from higher classes were inside their classrooms attending lectures. I had the idea that everyone had left and the school was actually empty. (You all might have a laugh if I were to tell you that they expected me to sit there till 3:00 p.m. when my sister would come out of her class!!)

So it happened that I picked myself up, picked up my books and gradually ventured out of the rear gate. I didn't quite know what to do. Then I chanced to see a 16 number bus going in the reverse direction. So I ran behind the bus and made a note of the direction it went. As I reached the spot that I had last noted I saw another bus with the same number and ran behind it and noted whence it went. By this process I remember to have reached Double Road and by that time I had forgotten the purpose of getting back home. I remember having stood by a small time general merchant's shop run by a Muslim and watching the happenings around.  I remember an army man in uniform asking the merchant for an egg. He cracked it in the middle and poured out the yellow contents into his uplifted mouth. I was fascinated for I had never seen an egg till then. We were Brahmins, you see! The army man asked for another egg and did the same thing. Later a young kid with a Muslim cap came over and asked the merchant for a cigarette peppermint. I recall that in those days there used to be a peppermint in the shape of a cigarette - complete with a red tip and ash. Since I had seen my father smoke cigarettes and I also desired to try a cigarette I yearned for this cigarette peppermint.  The Muslim boy asked - "Cigarette mithai Ek!". After relishing it slowly, pretending to smoke, and eat it in parts he asked the shopkeeper "Aur Ek !" I was watching all these happenings in awe. I would have loved to buy one but didn't even have the bus fare.

In the meantime my sister has come out of the class and noticed that I was not under the tree where I was supposed to be. All hell broke loose and messages were flashed to my father who had his shop in Avenue Road and a great pandemonium had set in. I was blissfully unaware of all this, and after I had sufficient entertainment at the Muslim's shop, I thought of home and how to get back to it. As I was walking I saw another 16 bus and ran behind it. I remember to have walked along Lalbagh Road and turned towards Shivaji Theatre.  On coming to J.C. Road I turned left and kept walking aimlessly and by sheer chance I came to a petrol bunk near Minerva Circle. This was a place I was quite familiar : my grandfather would get the car filled with gas there and would take me there quite often. Without feeling excited - I never even had the feeling or the knowledge that I was lost - I casually made it to my house at Ramiyengar Road in Vishveswarapuram.

My mother was astounded. My grandfather was even more so as to how a five year old, the very first day of school, had made it from Richmond Town to his house in V.V. Puram. By the flurry in the house I realized that I had done something really, really wrong but  didn't quite know what. My father was doing the rounds of the Police Stations and the random words 'Vishu',(my father) 'Police' 'Avanu sikkabatte regutthane' (he'll get very angry...) etc were floating in the air around me. They were all trying to question me as to how I possibly made it home and I knew I had done something gravely wrong. I was in one of the interior halls when I heard people announcing 'Vishu Bandha' (Vishu has come) and I made a quick appeal to my mother that I would be hiding in the store room (ugrana) and not to tell him.

I hear something indistinct being spoken...

My father : "HOwda?" (Is it?)
My father: "YELLI Avanu" (Where is he)

In panic I peek out, only to see my mother pointing to the store room.

Then my father arrives where I am  ...   :-)     :-)


                                        xxx

A whole pocketful of marbles

When I was a boy of four or five, like every other boy, I would delight in collecting marbles of various hues and colors. My collection of marbles would give me an emotional high the likes of which I've scarcely experienced in my later years. I wouldn't be content in leaving some of them in a box on a table but  would insist on loading both the pockets of my knickers as I would frolic around the spacious compound of my house. The pockets would be bulging and the elders could scarcely fathom the delight that the collection of marbles would give me. I reckon I must have had over sixty-five or seventy of them in various colors. I must add that the marbles of those days really used to look very attractive. Some would be milky white with a fuzzy green band running sinuously around it. Some would be a dark brown translucent types. The patterns were really so varied and so attractive that it would set a child's imagination on fire.  Those days boys would even have iron ball-bearings of some wheel of a truck to be used at various games that involved marbles. Even I had two or three of this type and to get one of this type a boy had to shell out 25 paise, which was a princely sum for a boy, to pay a mechanic at some automobile garage. I really loved my marble collection.

Though I had enough and more of these marbles my greed for more of them was immense. Hence it happened that one of the gamin boys who was about a year older than me and lived a few streets away in a poorer section of the city happened to come by my house one day. He saw my bulging knicker pockets and invited me to a game of what in Kannada of those days was called 'goli - goli'. The word 'goli' in Kannada meant marble and this game involved taking careful aim at a marble of the opponent placed six or seven feet away and hitting it with a marble of yours. It involves accurate aiming and throwing. If you strike the opponent's marble, that one becomes yours to possess.

 In my greed for more marbles I coveted the collection of marbles the gamin boy had and got into the game of 'goli-goli'. This boy being about a year older was much more skilled than me at the game. After about ten minutes of playing, I had ended up losing about eight or ten marbles from my collection. My mother who was watching all this happening cautioned me to stop the game lest I lose more and become morose. But by then I wanted to at least regain the marbles I had lost so I continued. Over the next ten minutes I lost another ten. My mother kept on warning me that I would lose my entire marble collection and asked me to desist from further play. But by then I was too committed to recoup my losses. So it happened that over the next forty-five minutes to one hour of play I lost my entire marble collection. This despite repeated warnings by my mother not to venture further at various stages of the game.

After I lost my entire marble collection I started wailing out loud and asked my mother to retrieve my marble collection from the boy. Thankfully my mother rejected my plea in no uncertain terms. She told me "I had warned you to be careful but you didn't heed my warnings. This is a lesson for you not to gamble. After you lost a few marbles you should have realized that the other boy is more skilled at the game than you. You should have learnt to quit when the going was not good."

I am proud to say that my mother was fair and just in this incident. I am also proud to say that the gamin boy who was only five or six years old felt quite secure with my mother - that she wouldn't ever deprive him of what was rightfully his because he hung around in our compound till it was dark and time to leave. If he had felt insecure with my mother and felt that she would snatch his winnings he would have tried to scoot from the scene as soon as he had collected his booty.

Well, I should have learnt my lesson from this incident, but I regret to say that in several incidents even after I had become an adult I refused to abandon my path when I had ample knowledge and evidences that things would turn out badly. I don't seem to have the skills to minimize my losses but persist obstinately towards  perdition with the idea that, since I've already invested so much, why quit? This weakness of mine ruined my health and many possibilities of effecting improvements in my circumstances. Another observation that this incident draws to my mind is how people, despite having enough and more of wealth, desire to snatch it out of their own friends who may not be as well-off as they are, out of uncontrollable greed. But if disappointments and failures are to serve as instructions, one can learn to be a little careful as one walks through life.