The way we enjoyed English films as kids

Hello Folks

As kids we loved English movies. What did we make of them? Well... perhaps not much! Please watch this 4 minute film to precisely enjoy the way we enjoyed English movies.


Click on this line to get a feeling of how we enjoyed English movies as kids !


If you don't get what they are saying, don't worry - you are not supposed to. It's fake English !


           xxx

A spectacular Short Film !!!

Hello Folks

I give the link of a spectacular short film. I liked it very much! It is only 8 minutes!

http://youtu.be/75wNgCo-BQM


                          xxx


                               

Najam Sethi - The Broadminded Pakistani Chief Minister

Hello Folks

I give here the Youtube Link of a video interview aired over GEO TV of Pakistan with Najam Sethi called '10 Blunders Pakistan Made'. Najam Sethi is the present Chief Minister of the Punjab province of Pakistan and seems to be a broadminded liberal who has alternate views about some historical facts. Whether what he says is true or not, at least he has a more tolerant view of events in Pakistan's past. Such views can greatly aid in the developing of peace and friendliness in the sub-continent. But I wish him a long life and seek God's blessings for it, for in the nature of things in the present world, such liberal ideas are scarcely tolerated let alone being popular and thriving.

Unfortunately the interview is mostly in Urdu, but many Indians with an adequate knowledge of Hindi can understand it in its entirety.  Please click on the link below to watch and listen  -

Please CLICK ON THIS LINE TO WATCH AND LISTEN -




                                  xxx

If I Owned The Internet !!

Hello Folks

I invite you guys to watch this short but exhilarating video of what everyone hopes from the Internet and more particularly from 'Life' in general!.


To watch Rives at his attractive best tune on your speakers and CLICK ON THIS LINE !



             XXX

A Really Interesting Way of Spending Time !

Folks! It is quite tragic that people get bogged down with unpleasant activities and things when the same time can be used in an engrossing way - I give this with the caveat that it should not become an addiction - but I present a link with a Radio Talk-show host, Rives, who gives an awesome talk on one of the more harmless ways of spending time. Get entertained and also get tutored!

Please view this talk by CLICKING ON THIS LINE !



                                   XXX

Enlightened Interpretations

Exquisite Hoysala sculptures with defaced torsos and amputated arms are cited by some historians as examples of the carnage perpetrated by invading armies in India.  A more enlightened interpretation with a greater sense of understanding and love would describe these as the 'sensitive efforts' of Muslim sculptors who superimposed ‘some Islamic elements and Islamic motifs’ on an underlying Hindu aesthetic to bring about a grand synthesis of Hindu and Muslim cultures and traditions’

A synthesis of the grand Hindu & Islamic traditions

New ways of learning - how do we get to promote it?

Having spent my entire student life as a very bad student, I was always fascinated with the possibilities of making learning interesting and to push children to eagerly seek knowledge.  I was always scared that I just couldn't learn well enough and was even afraid to try.

This makes me to paste the link of a Ted Talk by Sugata Mitra who has interesting ideas on the matter and who has also done a few things on this aspect.


PLEASE CLICK MOUSE ON THIS LINE TO WATCH TED TALK


Please click on the link above.

                                           xxx

Film Hoaxes

Just today by pure serendipity I came across a name 'Yuri Gadyukin'. It turned out that this character is a great hoax who never existed. His 'Home Page' on the Internet gives his biographical sketch as follows :

"Yuri Ivanovich Gadyukin was born in Leningrad in 1932.  He fought in the siege of the city in 1944 and shortly thereafter may have been an extra in Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, becoming inspired by the great filmmaker.  He directed one feature film in his native Russia before defecting to the UK in 1955.  In England he directed two films and had started on his third when he was murdered by his lead actor, Harry Weathers in 1960."

Quite an impressive life-sketch for a man who never existed!!

Confusedcoyote writing in his blog 'Under the small umbrella' is generous in his praise about Yuri Gadyukin. His blog says:

If you've never heard of the Russian director, Yuri Gadyukin, you should try and find out more about his films. With a mix of satire and the new social realism that was coming into cinema in the late 1950s. Yuri is best know for his last, unfinished, film, The Graven Idol.

With the upcoming film that shows a filmmakers efforts to finish his unfinished [some may say unfinishable] film. It seems that the director was ahead of his time if you watch the below footage. It was found when George Lewis was in London looking through archival material. It seems to be part of an un-broadcast interview that Yuri gave in either 1959 or 1960 (the date is unknown).

“When George Lewis, a hip young movie director, visits the Chipperfield archive he discovers the rushes of the last movie by his personal hero, the Russian filmmaker Yuri Gadyukin. Gadyukin, a charismatic dictator of a director, came to London in the late 1950s. His film “The Graven Idol” was abandoned when Gadyukin was murdered by lead actor Harry Weathers. George gets the support of a Hollywood studio and, with the help of a crew lead by Producer Emily and Editor Kate, starts to reconstruct Gadyukin’s film.

Through the eyes of a “making of” documentary we see George and his crew sift through the hundreds of hours of improvised material that Gadyukin shot. Meanwhile Emily investigates the circumstances of Gadyukin’s death. But neither project proves to be all that it seems.

Gadyukin’s film is either the work of a genius or a madman. Kate and George struggle with the myriad plots and subplots that seem to spiral out of control. In doing so, closeness develops between them, threatening Kate’s marriage. Meanwhile, the crew of “The Graven Idol” prove tightlipped about a project that ended most of their careers. Even investigation into the circumstances of Gadyukin’s death raises more questions than it answers.

With the studio putting on pressure for results, George and his team find themselves being drawn into a web of madness that takes over their lives. Can they unravel the mystery of “The Graven Idol” before history repeats itself?”

Kevin Morris writes with a tinge of irony in 'The Daily Dot':

"Long before the autopsy, London police could guess what killed Yuri Gadyukin. When they pulled his body from the river beneath the Hammersmith Bridge on July 26, 1960, they saw a bullet-sized hole that had ripped apart his skull.

Authorities had been searching for the Russian director for weeks. By the time they yanked him from the Thames, they'd surely heard rumors percolating down through country's film community of catastrophic arguments on the set of his latest film, The Graven Idol, between Gadyukin and the film's star, Harry Weathers. Others whispered that Gadyukin owed money to a local gangster—cash he'd used to finance the film.

Perhaps you've heard of Gadyukin? He was a star of early Soviet cinema before fleeing to England. You can read about his life on a fansite and a Facebook group. You can watch him melt down in a British television interview, storming off stage in spittle-spewing rage. For nearly four years, there were Wikipedia and Internet Movie Database articles about him, brimming with citations from authoritative Russian sources.

Those entries are now gone. Yuri Gadyukin did not owe money to a gangster. His final film was not swirling out of control. Weathers did not kill him. His body was not found beneath the Hammersmith Bridge.

Gadyukin never died, in fact, because he never existed."

Morris adds : "It was not a hoax for hoax's sake, born of boredom and a passing interest in wrecking things up on the Internet. Yuri Gadyukin had purpose. He had so much potential. He was born of exhaustion, beers, and Jorge Luis Borges. He could have (and still might) make two British filmmakers famous."

Further he adds:

"It was not a hoax for hoax's sake, born of boredom and a passing interest in wrecking things up on the Internet. Yuri Gadyukin had purpose. He had so much potential. He was born of exhaustion, beers, and Jorge Luis Borges. He could have (and still might) make two British filmmakers famous.

he hoax that fooled the largest encyclopedia and Internet movie database on the planet for nearly four years began when Gavin Boyter and Guy Ducker stumbled into a Belgian restaurant in London in 2002. They were tired. Boyter was an inexperienced director who would sometimes shoot reams of footage in a single day. Along with Ducker—who has editing credits on more than 20 films—he'd just passed the whole day cutting down footage for his first film, Anniversary.

The drinks and exhaustion sparked their imagination. They tossed out fantastic hypotheticals, wondering what kind of director would "shoot an insane amount of material, more material than anyone could ever watch," as Ducker later recalled. "What kind of person would shoot an endless film, just never stop shooting?"

The two friends were forging a fascinating character—a fictional marriage of legendary Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and control-freak geniuses like Stanley Kubrick, an archetypal director slowly creeping into madness. Or as Ducker described him, "a slightly psychotic person. And a slightly manipulative person."

They were creating Yuri Gadyukin."

People being what they are, and the past Russian government being what it was who really knows the truth about a film like Bezhin Meadow - whether such a film was really commissioned and if commissioned was it destroyed, or whether the entire story is a grand hoax like Yuri Gadyukin! Well, anything is possible.

And the boy grows to become 13 ...

A film was made about him but noting much happened to his lot. Nothing ever happens and watching such videos perhaps desensitizes us. But I give it here nevertheless. PLEASE CLICK ON THIS LINE TO WATCH VIDEO


                     XXX

A piece of another boy's childhood !

And there are boys from various backgrounds... CLICK ON THIS LINE TO VIEW VIDEO !




                              XXX

A piece of my childhood - Age 4 !!

Please click on THIS LINE OF TEXT to experience a fragment of my childhood at age four or five !!!

                             xxxx

The importance of meaning in one's work

I was an employee of a government organisation where, when I joined service, the official policy was "send  geologists to field-work for 180 days".  And for a lot of us who were youngsters at that time we would rather be in the city with easy access to friends and companionship, entertainment, proper housing and living conditions, tasty and edible food prepared by our caring mothers... and the list is quite long.

In the field the things were rather strenuous. In the first place the jeep drivers were a rather recalcitrant lot given to excessive drinking; they would steal petrol and we were accountable for the petrol efficiency of the jeep; some would bring prostitutes to the camp or harass village belles in other ways and put the officers responsible for the camp into grave danger of being upbraided by irate villagers; some would cause the jeep to have a 'mechanical failure' late in the afternoon as you were eager to return to camp after a day in the hot sun and so on. Then there were quite a few times when the tents would get uprooted in fierce winds and it has happened a few times that the night had to be spent soaking in the rain with the bed and clothes getting totally wet. In summers the tents would become extremely hot and, since there was no possibility of having electricity in the tents, there would be no fans. Having been accustomed to all these contraptions of modern living, we would rue the time that we would have to spend in the field . And there was this stipulation - 180 days in the field - this even if you have completed your target. For people like me who were extremely dependent on companionship and friends, the time in the field would be quite lonesome. The worst aspect was a sort of meaninglessness that would creep into your efforts when your ideas were trashed.

My official assignments had taken me to Melkote in Mandya District in 1986-87. I was in a terrible mental condition and since the sickness had continued for over three years by then, it was quite understandable that my bosses could no longer be lax with me and I was required to spend the days in the field and away from Bangalore. Actually I needed medical care but mental disorder is something that cannot easily be empathized with. Everything appears normal so whence the need for consideration? But I do confess that I was treated magnificently well by my bosses. With my equals it was not quite so easy.

The reason why I say this is because my condition was so wretched that I had completely failed to notice that the Melkote hill is actually a southerly low plunging anticline with parts of the town in the axial valley. The A-C joints that seem to cut the rocks as if a knife has sliced through butter. One look at it and it is so obvious even to a blind man that there should be a fold axis (b axis) perpendicular to it meaning that the fold axis would be plunging at a very low angle southerly. Prominent as it is, I noticed it when I re-visited the place sometime early this year (2013) when I made the trip there with my friends.  I shudder to think what all I may have missed during field work when I was sick.  Luckily my colleagues were not generous to affix my name in the crucial part of the report, or rather were generous to omit my name out of it, so that it technically exempts me from responsibility of having missed that geological feature.

Well, the Universal intelligence has His own ways !!

All this seemed to be put in a proper perspective by the TED TALK whose link I have given below and how the absence of meaning for one's efforts can be demoralizing.


Please tune up your speakers and click on the link below to get an understanding about 'efforts and meaning'.

http://embed.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_what_makes_us_feel_good_about_our_work.html






                       xxx

On Autobiographical writings - a brief observation

Never attempt a self-critical autobiography. All autobiographical writings should be self-laudatory. If you want people to know about your dislikable traits, allow your enemies to do it. They'll be pleased to do a more honest and thorough job of it! A self-laudatory way is the only HONEST way to write about yourself. Attempting a critical approach of your own character is fakery.

Bombay in 1969 - 3

We both were having a whale of a time in Bombay for the past four days and so it was time for something to go wrong. After roaming around the city throughout the day we arrived at Victoria Terminus one night at around 8:15 p.m. and bought train tickets to Chembur hoping to return home and hit the sack. We went to the platform and saw a train which was to proceed in that direction and entered a carriage that didn't have the lights on "as yet!". The train was quite empty although there were a six or seven passengers scattered around the bogie. We occupied a window seat and presently the train started.

It happened that the train didn't halt at the first station. Then it skipped halting at the next station. Then it didn't halt at the third station too and we began to get concerned. Where was the train heading? Then it skipped halting at the fourth station and we realised there was something seriously wrong! I told my friend Kumar that Dadar was an important station and if it doesn't halt there we are done for. As the train skipped halting at subsequent stations we were dismayed to see that it didn't halt at Dadar too. All sorts of thoughts began racing in our minds and we came near the door wondering what we should do. We were at the door and after Dadar as the train was heading towards Matunga, we noticed the train reducing speed. Then it decelerated even further. And a little slower still. Then it was cruising at a steady slow speed and I thought of jumping off the train. But there was darkness beside the tracks and the height between the carriage and the ground was considerable. When we also took into account that the train was moving at a medium steady speed it didn't seem wise enough to jump. I just took courage and jumped off. I picked myself up and began running alongside the coach trying to goad my friend to jump off too.The train was moving steadily. The train reduced speed still further but even though my friend desired to take the plunge he seemed to lack the nerve when he considered the height of the train. I was running beside the coach urging my friend to jump off and he was still lingering on nervously. The train slowly started accelerating and I was seriously worried for my friend.

"Dhumko boli magane!! Dhumko nimmajji!!!" I started abusing him in Kannada and strongly urging him to jump off. Luckily he mustered up the courage to leap off the train.

Fortunately nothing happened to him as he hit the ground  and we slowly walked towards the Matunga Station and ascended the platform to get into a regular train to Chembur.

                                 xxx

Bombay in 1969 - 2

Continued from the earlier post...

We entered the building and took the elevator to Mr. Ramachandra's flat and pressed on the bell. No one seemed to respond.  We tried again. Yet no response. After two or three trials we began to get worried. What if he is not in town? Where would we stay? We later rang the doorbell of the adjacent flat and presently a young woman of about 28 years opened the door. We told her that we were students from Bangalore and that we were looking for Mr. Ramachandra.

"He has been admitted to The Bombay Hospital with an attack of typhoid" she told us and our hearts sank. Mr. Ramachandra lived alone in Bombay and perhaps was not married. We had our luggage with us and didn't quite know what to do. We were students travelling with barely 200 Rs. in our pockets and we just couldn't afford a hotel room!

As the lady watched Kumar and I discussed among ourselves in Kannada and told him about my cousins in Chembur but that I didn't have the address of the house. I said that I had a feeble picture in my mind's eye of the house as I had visited it when I was four years old and that I had a vague picture of the approach to the house from the Chembur Station, as I was involved in an escapade with it at age four. Since we had no other alternative, I suggested that we leave our luggage with the lady and try our luck at Chembur.

We asked the lady if we could leave our luggage with her as we intended to try locating our cousins' house at Chembur and if we were successful we would retrieve the luggage. Fortunately the kind lady agreed and we left her with our baggage as we headed towards Chembur.

We walked to the Victoria Terminus (V.T. as it was called then) and bought train tickets for Chembur. Upon reaching Chembur, in a somewhat instinctive way, I took the appropriate exit and walked along a road anxiously looking around. At the right crossroad I hesitantly took a right turn consulting my mental images of as a four year boy and proceeded a few steps and looked into a house...

My cousin who was standing at his door saw me and called "Baa,... Baa...!"  (Come... Come...)

Kumar and I heaved a sigh of relief. We entered and told my cousin the entire story and said that we would be staying with them until the rest of our student party arrived at Bombay. Later we fetched our luggage from Colaba and had a comfortable stay at Chembur.

The next few days were sheer enjoyment. We roamed around Bombay avidly devouring every landscape. I specifically wanted to savour the city in all its essence and we toured all the important sights. One evening we got on to the flyover somewhere near Marine Drive (I think it was a relatively new feature in Bombay) and watched the cars whizzing past below us. We walked past the roads around Fort several times hungrily looking at smuggled goods like watches and cameras. We barely had any money with us and the two of us put together may have had around 250 to 275 rupees. So it was the right time for one of our pockets to be picked and Kumar lost his purse to a pickpocket as we were avidly looking at smuggled wares near Fort.

I had heard about the sleaze in Bombay and the red light areas around Grant Road and was curious how the hell they looked and asked my cousin about it.

"Why the hell do you want to see Grant Road Man," he cautioned, "They'll knock off your underwears without knocking off your pants."

And we went up the Malabar Hills of which we had heard so much. The Boot House. Then we walked around the roads in Malabar hills and saw a pair of twelve storied buildings strategically located at one of the highest points of Malabar Hills. Twelve stories barely looks tall these days, but back in 1969 and to us from a smaller place like Bangalore it seemed considerable. We decided to explore further. We entered one of the buildings and saw that there was an elevator. We entered the elevator and pressed the switch to the highest floor (12th). On exiting the elevator we saw a nameplate KAMBHATTAS. We were two undersized seventeen-year-olds, thin and scrawny, and I wonder what impression we would be making in those high places. I was barely five feet two inches  (as I hadn't yet attained my full growth) and though Kumar was a few inches taller, both of us scarcely would have looked threatening. In any case I decided to press the door-bell of the Kambhattas.

Presently a well-dressed, fashionable middle aged lady opened the door partially and queried "Yes...???"

"Excuse me Madam, we two are students from Bangalore and touring Bombay," I said plainly, "and we thought we would enjoy a good view of Bombay from your balcony if you'd let us in..."

When I now consider the whole thing it looks so ridiculous that we could do such a thing! I can barely surmise what she felt but there was a twinkle in her eye as she let us in saying "Sure! Do come in and have a look!!!"

Totally un-selfconsciously we entered and stood quite a while on her balcony looking out into vast distances of Bombay, gesticulating with our hands and pointing to various landmarks, and discussing with ourselves.

After we had our eye-full, I said to her "Thanks, Ma'am for your courtesy" and left her behind wondering what this was all about.

When many years later I spoke to a friend about it, he remarked "If you were to do it now they would shoot you in the leg and call the police!!". True, those days there were no security, no collapsible gates, no checks, nothing.

                                        xxx

Bombay in 1969 - 1

As students of IInd year B.Sc.(Hons.), four of us aged about 17 years got a chance to go on an educational tour of India with post-graduates students who were in their early twenties. We were all keen to visit North India and jumped at the opportunity of going on the geological tour with the seniors.

However the experience was not so pleasant as we had expected. The whole tour was covered by train except for short tours when we were briefly stationed in larger towns.Our teachers were lucky to be comfortably travelling in First Class and getting sufficient sleep and rest by nights while we students had to suffer out sleepless nights as we squeezed into unreserved compartments in Third Class, and quite a few of us at times travelled throughout the night standing in toilets of the bogies. Days would have us trudging tens of kilometers in the hot sun at fieldwork and most of us were quite spent and exhausted as we hardly got any sleep where most often we could not even get a seat to sit down. Our teacher took it upon himself to 'toughen' the students for future jobs as geologists and I remember that once near Nagpur we walked from one town to another covering a distance of over twenty kilometers carrying bulky rock samples. By the middle of the tour, when we reached Bhilai where a major steel plant is located, we were quite pooped. At that town, a geologist from Karnataka who was in quite a senior position in the steel plant invited the entire group for a dinner at his house, but I could see that he was surprised to see us so spent and without spirits.

And so it happened that as we neared the last leg of the tour - there were still about 7 to 8 days left - and reached Baroda, one of my classmates - T.G.V Kumar, 'developed' an acute appendicitis condition. The teachers got quite apprehensive and took him to a doctor, and as the doctor set about to examine him, he squealed in great pain. The doctor expressed the opinion that he may need an urgent operation for appendicitis and it became quite a problem to admit him to a hospital in Baroda.  Kumar then suggested to the lecturer that he had a cousin in Bombay and that he would like to proceed there without delay and take treatment under  the cousin's hospitality. The lecturer felt that as we were to go to Bombay in a few days, it may be a good idea to send Kumar there immediately.  Later when Kumar and the rest of us students were in the hostel the lecturer announced to all of us :

"Kumar has to be taken forthwith to Bombay for treatment for an appendicitis condition. We need one of you to accompany him. Who among you is familiar with Bombay and is prepared to go?"

I saw this as a godsend opportunity to escape from the drudgery of sleepless nights and arduous fieldwork. But I didn't know a thing about Bombay. True! I had been there once when I was four years old, but I knew nothing about the place. Yet the torture of field work in the blazing sun could be avoided if I only were to risk it out with Kumar. I briefly weighed the options and boldly announced "Sir! I'm quite familiar with Bombay and am willing to accompany Kumar !"

The lecturer asked "Are you sure...?"

And somewhat nervously and feebly I said "yyes..."

Then it was decided that I and Kumar would proceed to Bombay from Baroda by a night Mail train. After a while, when there was an opportune moment, Kumar surreptitiously pulled me aside and whispered "hey! I'm not having any pain or any such nonsense. I'm just planning to get away from this drudgery and faked the whole thing!"

I looked at him totally surprised. He had done such a neat job of faking appendicitis. In any case I too wanted an escape and kept totally mute about the whole charade. That evening the entire group of students (nearly 30 of them) and  the lecturers came and gave us such a grand farewell at the station, that the others in the compartment were left wondering what it was all about! The spectacle was even further accentuated since there were a few attractive girls around in the train and everyone, especially after those days in the boondocks, wanted to draw their attention.

After the train left the station  Kumar and I settled down in our seats and got busy to find out how to reach our residence in Bombay. Kumar's cousin an engineer by name Ramachandra, apparently lived in an apartment in Colaba. Kumar had the name of the building where his cousin lived but didn't seem to have the precise address. I seem to remember the name of the building as 'Sunflower' but Kumar says it was more like 'Sunita'.  We next got busy asking our co-passengers as to how to get to Colaba from Bombay Central, and when they saw that we knew nothing of Bombay, they advised us to just tell the taxi wallah to take us to 'Afghan Church' in Colaba and try our luck around.

The train reached Bombay at around 6:00a.m. and we came out of the station and accosted a friendly-looking Sardar driver and told him that we were to go to Colaba, near 'Afghan Church'.  Those days I was not too familiar with spoken Hindi and found it somewhat difficult to even understand it.  We got into the rear seat of the taxi and as it coursed its way around I asked Kumar to keep a watch on the right side of the road while I ventured to keep watch on the left looking out for 'Sunita' building.

As we kept  a hawk's watch, soon we found that the signboards of shops had 'Colaba' written on them. I asked Kumar to become more alert as we had reached the vicinity of our destination. We kept on reading the building names and suddenly I espied 'Sunita'. I hastily asked the driver to halt and that we wanted to get down. "But you said Afghan Church..." he seemed to say in Hindi as he stopped the car.

                                                                          To be continued...

Bombay Trip at age four !

In 1956, when I was four years old, my father, mother, sister and I made a trip to Bombay. My paternal aunt and uncle with four of their five sons lived in Chembur. As a young kid I was fascinated by trains and yearned to travel in them. I was not too aware of the differences between the inter-city trains and the suburban trains of Bombay and I considered my cousins who traveled by trains everyday the luckiest youngsters alive. I remember to have had a really nice time at my uncle's house in Bombay and that was when I became familiar with Bill Haley and the Comets. I remember my uncle charming me by singing 'Mambo Rock'. I think the roads in Chembur were just then being laid, or at least being relaid, for I have a mental picture of I, my sister and my cousin munching at crisp rusks smeared with tomato ketchup as we were up on the terrace of the house in the hot afternoon sun watching road rollers ply in the distance over the freshly tarred roads again and again. That was the first time I had tasted tomato ketchup and simply loved it with the rusk. We would frequently course through the city in suburban trains and visit various relatives who were scattered over Bombay. I clearly remember my first experience of bhel-puri and paani-puri at the Marine Drive Chowpatty,  and if I remember right, one couldn't get them in Bangalore in 1956. At least I had not heard of it in Bangalore.

Well, it was a wonderful time at Bombay save for the statutory misadventure that I must have everywhere.  On a particular day my parents felt like leaving me with my cousin who was, at 13 years of age, nine years older than me, as they along with my sister went visiting. I was at home with my cousin who was busy with his affairs when at around 5:30 p.m. a friend of his visits. My cousin and his friend are chatting up in the garden of the house as I keep myself busy with some random toys strewn on the floor. At this stage everything with the universe is normal and is just as it should be. I am not complaining and my cousin is chatting up with a friend. After a considerable while, as I am playing with my toys, my cousin comes up to me and says in Kannada -

"Deepak! Naanu ninnage chocolate thogondubarakke hogutthaiddini, neenu illay irrutthiya?"

Meaning "Deepak! I am going out to get chocolates for you, can you remain here?"

I had not even thought of chocolates and suddenly this grand offer was like a divine gift. I agreed with alacrity and abandoned my toys.

"Neenu illay iru gotthaitha? Naanu ninage chocolate thogondu barokke hogutha iddini. Yellu hogabeda!"

Meaning "You remain here understood? I'm going to get chocolates for you. Don't go anywhere!"

As my mind was now keenly fixated on chocolates, I readily agreed to his words. And so it happens that he asks me to bolt the door from inside and quietly departs with his friend. Till about five minutes ago, the thought of chocolate had not even entered my mind. Now that my cousin had tempted me, I couldn't remove my mind from the thought of chocolate.  So I get to abandon my toys and my solo game with them, and stand by the door waiting for my cousin to return with the chocolates. Five minutes (?) pass and he doesn't come. Five more minutes (?) and still there is no sign. I keep waiting and am getting more and more anxious for those delectable chocolates and there seems to be no sign of my cousin. I remember his warning "Don't go anywhere" and decide to wait some more. A long while seems to pass and there is still no sign of him. Where the heck has he gone? Shall I just go across and check up? I decide to wait some more, and after a while I can wait no longer. "Let me check up where he has gone", I say to myself and quietly open the door and venture outside. It is already getting a little dark as I go out looking for him. As I traverse the road I see hawkers peddling large heaps of marbles under the light of kerosene lamps. Over a period of time the thoughts of my cousin and his chocolates vanish. I think of those marbles and gradually move on along the road. As I pass a considerable distance, I think of railway trains and at the same instant think of the Chembur suburban train station. I decide to move thence and with a firm purpose proceed to the Chembur station. I enter and keep scanning the various trains that arrive and depart, when a police constable notices that a very young kid seems to be left alone in the station.  He comes and asks something in a strange tongue. I don't understand what he is saying. I speak something. He realizes it is in Kannada.  He seems to know of a Kannada family that lives a short distance away and hoping that I may belong to that family leads me out of the station. We walk up the road and turn right into one of the crossroads and take a few steps when both the cop and I notice that my cousin has returned in the meanwhile and is anxiously peering out of the window.

I immediately went to bed and the next morning the usual things that happen in such circumstances followed!!

                                xxx

Some Childhood Escapades - 2

When I consider my childhood I am forced to conclude that I must have been a devil of a kid or my parents were singularly inept in bringing up children. Perhaps it was a combination of both.

Just yesterday I wrote about my first day at school but that was what happened when I was around five years of age. Would I have left the the world at ages of three and four go a waste?

When I was around three years my mother would force me upon my sister (10 years) who would be eager to play with her playmates without the botheration of having to watch over a small kid. My sister would plead with my mother to let her play by herself and her friends in the evenings, but no! My mother would insist that my sister take me along and watch me as she played games with her friends.

I generally would hang around playing by myself as I was too young to involve myself with other kids. That was also a time when a few grown up men and women found me 'cute' and would pamper me quite a lot. One such person was a man who owned a petty shop at Sajjan Rao Circle and whenever anyone would take me to his shop he would give me a toffee or two gratis. He would also smile and be generally cheerful with me and engage me in small trivial sweet nothings. So it happened one day that while my sister was playing with her mates and busy doing her own things I decided to visit this shopkeeper and touch him for a few toffees. I walked away from the compound of the house where we were and slowly made it to Sajjan Rao Circle. The shopkeeper was glad to see me albeit being a bit surprised to see that I was alone. Nevertheless he gave me a few toffees and after a few pleasant words sent me along. After collecting my booty, instead of turning on the East cross road to head back towards my home, I walked across the circle and headed towards Kalasipalyam and City Market. Taking time to inspect the shops along the way I gradually found myself near the City Market. I remember a 18 to 20 year old youth coming and asking me something and soon I found myself being led by him to the Kalasipalyam Police Station.  Most tiny tots in India were terribly scared of the police as it used to be one of the ways adopted by parents to scare children into good behavior by threatening that the police would cart them off.

The Sub-Inspector who was on duty at the moment seemed a kindly person and he tried to elicit some information from me regarding my parents and so on. When he found that I was on the verge of tears he asked me kindly what I would like to eat.  At that stage of my life I used to intensely like what in Kannada is called 'Rave Unday'. This was a dish made of semolina, grated dry coconut, sugar, one or two cardamom  and compacted and pressed into spherical balls. I asked that from the kindly cop. He asked a constable to take me along to one of the shops and get me one or two. I still can see in my mind's eye the bluish grey transparent large cylindrical containers with aluminium lids in which these used to be stored in the shops those days. The cop got me two Rave Undays and was busy talking to some acquaintances of his for a while so that when we returned to the police station, the duty timing of the kindly sub-inspector was over and a stern and ferocious ruddy and balding officer with a thick mustache was seated at the table. He glared at me and I proceeded to sit on the bench as I had done earlier. After a while I tried to ask this cop something and he glared menacingly and shouted "AAaaayyy...!!!"  I lost my nerve and sat glumly. After quite a long while again I tried and he again roared "AAAAaaayyyy...!!!".  I began to feel that things were not turning out too well and shut up and was seated on the bench on the verge of tears.

The time must have been around 6:45 or 7 p.m and it was the hour when the constables who were on duty were to retire for the day. I was seated on the bench beside the entrance door and as each cop entered he would look at me and size me up. As one cop after another entered and kept on sizing me up I felt increasingly nervous and panicky. I tried saying "Amma..." and the cop roared menacingly.

In the meantime my sister has realized that I am missing and has reported the matter to my mother. The mechanism of the universe has been set in motion to trace me. A party has gone towards Lalbagh; a party has proceeded towards Mavalli; and the worst part is that this Mechanism of the Universe has also alerted my father. They've searched all around and in the meantime I've been feeling more and more wretched when finally at 8:30 p.m. deliverance arrives!  A distant relative of ours - a man named Appanna - a bachelor of about 24 years who lived on a rented premises in the next street arrived at the Kalasipalyam Police Station to lodge a missing complaint. As he entered I was glad to see him and he was rather surprised to see me sitting quite placidly on the bench just beside the door. The Sub-Inspector gave a rather harsh lecture to him and I was sent on my way with him.

But they say every cloud has a silver lining and the one that I found now was that I was made to sit on the bar of the bicycle on which he had come to the station and was thrilled by every fiber in my body that I had my first bicycle ride home. I still remember the pleasant cool breeze that kissed my face and the thrill of speeding on as we rode the bicycle home to face my father.

                                              xxx

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.