gajabhuja funda

Nayabagam Varudhe - 1

Folks;
So this is the first of the series of recollecting my childhood posts !
But before i start on this let me confess this.I admit i do have an elephantine memory.Not in all aspects but in most of them.I do have the tendency to recollect most of the things which i force myself to remember.It's a different matter that i cannot remember much of what i studied ;-)
Much of this is due to my mom who painstakingly made sure i attended all kinds of sloka telling classes, the bhagavad gita, and many others.It is indeed a shame that i do not remember much of it due to being out of touch with them for quite sometime but that is a different matter.

So without much ado let's get the memories flooding.
Four years of age.
The first thing i can remember is of my childhood spent in tanjore my mom's hometown.I remember distinctly playing with the next house kid called balaji ! There was also a construction happening next house, for which they had dug up to lay the foundation.I remember when we went and sat inside those deep pits one day evening and had hot snacks.I dont remember what the snack was though.Into this house moved another kid called amudhan, whose family owns a lot of medical stores in tanjore.Oh ya our house in tanjore did not have compound wall ! I am not able to recollect as to how i went to tanjore, whether by train or by bus. I do recollect a train journey along with my grandmom and younger brother.
Right from the time when i was a small kid, my mom drilled into me all sorts of sanskrit slokas.We used to have a teacher opposite to vidyaniketan school in ashok nagar.We used to call her akka.There used to be Bhagavad gita recital competitions held in egmore.Now it so happened that my mom or dad could not accompany me to this year's competition.So my teacher's younger brother offered to take me to it in his scooter.I do remember standing in front of the scooter { i think it was one of those good ol bajaj ones },between the driver seat and the handlebar and going to that competition.Oh ya i think i won the first or second prize in it.I was good at reciting slokas, so they say !
And yes we used to live in LIC quarters { as a matter of fact we still do and would be doing till next year probably ! }.In our quarters there used to be an old teacher of these slokas.I think his name was raghavan sir.

Five years of age
The first memory that comes into me is quite intresting actually.Probably that set the tone for me being a very bad guy :-) or far ahead of my times which ever you could say.Ok at home the emphasis was that we should always get the first rank and some how by luck we used to get it.Oh the we here is my elder sister and my younger brother.However once during one of those exams i got the second rank ! Woe betide me that my father refused to sign the report card and man things were really bad then.So i put my father's signature using a pencil and gave it over to the teacher.I still remember.The report card was kind of pinkish in color and we used to have a deadline for handing over the report card.And on the day of handing it over the guy next to me asks me your report card is not signed.So i say that its easy i will put my dad's signature myself and hand it over ! and so i did.Boy little did i imagine what would happen next.Oh well 25+ years down the line i still get my leg pulled over this incident ! I came home and we used to have this habit of getting our bags checked when we come back home.This was because our mom will keep the necessary notebooks in the bag in the morning and take it out in the evening.She noticed that the report card was not there ! and on further questioning, i gave it out saying i put the signature myself with my pencil.Boy what a spanking i got.The i was made to sit in the corner naked and not talk to anyone.Dad came home from work and more scoldings followed.The next day i went to school told my teacher about it, and got bac the report card.Then my dad signed it.Ah if only he had signed it the previous time itself ;-) on a more serious note i think it was good that i had a disciplinarian background !
The second incident is i lost my socks ! Ya i think it was some drama or dance one of those things which i don't remember.But i lost my socks and got spanked roundly at home for that ! My mom used to come and pick me up and boy she was upset about that.
Ya i said my mom comes and picks me up right ? On one such day i had this terrible stomach ache.School used to leave at around 3.45pm and suddenly from 3.00pm onwards i had this shooting pain in my stomach or so i thought.I lied down at the last bench in school and i think i cried real bad.Mom comes to pick me up and i cry out to her too and then she asks me to go to the loo and come.The pain was coz my baldder got full from drinking too much water.Ah the peace and relief that followed once i came out out of the loo was so very heavenly !!
Me my mom, dad sister and brother were planning to go out somewhere.I hid behind a wall wanting to scare them by shouting at them.Ah but then i hit my head against the wall and got myself a cool little pirate headband for the next few days.I do remember that i had lots of injuries at various points of time.Head banging against the school compund, falling down and scraping the knees and so on !!
I think enough memories for today ! Rest memories will follow ;-)
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 10:38 AM