Most five year olds from two decades ago were easily entertained or distracted.But some of them require a very oddly specific thing to be entertained for hours. I belonged in this category.
When i was in class 1 (or 1st grade) at school , i was insanely enthusiastic about going to school every single day.This was the first time i would get to carry my own lunch to school and eat it there! Mundane as this sounds, until a month or so ago, in kindergarten , I could come back home after only half a day of school,which included an hour specially dedicated to sitting in a sand pit with a pail and a ladle. And my older brother wouldn't miss a chance to show off to me , that he was tougher owing to the fact that he could come back from school later than i could and ate his lunch from a tiffin box .So for the first few days of class 1 , I made sure to brandish my lunch bag about , so everyone could see that i was a cool kid who carried her own lunch and everything.
And so this went on , until one day, my father announced to the whole family that we were to go to Kerala for a week and my brother and I would have to skip school. I was devastated. I begged to be left behind at my neighbor's place. The sincere nerd types that i was, the prospect of missing school was like to me the end of the world! My parents reminded me that I was only in class 1 and I would easily catch up when we came back from the trip. And I was told that it would be worth skipping school because I would get to see the Maha Swamiji who had come straight to Kerala after his pilgrimage to the Himalayas. I didn't care less if he were Maha or Mini but I didn't dare tell my father that. My mother promised me that she would talk to my teachers and there would be no trouble
.
That was the first of the many trips I would take to Kerala. And I hated it then. I didn't know what the people were saying,the autos were black,the buses had atrociously loud horns and it was muddy and slushy everywhere.My relatives spoke konkani,the same language we spoke at home. But I couldn't understand a word of what was being said and often stared blankly back to what would sound like a question. I followed my mother around everywhere and was taken aback by how well she spoke the Konkani of these people and how she didn't see to Mind the weather,the buses ,the people or anything. She spoke to everyone like she had known them forever and introduced me as her "younger one" . I simply clung to the edge of her sari and tried to disappear in the loose end of it.
We all went together to the temple at Eranakulam in a car. There we were to meet the Maha Swamiji. He was quite an old man with a long red tilak on his forehead and looked like the sort of person who would pick on young children simply because he was bigger. We stood in line as one family of konkans after another supplicated to him. He jabbed the men of each family with a short sort of rod with a flat mould at the end which my mother told me was Lord Vishnu’s preferred weapon the Sudarshan chakra, a wheel with magical powers and enormous amounts of energy. And then I noticed with horror that that the Maha Swami was actually burning the mold with the lamp lit beside him before jabbing the men with it. I pointed this out to my mother and she shushed me as it was soon to be our turn. As i watched the Maha Swami slowly burn the mold and slap the hot rod on my father's arm i let out a high pitched scream and started weeping. My mother quickly hoisted me on her hip and took me away but the crying did not cease. I wept and wept till we boarded the train that evening. I wept for my father getting his arm burned voluntarily and i wept about missing school and about hating kerala. My mother tried to coax me to stop but i just bawled away. We were settled on the train and slowly it chugged into action but still i kept crying. My father was getting frustrated and my brother pretended like he didn't know me. The other passengers in our buggy stared at me.
After a while my mother whispered some hushed instructions to my father, who gave her an incredulous look before stepping down at the next station and returning with a bottle of horlicks. My mother quietly handed me the bottle and a spoon from her bag.I opened it and started driving the plastic spoon in and out of the horlicks powder with a satisfying twish-twish sound, and i quite forgot about crying.Each time i drove the spoon into the soft powder the sound it made and the crunchy feeling on my fingers holding the spoon had taken complete control over me , and i just couldn't stop.I had gone into a world of my own.The other passengers looked relieved and i was occupied with my activity till late into the night.She would later tell me , that she had once seen me do this with a bottle of salt at home which inspired the horlicks idea.She had already become an astute observer of her children's behavior and knew that all it took for my brother to forget his tantrums is to draw his attention to anything nearby with four wheels(ranging from a half inch toy car to a 15 tonne lorry) .Some kids are odd , but for a shrewd mother , with an astounding presence of mind , any intractable kid is merely a puzzle whose pieces only she can put together..
When i was in class 1 (or 1st grade) at school , i was insanely enthusiastic about going to school every single day.This was the first time i would get to carry my own lunch to school and eat it there! Mundane as this sounds, until a month or so ago, in kindergarten , I could come back home after only half a day of school,which included an hour specially dedicated to sitting in a sand pit with a pail and a ladle. And my older brother wouldn't miss a chance to show off to me , that he was tougher owing to the fact that he could come back from school later than i could and ate his lunch from a tiffin box .So for the first few days of class 1 , I made sure to brandish my lunch bag about , so everyone could see that i was a cool kid who carried her own lunch and everything.
And so this went on , until one day, my father announced to the whole family that we were to go to Kerala for a week and my brother and I would have to skip school. I was devastated. I begged to be left behind at my neighbor's place. The sincere nerd types that i was, the prospect of missing school was like to me the end of the world! My parents reminded me that I was only in class 1 and I would easily catch up when we came back from the trip. And I was told that it would be worth skipping school because I would get to see the Maha Swamiji who had come straight to Kerala after his pilgrimage to the Himalayas. I didn't care less if he were Maha or Mini but I didn't dare tell my father that. My mother promised me that she would talk to my teachers and there would be no trouble
.
That was the first of the many trips I would take to Kerala. And I hated it then. I didn't know what the people were saying,the autos were black,the buses had atrociously loud horns and it was muddy and slushy everywhere.My relatives spoke konkani,the same language we spoke at home. But I couldn't understand a word of what was being said and often stared blankly back to what would sound like a question. I followed my mother around everywhere and was taken aback by how well she spoke the Konkani of these people and how she didn't see to Mind the weather,the buses ,the people or anything. She spoke to everyone like she had known them forever and introduced me as her "younger one" . I simply clung to the edge of her sari and tried to disappear in the loose end of it.
We all went together to the temple at Eranakulam in a car. There we were to meet the Maha Swamiji. He was quite an old man with a long red tilak on his forehead and looked like the sort of person who would pick on young children simply because he was bigger. We stood in line as one family of konkans after another supplicated to him. He jabbed the men of each family with a short sort of rod with a flat mould at the end which my mother told me was Lord Vishnu’s preferred weapon the Sudarshan chakra, a wheel with magical powers and enormous amounts of energy. And then I noticed with horror that that the Maha Swami was actually burning the mold with the lamp lit beside him before jabbing the men with it. I pointed this out to my mother and she shushed me as it was soon to be our turn. As i watched the Maha Swami slowly burn the mold and slap the hot rod on my father's arm i let out a high pitched scream and started weeping. My mother quickly hoisted me on her hip and took me away but the crying did not cease. I wept and wept till we boarded the train that evening. I wept for my father getting his arm burned voluntarily and i wept about missing school and about hating kerala. My mother tried to coax me to stop but i just bawled away. We were settled on the train and slowly it chugged into action but still i kept crying. My father was getting frustrated and my brother pretended like he didn't know me. The other passengers in our buggy stared at me.
After a while my mother whispered some hushed instructions to my father, who gave her an incredulous look before stepping down at the next station and returning with a bottle of horlicks. My mother quietly handed me the bottle and a spoon from her bag.I opened it and started driving the plastic spoon in and out of the horlicks powder with a satisfying twish-twish sound, and i quite forgot about crying.Each time i drove the spoon into the soft powder the sound it made and the crunchy feeling on my fingers holding the spoon had taken complete control over me , and i just couldn't stop.I had gone into a world of my own.The other passengers looked relieved and i was occupied with my activity till late into the night.She would later tell me , that she had once seen me do this with a bottle of salt at home which inspired the horlicks idea.She had already become an astute observer of her children's behavior and knew that all it took for my brother to forget his tantrums is to draw his attention to anything nearby with four wheels(ranging from a half inch toy car to a 15 tonne lorry) .Some kids are odd , but for a shrewd mother , with an astounding presence of mind , any intractable kid is merely a puzzle whose pieces only she can put together..
Read your blog a couple of days back :) I had a new follower and it turned out to be you which lead me here. Welcome to the blogging world!! It gets boring, lonely etc etc but every year when you look back, you will have a chest of posts to treasure which will tell you what you felt and how you have evolved :) All the best for this!! :) Also, both the posts have stories that I can recite verbatim, hahaha! Since I have been privileged to be privy to them numerous times :) The Great Dane and stories of Kerala :) As always your writing style is gripping and funny! Keep it up babe! Love
ReplyDeleteThanks Supriya for the warm welcome to a new bloggie and the exaggerated compliments.. Yeah you will know most of these stories :) I'm glad you liked them!
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