The fifteen year old sat beside me and let out a disappointed sigh. I looked at him with a question in my eyebrows. He complained "I want to write about my life but I don't know where to start". The appropriate response for this complaint rose in my head. "Why don't you start at the beginning?" He gave me an annoyed stare. I smiled and started typing out the following words. As I typed, I read it out to him. By the end of the second sentence, he started writing in a notebook. The exercise did not hold his interest beyond that evening but my journal got richer by a post (or is it a past?).
I don't remember a thing about the day I took birth. Actually, I don't remember a thing about the first year of my life. To tell you the truth, the details of my first five years of life are sketchy. I remember bawling as my uncle threw me into the Kindergarten school. The school was named "Isabella" and from that day, I lost my trust in organizations with the name "Isabella". I remember the house I stayed in - my grandmother's house, when I was four. The house was by the railway line and it had a long window at the front. I remember being taken to a movie in Palakkad and hating the movie. I think it was the Malayalam movie "Nellu". I don't remember anything else. But my parents and grandparents have filled in the gaps with a few stories. The first one I heard was about me getting lost in a tea plantation in Ooty. They keep mentioning that I could have been lost forever but by God's grace I was found.
The second incident took place at my great grandparents' house in Chittoor. One evening I was running up and down the veranda outside the house and I fell down. The right side of my head crashed on the terracotta tiles that lined the floor. A wound opened up and a blood started pouring out. My parents picked me up and took me to a hospital. Pus started collected around the wound and soon my face bloated up into an ugly lump. I could not see anything and my parents and the doctor sat around me worried. Around midnight I called out to my parents and said "I can see a small light there and it is becoming bigger". My parents and the doctor turned around and looked out of the window and saw a car approaching the hospital. The doctor heaved a sigh of relief and said "Thank God!".
We used to stay in a house on the side of a main road near Olavakkod railway station. There were three or four houses in a row and though there was no one of my age in these houses, being the only child in these houses, I became the star of the place. This meant that I could walk into any house at any time and expect to be entertained. Every morning, as my father left for office, I ran out of the house. I walked into the neighbour's home calling her name (which I believe is "Sharadae"). I had to be dragged back home at lunch. One morning, I locked my mother in the bedroom and walked away. My mother called out my name desperately but I continued to walk away laughing. My mother was scared out of her wits. She called out for help for a few minutes. The maid in the next house heard her call and came running. She opened the door and my mother ran out to the neighbour's house where she found me munching a murukku happily. My mother dragged me back home and ensured that my backside turned pink.
I spent a miserable year of my life at a school in Palakkad. I was in first standard and I have never worked on my homework like I have done in that year. As a result of that one year, I hate homework even now. For most children, no learning happens through homework. It only exists to make the grownups believe that the children are working and learning. I used to go to the school in a horse-cart (kuthiravandi driven by a kuthiravandikaran). I don't have any memory of the journey to and from the school or my friends and teachers at the school. Fortunately, it has all been overwritten by other trivial matters. But I will never forget this one incident from that year.
I was walking out of the school gate one afternoon when I saw the kuthiravandi leaving. I tried to stop it but no one noticed me. So, I stood by the road wondering what to do. The hot afternoon sun was frying the insides and outsides of my head. Probably as a result, I started thinking about the route from my school to home. A few minutes later, I realized I knew how to get home from the school. So, I started walking. I spent the next hour or so walking the four kilometres that separated the school from the telephone exchange (the fourth and fifth floors of the exchange were reserved for staff quarters).
When I reached home, I did not think it important to tell my mother that I had missed the horse-cart and had walked home and went about my post-school time life peacefully. About an hour later, the kuthiravandikaran arrived at our doorstep and announced frantically to my mother that her son was missing. My mother refuted the claim by saying "no he isn't; he is lazing inside". The kuthiravandikaran recounted what happened. My mother came in and asked how I had reached home. I responded casually "I walked home". I don't have to explain the actions of the next few minutes. At that point, I did not understand why my mother was making a big deal of this trivial incident. Years later, as I travelled along the route, I shuddered thinking how I would have felt if I realized that my five year old son had walked alone on these busy roads. There are two questions that remain unanswered in my head though.
- How was I so sure about the route?
- What the hell is wrong with that kuthiravandikaran?
