Finally me...My Childhood

Born on 21st Sept 1968 as the only child of my parents, I had my share of larger good & very few bad things/ Experiences in life.

I grew up in the most notorious of neighbourhoods in Bangalore. Even today, the notoriety of the area is so high that Auto's still hesitate to come in after 9.00pm.

Have had friends walked into every possible way of life, i.e from the Most Notorious Anti Social Element in the area to the a current day Circle inspector of police; From a Senior management professional to the Security guard. Growing with them all was fun & I've enjoyed every bit of it.

The Primary school Student:

My Nursery on wards till high schooling was done at Nivedita School at Gavipuram. I was a Famous kid for two reasons (not sure was it right or wrong)

1. Family Background
   
2. Hopeless student.

My hall mark of school days was my Awful handwriting . This was the main reason why i lost marks as my communication was very very confusing.This Prompted teachers to push me on to the back benches.Typical Back benches were places previous years leftovers hovered around.

On innumerable occasions My parents were summoned to get fired on my behalf. All these failed to ignite the fire inside my belly .

My teachers usually complained to my parents on

• my dreaming & not being attentive in the class
• Bad handwriting

not being reactive in the class

poor scores in test or Exams.

Fortunately, I scraped through to the next classes with out being struck even for a year & was a teachers nightmare due to my poor Edu Skills.

One Incident which is still fresh in my mind is when the PT/ Drill Teacher Mr.Sridhar hit me on the back with a Base drum stick causing a blood clot. It was the one period before the last one. The pain was unbearable & the shock from this hit was so severe that I could not even cry. When I reached home & showed it to my mother & Grand father, The later sprung into action by driving us back to the school & firing the Head Mistress for the wrong doing of the PT/Drill teacher.I remember that he even went to the extent that threatened the School authorities ( who were on the verge of going back home after school) of Legal consequences.

The Very first reaction to this threat was, the PT master coming home & apologised to my grand father for the wrong action & later on pretended to be very friendly with me.

The Street Plays:

I enjoyed on the streets along with a few chaddi Pals playing cricket, We Played all sorts of games from Kabbadi to Koko, Cricket to gang Chatter boxes . On a specific day, a few of my Chaddi Pals were locked up inside Hanumantha nagar Police station for playing on the streets. This was at the instance of a neighbour who had complained to the police that we were a nuisance in our neighbourhood.

We have lost the count on the number of window panes we broke, the number of passerby who were hit by the ball from our cricket bats.

Learning to be proud of Dirty work

Me Sitting with my Cousin Shankar on Father's Sherpa

Me on Bicycle looking at our Renault

Our home had a small shop (Which still Exists). This used to be the Sunday Garage of my father. I usually used to be there when he worked either on our car or friend/Relatives vehicle. I remember father working on BSA Motorcycles, Bullets, Jawas, A wide array of cars.

At times, I too would be allowed to work along with him as his part time unreliable helper . This used to be the motivational reward for no being harmful or dangerous with any ones gadget/equipment during the week. I relished & still cherish these moments.

Since Grand father loved & Owned only Imported cars ( their technology was better than the Indian counter parts), Spare parts for these were not easily available. This usually prompted father to rekindle his love for old parts from Gujuri (the scrap markets) scouting & sourcing old parts for our cars or others vehicles. Our roof top was the store to many such parts & we in fact had a couple of Spare Engines (for the Renault we owned), large range of Suspension & steering parts.

Whenever there were restrictions to play on the street, I used to steal a few tools from under grandfathers cot & experiment on these recycle able parts on the roof top. At times few parts would have been rendered useless too.

One incident Which I remember till date was when I used a Screw driver to punch a hole into the Crankcase of the spare engine of the Renault & the engine oil gushed out of the crankcase. Not knowing what to do about it, I was bit panicky. Grand father noticed that I was too quite for too long came up on the roof & was amazed at what he saw . He saw may desperate juvenile effort to stop the oil ooze out, laughed at me & asked to accompany my father to the welder to get the case repaired.

When Father finally decided to quit his neat clean life style to a dirty one & started his workshop, most of his rarely used tools used to be in a wooden crate under Grandfather's cot. This even with out saying, would be used in my play. I did play with them at times it would be dangerous too to quote an incident I drilled a hole on my left toe nail yelled for help later on . The partial deformation of the toe nail is still there.

There were many occasions when I would experiment & get struck with it It needed my father to bail me out of the situation. Slowly but steadily Cuts & bruises on fingers, Burnt hands & legs slowly became my hall mark.

I still remember the occassional creep under the chassis of both Renault & Oldsmobile (The Kissing car of Lage Raho Munna Bhai) . Oldsmobile was a favorite among my friends during hide & seek or cricket (when we had non one to keep the wickets). The reason why Oldsmobile was famous was, it housed a Massive, large & Strong Boot which could be unlocked ground with a hacksaw blade which we kept handy at my Friend Murali's place.

All a matter of habbit & habbits die hard:

I also was famous for carrying a few tools like Screw driver, Cutting pliers & nose pliers handily some where with me.This provided me with freedom to dismantle any thing that I found interesting. I had to wait till my father came back to guide me to put things back into their normal state. Most easy targets would be anybodies Radio, Table fan, LP record player & bicycles at times even Scooters or motorcycles.

They say habits die hard. This is very true in my case. I still carry a Forty eight function Swiss army knife handy, with me always. Relatives & friends who take notice of this knife set, go back in time, recollecting the nostalgic incidents we were involved in & then we all burst into a loud laughter.

The most unforgettable Incident in my childhood:

The Most important incident of my younger days is the Tear up of the Chamber's Twentieth century Dictionary. I asked for an Ice cream at MTR, I was not bought that for health reasons, (which I did not understand). Came home & put up a fit .When this evoked cold response, I pulled my Grandfathers Dictionary & tore a few pages. Father & grand father just pulled me aside & wrote a note in the same. This is just the tip of the iceberg of my style in my childhood.

In short When I sit back & reflect upon my Child hood, I think I've got every thing I wanted from it. In short I've been blessed with a very good childhood & I thank my stars & God for the same.