Tuesday, May 29, 2007

A few more childhood events

This is the latest of the stories of my childhood and I heard this a few days back. My grandfather was a homoeopathy doctor and I used to get those sweet medicine daily from him. He used to prepare the sugar balls separately and add medicine later. So I guess he would give me the sugar balls alone. My grandfather used to spend most of his time upstairs in his easy chair. One day, when he had gone downstairs, I had creeped upstairs and poured a full bottle of gumon his easy chair and applied it. He had laid on that chair and he got stuck on it. Then people slowly detached the chair from him or him from the chair. He was so angry with me that day.



And yet another "hit" story. I had hit my great grandmother with a cleaning stick which is used to remove spider webs near the ceilings. My grand father who used to prostrate to his mother everyday and check her pulse, did the same that day and told people that there is no pulse. Everyone got scared and they called on our family doctor. And so very luckily she survived and the doctor told my mother that I had hit the old lady on her way back home. She had come home rushing to see her mother-in-law's mother-in-law!!

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

My schooling - I

I was not 3 years complete when I started going to school. I was underaged when I was admitted to Lower Kindergarten. My grandma used to carry me to the school which was near my house. I still remember my care-taker teacher and the school principal. They too remember me till date. I did my LKG and UKG alone in that school. That was a very small school and I do not have great memories of what happened in that school nor could people know what happened there and told me.

Some of my memories in those days, I wish to share in this blog. The first is a fancy dress competition where I was dressed as Swami Vivekananda. Lot many people were involved in making me up and teaching me a few lines to speak. Great lines but nothing difficult to memorize or present it. "Awake, Arise, Stop not till the goal is reached". I remember I was asked to speak like this. But I see this quote everywhere as "Arise, awake, stop not till the goal is reached". Whatever be it. The thing here is that I won the first prize for this fancy dress competition.


Nothing more I wish to share about the school. I guess it was quite like everyone else's KG schooling. But I have been told this incident quite a few times and it happened in that time but not in my school. It was near my house gate. My neighbor was very fond of me and she always used to make me speak something. That day, I was with my grandma near our gate and my neighbor entered her house. She as usual asked my grandma some common questions and then turned towards me and asked if she could come to our house for lunch. And my answer was so simple and it was "We did not place the cooker on the stove today!".

Then I got shifted for my I standard to another school, in which I continued for 10+2 years. I remember all my classrooms and almost all my teachers. In my first standard, the class was asked to do an assignment and it was to collect some insects. And children never do assignments in that age and it was work for the parents. My father's office staff collected insects for me and my father did the fit and finish job. I remember this very much because I saw this years later in my school. All the insects had decayed and there were no remains but the names of the insects and my name were there.

I started playing cricket on the streets from my first standard. I used to play daily in the evening as soon as I come back from school till sunset. In my second standard, in school, there was good competition in our school and the toppers in the class, we were really close friends. In the maths class, I remember there was always a race as to who finishes all the problems first. And I do not have any statistics as to who used to win the race mostly. The things I remember are that I used to score good marks but I never have stood first in the class. I had come first in class only once till my X standard. In my II standard, the maths papers where distributed and I had secured a centum. The teacher used to teach Tamil and Maths. The teacher gave me the paper and said "Keep it up!". I was a sincere student and I immediately climbed the book rack and placed the paper up. I do not remember whether it was my ignorance or my intention to create a laughter in the class. But everyone laughed in the class then.

We used to play a lot in the school. The school was far away from our house and I was a passenger of the school van. During the waiting time for the van, I would finish all our homework in school so that I could play as soon as I get back home. In my second standard or third standard, I joined the Veda chanting class near my house. That I continued for 8 years nearly. My third standard memories are totally void or I did not do anything special or rememberable. I guess I had a fancy dress dance competition where I played a Frenchman. There was a girl for a frenchwoman. I do not remember her name.

Let me continue with more on my schooling in the next entry.

Monday, May 21, 2007

My infancy and childhood

This blog is an attempt to share with others the Prasad I know. I am sharing only shareable memories of my life! I would simplify the narration instead of burdening people to remember names and relations, thereby being safe also.

I was born on 23rd July 1985 at Nagerkovil. Nagerkovil is a place in Tamilnadu, one of the southern most states of India. My birth alone was there in Nagerkovil. I do not share any other significant bond with Nagerkovil. I was slightly above normal weight at the time of birth.

17 years of my childhood I spent in Tirunelveli. I was brought up by a lot of people. Our family is big and in those days after my birth my parents, grand-parents, great-grand mother, my two uncles(my dad's younger brothers), one with his wife used to live in the same house. We lived in a house on the main road. Our house had a ground floor and a first floor. It was a rented house and the owner of the house is one of our very close relatives(like an elder brother to my dad) who stays in a street parallel to ours. My dad's sister used to stay in the street parallel to ours. From the backyard of our house we can reach the backyard of her house and our elder uncle(our house owner) stayed in a house opposite to that of hers.

I was less than a year old when the following happened. One night I had cried to the peak of my voice. I used to cry around midnight and my mother would give some infant food drink and the bottle would be finished by me in a few mins and thrown away. That night my mother thought that it was the same and she had come with a feeding bottle. I had not stopped crying that night. People were worried that some insect had bitten and thought that was why I was crying. So immediately they had taken to me to our family doctor. The doctor was the right person and he did find the correct reason as to why I was crying. There was some fluid coming out of my ear and they immediately took me to a nursing home at around 2 am. I was medicated properly and I have fairly good audibility till date. However, my ears are one of my weak spots and I hated people touching my ears till my high school days.

The above was one of the incidences people used to discuss very frequently and almost all the following incidences are not from my memory but from the narration of the people who had grown me up.

I was quite fast in learning things in my infancy. I stood up and used to walk even before when I completed 1 year. I never had had a childish accent. I had been able to pronounce "KA", "RA" (the indian way of pronouncing "RA") even in my very young ages. My uncle's wife used to give me lunch as both my parents were employed. I used to run to my aunt's house behind ours and make her run after me to feed me. One day, as usual when she was chasing me to feed me, I had stopped in the garden in our backyard and threw a big piece of a brick at her and people say that she was wounded!! Was I that strong when I was a year old?

I was very agile and used to run through all the places in all the three houses(ours, my aunt's and my elder uncle's). I was 2-3 years old when the following happened. In my aunt's house, I used to play cricket with my aunt's son in the first floor. On the day of this anecdote, we had played for long and we were getting down for lunch. My aunt's mother-in-law had her head shaved that day and was seated in the staircase. I asked her to give way for me to get down. I remember she had some hearing problems. Whether she heard me or not, I do not remember, but the fact is that she did not give me way that day. So what happened next? I had a cricket bat in my hand. It was not a plastic bat but a bat with the famous brand Sunridges written on it! BANG!! Blood started pouring from her head and Prasad was nowhere in the spot after seconds of her scream. Poor old lady but she survived the hit thankfully.

I used to play with my elder aunty in their backyard. There is a well in their backyard which serves them water till date. This well situated in the river bed of Thamirabarani has had water all round the year for several years. The people then in this house were my grandmother's sister, her husband and their two sons(my elder uncles) and daughters in law(elder aunties). I spent time almost equally in all these three houses. My grandma's sister was drawing water from the well that day. It was around noon when she was drawing water and she saw something glittering in the sunlight in the well. She managed to take that object and found that it was a tumbler. That day all the inmates of the house worked for hours and found several utensils from the well. They are not treasures but they were all their own vessels with their initials in them. So the obvious answer as how they went to the well is me. I had been dropping all these into the well unnoticed.

This was me during my pre-school days. I was a kid whom everyone loved and feared. I was scared of one person, an old person who used to roll in the streets begging for alms shouting the name of the lord Govinda. On hearing his voice I used to run from wherever I was to my grandma and close my ears. Apart from this, I have hit people, made people run behind me, thrown stones, bit some noses, carried a fully grown pussy cat which people were so afraid of etc..

These are some memorable anecdotes of my pre-school days which people have told me. In my next blog, I would continue with my school day memories.