First day at school

Sunshine wrote a post on gutter baby, recalling how she had once fallen in gutter when she was three, and I have a similar story to share..

It was way back in 1983

As it so happened, we have recently moved in to the new house, my paernts had bought a house (just 85k !!!). We were among the first to occupy a house in that colony. And all around our house lot of construction was going on. Among the other things getting constructed there was this one rectangular gutter. For some vague reason on that day, they had kept it open. Me and my elder sister were jumping across it (along the shorter side). Each trying to tell the other , "If you can I can too". And then my sister just to show how big and how capable she is, as compared to me jumped along the longer side as well. How could I stay behind. I wanted to do the same, and bang I went inside, with my head hiting the edge of it as told later to me, with blood dripping nonstop from my head.

I dont remember anything after that, neither does my sister remember anything. I guess she would have just gone inside shouting and calling for mom. My mom says that they took me to the doctor, (our next door was a doctor). And saved me.

But as a momento of that incident, I still carry this deep cut on my forehead, whose reference I have given in infinite forms that I have filled. While people may search for their unique identification marks, in split second I say "deep cut on my forehead).

I have only two photos of myself, which dont have that cut... :D

Now that I am at it, there is one other incident that I vividly remember, that is my first day at school.

I was all in tears, I never wanted to go to school, but my papa would not take anything. I got ready to go to school but with the condition that papa was also going to stay there with me all the while, but somehow smart as my papa is, he managed to dodge me and disappear and I was in this room with all the kids and monstrous looking spectacled teacher. I did not talk with anyone, and finally this teacher cames and asks me my name and I say "Rajesh", (Yups Rajesh is my real name), and next she askd me was my surname. I had no idea what was that supposed to be. At home they had made me momorize my name, fathers name, mothers name, all about pencils, slates, bicuits, but never this surname.
I still remember that scene so well, teacher bending over me trying to catch it at all I muttered soemthing, wondering if I was shy, afraid, with green and white oil painted school wall in backgroud, with other kids staring at me, some even laughing and giggling at me, I was terrified as hell, wondering what was gonna happen to me, papa was nowhere to be seen.

For that one moment, I hated my papa with all my might, why did he not tell me. Where had he dissappeared. He had broken his promise and he was not there, I was never ever going to listen to him again. Probably I would never even talk to him again, but for one moment I wanted him there, to come and open those iron gate and take me outside, I wanted to be home and play.

I dont remember anything after that, just that one teacher took me somewhere and I was again made to sit. And I guess I sat there, crying all the time, looking at the door, just waiting to see some familiar figure there. Forming all those schemes to take revenge from Papa. And go and tell mom, about all the things that had happened, I was sure she was never even going to send me here again.

The confusion, which I learnt much later from my papa, apparently was because they were planning to divide the batch in to two classes and as is the case always there were more than one Rajesh, they wanted to know my second name, so that they could put me in right class.

But as it turned out later, I hardly went to the school for more than a week. I was always full of tears and would break into crying everynow and then again. Teachers also got sick me. My parents got me out of school. And I spent one more year at home, playing, and blissfully Njoying. Next year they got me admitted directly to U-KG.

Even now, when I go back to my hometown, and I meet some of our old family freinds, they keep telling me about those days, and wondering how I ever managed to study to be an engineer.

Smiling cockroaches...

Have you ever seen a smiling cockroach... or for the matter of fact an irritated, or angry or happy or sad or any kind of emotional cockroach. Have you ever bothered to figure out? I wonder if they exhibit any such emotions.. why this questions popped up because I was just looking at the way, everyone at my home takes extreme pleasure in crushing this poor insects under the chappals, and whatsoever that they find, not that I am a big cockroach fan and that I would love to keep them as pets, I dont like them that much because they are ugly, especially their colour, I wish that they were more colourful or atleast have some other colour other that stupid orage'ish brown. But I was wondering if cockroaches instead of running around here and there like idiots, could do something with their antennas to amuse people, I guess then people would not be so harsh to them. Imagine as soon as we switched on the light they would, instead of running around, would do something cute, as if saying "Why did you switch on light, we dont like it", by moving their antenna in some way or walking in someother manner, or doing something different rather than running away blindly. I guess they could stir our emotions too, and then we would not be shovering chappals over them.

I was just wondering, why we feel sorry when we see dogs getting killed and chickens and goats getting killed for food, I guess that is only because they have learnt to do some actions which sort of stir our emotions and we start feeling sorry for them. Like dog wagging their tails and goats with always that so called sorry looking and innocent face. But most of times when we see the cockroach have only one thread running in our head, find something before it vanishes and satakk... missed... another satakkk.., gone and then we feel happy and think that we have accomplished something.

Hold on... please dont label me as cockroach activist. Dont start forming images that when you come to my home you will see cockroaches sitting and having a merry time on my bed and in my bookshelf. It is not like that. Whenever I see one of them, depeding on my mood and availability of appropriate weapon, I too do also do the same. And as such I am now staying in a newly constructed house which as of yet remains as one of the unconquered territory by these species.

But it is just that yesterday, at a friend's place, the death of one of this fellows with a chappal triggered this chain of thoughts.

Anyways, have a good week ahead :D

Anandashram....Old Age home

Ever since Tejas (my old company ) moved to Bannergatta road, everyday while passing by that road, I used to see this board "Anand Aashram, Old age Home". This was like Aug 2005. And since then I had always wanted to go inside it once. But as idiotic as I am, who wants to do 100 things in life and hardly manages to do four or five of them, I could never make it there.

Until but yesterday one friend of mine, showed similar interest and immediately off we went, yesterday evening after office. Actually you are supposed to take permissions to visit there, but when we reached at round about 6 the office had already closed, so we just walked in to the gate and there were couple of old man sitting there and yups minutes later we were talking to them, about weather, about our natives, about Bangalore city changing, and so on.

Later on one of the guy, took us to his quarters. His wife was watching TV. The quarter was just one single room about 10x10 feet, with attached bathroom. He said that he paid about 1.2 lakhs for that (it seems they have to pay to construct the room, which remains theirs till they are alive and then goes to aashram), and he was paying about 3k per month (for both of them) for other facilities (like food and water and all).

He was telling us about his job, he was a retired railway employee and had a pension, so in a way he was like self dependent. He had two kids, son in mysore and a daughter in Bangalore. He said that he spent most of the time doing, actually doing nothing.

The place was very nice, and green and silent. But there was this feeling of abandonment there, feeling of being cut out from the world, which was very sad. This is bang on Bannergatta road but I wonder how many people walk into those gates.

Listening to him, I kept wondering how it would be to live without a aim or aspirations, when sunday is just like monday and everyday is just like any other day, when I think about myself, I always have this small things in life which i keep looking forward to, like am going to bombay next week (for some customer meet) and there is this film that I have to make as a part of Film making course at CFD.

You might get the feeling that I am talking like a Buddha, a spoiled brat who goes out for the first time goes out to see the sufferings. Not it is not like that. These people are living very comfortably, good food, resonably decent medical facitlity, good atmosphere, but I guess it is a quite a different thing to be lonely, and the feeling that you cant do much about it.

Ok coming back, we spent about an hour there, talking to couple of people, could not talk with others because most of them knew only kanada, (and I was ashamed to admit that I have not learnt a word of kannada even after close to five years in Bangalore)

I came out feeling little weird. Wondering if I could do something about it. They had everything there, carrom, library, chess etc. But somehow they had lost enthu to do anything. They just want do nothing. I dont think I can blame them, because I guess sometimes circumtances, the feeling of hurt, the feeling of being left out, might just kill your spirit, and it would take a lot to rekindle that.