Early memories
I was born on the 1st of June 25 summers back. My dad was then TGT (Science) in Kendriya Vidyalaya C.L.R.I and my mom was a house maker. We lived in a joint family along with my grand parents, my dad's younger brother and my mom's younger brother. We stayed at Saidapet Subramanian swamy street. The house was too smal, I still cant imagine how did 7 of us stayed in a house which had a small hall a bedroom and a kitchen. I was the second son to my parents, my elder brother had died when he was just 50 days old and because of this I was treasured by the entire family. There was hardly a day when I wasnt alone. No one ever thought of letting me down and everyoen kept me constantly busy by chatting with me. My mom says thats the reason why I learnt to speak much earlier than I learnt to walk.
I remember just flashes of incidents that happend during my first 3 years, few of those are my grandpa telling me stories of Mahabharata, Ramayana and other stories from Jataka tales or Amar Chitra Katha. I also remember a dream that I had probably when I was 3 years old, I dreamt of standing on a wall and trying to reach-out to someone on the other side of the wall, the wall seemed to have an additional security of iron bars. I wasnt able to reach out, but then I find a hole in my palm and this hole seems to be growing bigger every second after I while I find my hand to be hollow, I grow terrified and suddenly wake up crying. Till this date I havent understood the meaning of that dream (If you read Sigmund Freud, you will know that dreams do have some meaning), however that dream has still remained in my mind ever since and I havent been able to forget it.
My younger brother was born nearly 2 years after me, I was happy to have him as company. My dad at this time decided to pursue his PG degree and was also doing some course in journalism so he often returned home late. I used to spend more tiem with my mom, my grand parents and with my younger brother. My younger bro' (about whom you can know here) had a passion of ahem...extra-ordinary stuff right from his childhood. Once he chased me all around the house in order to experiment the strength of his jaws. Although he used get spanked a lot of times by my family members for his work he never seemed to lose his concentration or enthusiasm to try out new things with his teeth or fists. Another of big passion of his was to experiment "running away" from people who took care of him. He got claustrophobic too often and ran away from our house either to the nearby temple or to the main road. Every now and then it became a routine for chithappa or mama to go in search of him. I had a knack of locating him though. I am not sure whether this was because I too had similar inclinations and thoughts as his (the only difference was I never executed them). I remember the day when my cousin Raja, decided to take care of brother because he was troubling everyone at home with his mischief. My cousin took him near the gate and was chatting with him and it so happend that he had to adjust his dhoti and so he let my brother down and adjusted his dhoti and when he turned back my brother had vanished!!! All this happend in matter of 3-5 seconds...there was a gr8 confusion at home afetr this happend, all of us ran outside in search of him running helter skelter...I too moved out in search of him along with my chithappa and after a while I noticed someone my bro' standing inside the temple that was opposite to our house and watching our house gate and enjoying the commotion out here...I motioned my chithappa and then he went after him and brought him back...after this incident, my cousin became very cautious whenever my bro' was around. One of our favourite past times was breaking up all the new toys our parents got us. My brother was an expert at this. If you get him a car, he would play with it for a few days and then break it open and start experimenting with its bearings and other stuff. My grandpa said this was due to the engineering craze in him....the rest never paid much attention as long as he doesnt ask for a new toy..anyways we neded breaking most of the toys and inventing new toys from the broken ones. We were also crazy about gas balloons, we kept pestering our grandpa every now and then to get us gas balloons. One incident that I remember is when our grandpa brought us 2 gas balloons and had asked us to play with them on the terrace without letting them fly..but my brother couldnt resist the urge and decided to let it fly..and both of watched watch the balloon break away from earth and fly high..we kept staring at it until we could no longer see the balloon. Right from that day both of us have been crazy about flying objects. Whenever there were guests at home, few of us slept on the terrace and this was great time since we kept talking for a long time into the night..I kept staring at the stars and night sky...Watching the night sky is a wonderful experience, although I dont get a chance to that often now, it is something that eery child must do. It gives immense pleasure in seeing the stars at night. These are the incidents that occurred before I was sent to school. What follows next would be the incidents that I recollect during my tenure at Cambridge Convent and K.V C.L.R.I during the years 1985 to 1986.