Over the last week, I have gotten back in touch with at least 10 of my high school (then, National English School - NES, now NPS) friends thanks to Facebook, and I wanted to capture these gushing set of memories from childhood:
[I will be surprised if everything below is true, but it is my current version of the events frozen in my fast decaying memory that I wanted to record]
[I will be surprised if everything below is true, but it is my current version of the events frozen in my fast decaying memory that I wanted to record]
- fracture due to a fall from sarukku maram (slide) in International school, Delhi
- playing running games with Sekar
- playing cricket with Arun and running races against Jameel in Jain school, T. Nagar
- spending all waking hours playing some game or other with periya Anand (table tennis, under-arm cricket, carroms)
- getting together with 20 others in Somanathan mama's house to watch Kevin Curren vs Boris Becker (going home and thinking about Becker being an incarnation of god)
- standing in the bus stop with periya Anand trying to see who can spot the number on the bus from the farthest distance
- going in the rickshaw with periya Anand, Kshiraja and Gayathri constantly counting the number of foreign cars - our favorite was Peugeot
- getting sick before Chemistry test and praying to all the gods for intense rain the next day and/or Usha Ramani also getting sick with the same virus
- getting mother's help for biology class diagrams to prevent my frog by being interpreted as lizard
- missing the 3A bus, catching 5, missing the Music Academy bus stop, and walking all the way from Royapettah Rd. bus stop, plotting with Gayathri to not leak to parents
- Saada Soda - 50 paise, Paneer Soda - 60 paise; Hoping it was closer to Aditya Pappu's Pocket Money day, so everyone nearby gets free paneer soda and puff!
- veg puff in priya bakery with Fiaz
- scrambling in Eshvari Lending Library to find good Commando comics
- long dumb charades practise sessions with Fiaz and Nirav arguing over what single symbol we could use for the movie "The man who knew too much"
- slowly building enough savings for the awesome Coconut bun in Khadi Gramodyog Bhavan and going at 4:30pm on multiple days to find it get sold out!
- begging appa/amma for Eclairs (25 or 30 paise) for birthday gift to friends instead of Caramilk (20 paise each)
- all children watching our parents play carroms every week in the common space between our homes
- being thrilled when the fan that was creaking for 5 months stopped making the annoying noise when appa put a little oil near its anchor
- fighting with Gayathri over who gets the "fairer share" of the 5-star candy bar some visitor just gifted to us (kuTTifying (hitting) the head, promising to use a less militant strategy after appa settled the fight giving her the bigger piece because she was younger!)
- attempting to note down all the girl friends of Aditya and running out of paper
- playing tennis ball cricket in Gopalapuram corporation ground with several cosco balls repeatedly crossing over from the 10 other matches being played nearby
- playing cricket in Vatsa and Srikant's flat complex and disbanding in earnest once a brilliantly played shot got some neighbor's window to an architectural state the neighbor did not have the aesthetics to appreciate
- elated every time Krishna and I beat Hari and another person in book cricket (despite claims of match fixing by Hari noticing some ridges on the pages 268 and 346)
- competing in extra curricular activities leading the Radiance group
- playing for 40 minutes in round toss table tennis going from 50 people down to 3 of us and PT master comes in and says the period is over
- joining with periya Anand to draw on various charts for advertisements for TG for the post of SPL (School Pupil Leader)
- excited to see Gayathri sing in choir in assembly and principal saying good things about her (annoyed when every classmate tests genetic theory by asking me to sing)
