MEMORIES & THOUGHTS!

Chapter 1. The Rental house days.

The first and the distant memory I am having about myself is, falling from the verandah of our rental house to the courtyard along with a blue tricycle. I was nearly two then. I could still feel a fall upside down while thinking of it.

I remember Daddy and my brother in the verandah with me. After my fall Daddy picked me up and I had a swelling in my forehead. Dad crushed some shallots and made a bandage with it and I moved around with it on my head for sometime.

You may be wondering how I remember this incident yet.

It is because, Dad was clicking our photos just before my fall and after it got printed I used to remember it from time to time when I saw it again and again!

I also liked to brush it up again and again just for fun.

It was a small house in which Mom, my brother whom I call Achachan, and me lived for a short period of time. Dad was a Non-resident Indian. We had my cousin with us to empower us in strength. I have a certain lot of memories there, some of which are clear and some vague.

We had a neighborhood with two kids there, around and above the age of my brother. I was small compared to them. So they did not take me around when they were out to play. I used to watch them from the home.

I once saw my brother wear a dhothi just like adults in our places while he went to play and I wanted one too, but he and his friends discouraged me saying that its for boys only.

They had the privilege to go and play around the neighborhood while I was restricted by mom since I was small.

Once, a teacher came to our home to teach me. Old and bald, with white dress and white hair he came, in order to teach me write letters and numbers.

I am from the state of Kerala, India. So I have to learn Malayalam , our mother tongue.

How kids were taught to write is,  with the index finger  kids have to write in cleaned river sand. (This style is getting changed now a days due to lack of home teachers). That creates a clear and clean imprint in brain and we won't forget it.

For a kid with soft fingers and only playful mind, it is tiresome and painful. I, after a few days being out of my tolerance level started rebellion. " I won't write"! That's my decision! The elderly teacher was a veteran Malayalam teacher. I now understand he knew to manage kids. After a day or two he just got out to the courtyard where there was a coffee plant and took a small branch from it and just gave me a slight caning.

From that moment I became a very nice and industrious child who learned the lessons faster than many of my age.

I was sent to the best school in our area. Being a mama's child and being separated from her for the first time I was a cry baby in the class room.

Thinking from here years apart I can see that there was only one cry baby and that was me. I never sat on the chair in the class, but under the desk.

One day I was caught by the Principal. He used to narrate the story of our encounter,  whenever I was seen in the staff room with other teachers.

It is like this, " teacher, do you know who she is?? She was a villian in the older times when she was in Lower kindergarten. She always sat under the desk making the class teacher in difficulty. One day I caught her up like cat mothers carry their kids. She kicked me then with her little chicken legs."

I would become embarressed and would escape from the scene with a cute smile ASAP.

However, I became fearless afterwards as I had encountered the lion of the school then. Even I used to scare boys over disputes. I retain the same behavior even at my husband's home, through my own home.