When I was young…

Remember Cliff Richard’s Bachelor Boy hit number  When I was young my father said ??

I take you back to the early 60’s when I was young, but not yet 16.

And that was 56 years back.

I was nowhere like any of the current generation young school going kids I see in Sobha Palladian!

And I honestly wonder how today’s kids are so sober, well mannered, polite and even courteous to each other! The other day Jayanthi heard a chubby one say, ‘Thank you A… for coming out to play with me ‘. I thought that was delightfully cute & wonderfully civil.

It’s been 20 months since I moved in, and I have not seen a single fist fight, no rough and tumble fights either.  Things ae perfect here!  Like Ram Rajya.

Back then in my time, things were different. We were not civil to each other, to say the least.  A week without a fight or a tussle was a miracle. And we looked spoilt for a good fight. Our personality reflected our mindset.  Our hairstyle displayed our attitude.

 The local mohalla (community) bully had a dry brown mop on is head. The tall & tough one had long hair covering his ears (a raging fashion then – angry Amitabh Bachhan style).

Mine was an unruly but    well-oiled bush where each hair had an attitude of its own defying any comb or grooming. My mom had tried everything – from the popular Colgate castoroil hair oil, a red viscous liquid that took ages to flow thru the small opening to the pungent Dabur’s Brahmi Amla Kesh Tel. No success.

Thank God she did not try Simmi instant hair fixer – the sweet smelling gooey, sticky liquid that our neighbourhood Sardarji family used.

Vir ji and his sons used to tame their Simmi oiled beard under a white strip of cloth that covered their chin and cheeks and tied into a knot on top of their head.

A haircut by 65-year-old Munna  was only good for two weeks. Munna was our Mohalla’s well regarded nayee  – a full time barber and a  part time match maker. The second business has been seriously hit by aggressive on-line matrimonial sites and most nayees have switched to real estate business nowadays.

We played hard and lived dangerously. Never saw a swimming pool and I cannot remember when or how I learnt swimming. Probably jumped in to the huge well near our house in Vellore and thankfully did not get drowned. 

And our spare time was spent in real life 3D - not the VR/AR type but really real.  (AR/VR = Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality).

 We lived and played on the ground, roof tops, treetops, jumping thru old tractor tyre hanging from the mango tree branch, swinging from its branches & enjoying and exploiting all the three degrees of freedom!!

Wish God had created a few more.

And we got hurt, and sometimes real bad.

Back to Sobha Palladian!

Injuries are rare here.

I have seen only one girl with a hand in a sling so far in last 20 months. An excellent record for SP safety and security measures. 

We also have a dozen dogs & cats.

We had one unfortunate case of a dog bite. But not a single cat scratch reported so far.

Hats off and a big thank you to all the pet lovers for being so responsible. (Dog Poo is a different challenge though)

My time??

Injuries were a plenty! The bigger the injury, the more proudly we boasted about it!!

And each of our injury uniquely betrayed one of our forbidden activities!

 Broken arm/leg or finger meant a fall from guava tree (they have very smooth & slippery branches).

Deep scratches and chaffed calves /forearm meant a painful slide from the mango or litchi tree trunk (rough and chipped barks).  Scratches all over the face and forearms came from climbing up and down the ber tree(the thorny wild berry one). 

Cuts on eyebrow, bleeding nose or split lips meant a health fist fight with a worthy adversary.

Twisted wrists/ankles & Purple swellings (karu-raththam in tamil) on forehead or limbs certified us being chased by the mango/litchi baag’s (grove) bad-tempered maali (gardener cum guard) resulting in some of us jumping off from the compound wall .

Torn pant seats and shirt tails also indicated the same activity, but with the bad-tempered maali being replaced by his equally bad-tempered mongrel caching up on us real close!!

And some very sober activities also got us hurt..

Like riding our dad’s bicycle right into the backside of a fat buffalo that occupied most of the narrow unlit road on a winter evening and getting our front teeth knocked out.

Like getting deep cuts on our fingers while trying to slice raw mangoes with a shaving blade.

Like the many other bruises that one gets while chasing a ‘kati-patang’ through the narrow streets, rooftops and jumping fences.

And what is more interesting to note is that both boys and girls of our age sported equal number of similar injuries. We all payed rough and with no gender bias at all!

And remember Babli, the alfa-male in our gang? She always sported two mean ones at any point in time!

All in All, our life then was exciting to say the least and I am glad I am still alive and in one piece to tell you the story.

Krish..

My early childhood was spent in two quaint little towns – Dehra Dun up in the North and Vellore down South. At a time when we did not have TVs, Smart phones, PCs and Malls and Mc Donalds!!