hullo there,everyone and anyone.
Sometimes one feels like just sitting back and mulling over the past.Its not easy to remember because one's mistakes,-especially the ones of decision,made in the heat of the moment or in a hurry or under pressure or simply because one ran out of options,-tend to dominate the memory.Why do we recall bad times rather than the good? Why do we recall hurt clearly and not happiness?
My childhood memories are luckily more good than bad.In fact my experiences as a child have helped to sustain me in adulthood and age. As far as I recollect nothing particularly tragic or ecstatic happened, just feather-soft moments of joy and comfort, of becoming aware of Nature, of the world within me.
I would like to share these with everybody.I just hope I find the right words to convey my past.Nothing lurid
nothing shocking,nothing titillating,yet appealing to the senses,the sensibilities.
I was a quiet child,living in the world through my sketches.Mum would buy me, daily, a Bahadur drawing book, with the picture of a lancer on horseback adorning the yellow cover.I would,every evening ,fill up the pages with pencil thin people,particularly cowboys and Indians,give them names and murmur their stories to myself.My three elder sisters would be away at school from 10am to 4pm plus some time spent after school hours chatting with friends. I missed them not a whit, home at 1 Lee Road was that much more peaceful without them. Not that I minded having them around, so long as they didn't disturb me.
They,Eta,Lila and Loka were respectively eight,six and five years older than me.On holidays they would take out their toy cooking utensils,empty cartons etc and set up shop on shoeboxes in the corners of dad and mum's bedroom.They would "Hello,dear" each other and so the game was called "Hello,dear".I would trot up to Eta and say,"Lemme play no" and Eta would refer me to Lila.I'd then trundle over to Lila and plead "Lemme play no" and Lila would say "There's no space here, go and join Loka". I'd then go over to Loka's corner and beg"Lemme play no" and she'd say" Go to Eta, there's no room here" to which I would pathetically reply "Been there an' asked her" to which she'd suggest I go over to Lila and I'd reply sadly "Been there too".
Perhaps it was just as well they excluded the little nuisance that I must have been otherwise I may never have read as much as I have nor perfected my sketching skills.I seized whatever reading material I could lay my hands on, - pamphlets, newspapers, magazines,comics,books, I even read the tiny writing on bottles of medicine and cosmetics.By the time I was ten my sisters called me the "walking encyclopaedia". I'd even skimmed through dad's medical books and journals with their horrific pictures.My mind was starving and I fed it every tidbit available including a pornographic yellow-covered anonymous slim volume called 'Kate Perceval' that was ,unknown to parents and teachers, doing the rounds in the senior classes of GMGS. A patient of my dad gave him D.H.Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', a book banned at the time and not easily available. I was about 6 or 7 then I think. Dad had issued strict instructions that none of us was to even touch the novel.However I dared to leaf through the book one sunny afternoon.I found the affair of John Thomas and Lady Jane pretty stupid, but could not resist reading the parts that struck me even then as singularly vulgar.
more later.
Sometimes one feels like just sitting back and mulling over the past.Its not easy to remember because one's mistakes,-especially the ones of decision,made in the heat of the moment or in a hurry or under pressure or simply because one ran out of options,-tend to dominate the memory.Why do we recall bad times rather than the good? Why do we recall hurt clearly and not happiness?
My childhood memories are luckily more good than bad.In fact my experiences as a child have helped to sustain me in adulthood and age. As far as I recollect nothing particularly tragic or ecstatic happened, just feather-soft moments of joy and comfort, of becoming aware of Nature, of the world within me.
I would like to share these with everybody.I just hope I find the right words to convey my past.Nothing lurid
nothing shocking,nothing titillating,yet appealing to the senses,the sensibilities.
I was a quiet child,living in the world through my sketches.Mum would buy me, daily, a Bahadur drawing book, with the picture of a lancer on horseback adorning the yellow cover.I would,every evening ,fill up the pages with pencil thin people,particularly cowboys and Indians,give them names and murmur their stories to myself.My three elder sisters would be away at school from 10am to 4pm plus some time spent after school hours chatting with friends. I missed them not a whit, home at 1 Lee Road was that much more peaceful without them. Not that I minded having them around, so long as they didn't disturb me.
They,Eta,Lila and Loka were respectively eight,six and five years older than me.On holidays they would take out their toy cooking utensils,empty cartons etc and set up shop on shoeboxes in the corners of dad and mum's bedroom.They would "Hello,dear" each other and so the game was called "Hello,dear".I would trot up to Eta and say,"Lemme play no" and Eta would refer me to Lila.I'd then trundle over to Lila and plead "Lemme play no" and Lila would say "There's no space here, go and join Loka". I'd then go over to Loka's corner and beg"Lemme play no" and she'd say" Go to Eta, there's no room here" to which I would pathetically reply "Been there an' asked her" to which she'd suggest I go over to Lila and I'd reply sadly "Been there too".
Perhaps it was just as well they excluded the little nuisance that I must have been otherwise I may never have read as much as I have nor perfected my sketching skills.I seized whatever reading material I could lay my hands on, - pamphlets, newspapers, magazines,comics,books, I even read the tiny writing on bottles of medicine and cosmetics.By the time I was ten my sisters called me the "walking encyclopaedia". I'd even skimmed through dad's medical books and journals with their horrific pictures.My mind was starving and I fed it every tidbit available including a pornographic yellow-covered anonymous slim volume called 'Kate Perceval' that was ,unknown to parents and teachers, doing the rounds in the senior classes of GMGS. A patient of my dad gave him D.H.Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', a book banned at the time and not easily available. I was about 6 or 7 then I think. Dad had issued strict instructions that none of us was to even touch the novel.However I dared to leaf through the book one sunny afternoon.I found the affair of John Thomas and Lady Jane pretty stupid, but could not resist reading the parts that struck me even then as singularly vulgar.
more later.
