Township Tales - Rajyotsava

Somewhere, sometime, I had started off our Township Tales - and for no reason at all, it came to a standstill. I remembered our township again because of the date - Nov 1st - the highlight of the year in our township was the Rajyotsava Celebration.

The planning and organization for the Rajyotsava Celebrations, which was held throughout the month of November, started much earlier. The "Township committee" drew up a careful calendar of events, and nominated a "Sports committee" and "Cultural programme Committee". The heads of the respective committees plunged into sincere and thorough arrangements.

Through November, there were games and competitions and other events. The sports events consisted of Carrom, Badminton, Table Tennis, Chess, Cricket, and so on, all of which we played in all possible versions - Singles, Doubles, Mixed Doubles, Team Events... you name it, we had it. Since the participants consisted not only of children, but also adults, all the events were held in the evenings after the adults got back from work, and they went on until late at night.

On ordinary days, we kids usually stopped playing and got back home by 7 30 pm, with only occasional forays after dinner to chat up with a friend (but those occasions were rare.) But during November, all deadlines and self-imposed rules disappeared. Our parents also became very lenient during this period, allowing us to do things that wouldn't otherwise have been tolerated.

For example, I would be eating dinner with the family, when someone would shout out from the Community Center, loud enough for everybody to hear......

"Shruuuuuuuuthiiiiiiiiiiii... your carrom match starts in five minutes!"

Me: *mouth stuffed with food* Can't you postpone it by fifteen minuuuuuutess?"

"Nooooooooo, it is a doubles maaaaaaatch, your partner is free only nooooow, if you don't come right away, the other team will receive a byeeeeeeeeee!!!"

Horrors! How could I allow that? I would ditch my food and dash out in a trice. And my mom would understandingly say nothing, and keep my plate aside for me to come back and eat later. Bliss.

And there was something exciting about playing a night match of Badminton on the lawn. With real floodlights. We felt so important!

There were other events like Memory Test, Singing, Fancy Dress, Quiz, Antakshari, painting, and other games like putting the ball in the bucket and seeing who could light the most candles with a single burning match... we participated in everything that could be participated in.

Whether we lost or whether we won, the whole experience was head-spinningly exciting!

Along with these events, the rehearsals for the main function were held through the month. Invariably, my mom was in charge of training the singers for the group songs, and the rehearsals took place in our home or in the house of others who were in the group.  These rehearsals were accompanied by hot tea and snacks made by whoever was hosting. There usually was a whole lot of giggling, and I have stories just from these rehearsals that I air out whenever I meet friends from the township, causing great mirth. I was also be in the group, and a couple of years, I played the keyboard accompaniment.

After all the rehearsals were concluded, the matches played, the competitions held, and the winners decided, it was time for the Grand Finale. The actual day of celebration. The Main Function. The Gathering.

This day, sometime towards the end of November - this day, I can tell you - was VERY exciting. Just writing about it is producing goosebumps in me.

It was usually held on a Saturday, which meant half-day at school. By the time we got back from school, the arrangements would have begun. Someone would have started arranging light brown folding metal chairs on the lawn, and a wooden stage would be getting ready. Red screens and curtains would be lying by the side, ready to be put up. We'd run home, have a quick lunch and get back to "oversee" the arrangements, and then go back home to have a nap because the programme would go on late into the night.

We'd be awakened from our naps by the setting up of the microphone and sound system, accompanied by feedback screeches and "Allo, allo, 1-2-3 testing.." We'd tremble, our excitement reaching a fever pitch.

Sharp at 4 30 pm, we'd turn out in new clothes (or costumes), and salivating mouths, to partake of snacks and tea, to a background of songs about the greatness of Kannada and Karnataka being blared from loudspeakers. After that, the programme began with a huge screech. Invariably some Sandalwood personality (one time it was Master Manjunath of Malgudi Days fame) or an Office Biggie would have been invited, and their arrival would be marked with a lot of buzzing and whispering.

The programme would then start with an invocation, followed by speeches, and then the cultural events, in which we'd also participate, presenting the songs that we'd rehearsed so long for. The fancy dress and prize distribution followed - and then dinner.

And if you thought that was all, no. This was followed by late night Housie - where we delighted in losing money and cursing those who always seemed to win lots of money (But they buy ten tickets - they will anyway win!)

I don't think I have enough words to tell you how exciting these times were for us - but we would revel in the memory of it for days afterwards, reliving each moment, breaking down every event for careful contemplation and ruthless remarks.

And after all the excitement died down and the routine of school swallowed us again, we would look forward to the next Rajyotsava.

Township Tales - Sports Enthusiasts

There was a man (not in our township) - let's call him SM Sir. He was upset by the lack of stress on sports in his sons' school, and decided that he would start a sports group for children. He called it ASHA (Academy of Sports, Hobbies and Athletics). His sons' friends, and their friends joined the group, and soon, it reached our township. Since there was a lot of space for games, and we had indoor games in the Community Centre too, SM Sir started coming to the colony, and soon, he had recruited many of us into ASHA.

Some parents were hesitant, saying that it would interfere with their children's studies, but SM Sir was great at PR - he convinced everybody, and his enthusiasm was really infectious. Many of us joined. My parents were thrilled with the concept, and my sis and I needed absolutely no convincing to do - they said Yes almost immediately. There was a monthly fee for membership. I don't remember how much it was, but it was quite reasonable.

He would come to the township nearly every evening, and we played all kinds of games in the lawn. He taught us rules for all the games that we so far had just played blindly. He taught us tips, and tricks. He introduced me to Table Tennis. I hadn't even held a TT racket before he came on to the scene. And once I picked up a TT racket, I was hooked. To this day, it remains my favourite game, and I have only SM Sir to thank for it.

Besides games, he trained us in fitness. Every morning, he would expect us at a field about half a kilometer from our township. We would rise at five, drink something, get into tracksuits, and a group of us would go to the grounds, and there, he would make us warm up, and then jog round the field as much as we could. He kept an eye on each of us - he made sure that we increased the distance periodically, according to our ability.

After about an hour or hour and a half, we got back home, bathed, ate a monstrous breakfast, and then went to school. I don't remember ever being tired at school. Just very, very fresh.

This was perhaps the fittest period of my life. I was about 12 or 13. I had the stamina, I had the strength, and the energy. And the interest. I cannot believe that I rose at five every day for so many months. The mornings were beautiful. The sun rising, the birds chirping, the crisp, cold, morning air biting our cheeks, and a group of us friends, young, spirited, happy, quite sure that we were training to be the next Flo Jo.

We went on a couple of treks too, to hills around Bangalore. Those were wonderful experiences - something we had never done before. Once, we walked all the way from Malleshwaram to Kanteerava Stadium, through the greenery of Sankey Tank. We "trained" at the stadium and had a great time. After these outings, we always returned tired, but very enriched.

He also organized many events. We regularly had potluck dinners, or parties on contribution basis. We even brought out a simple, cyclostyled monthly journal for a time, where we were the writers, editors, everything.

And apart from all this, of course, we grew better and better at sports. Because of my experiences here, I got many prizes in school too. There was one year, I think the ninth standard, when I won prizes in running, relay, shot put, long jump, and TT.

I would have won in high jump too, hadn't our PT teacher insisted that I jump without my specs on. I told him a hundred times that I needed to see the bar which I would have to cross. But no. He said my specs would fall and break, and he wouldn't be held responsible. I told him that I have done all kinds of acrobatics with my specs on, but no. He refused to let me participate with my specs on. Duh. I ran and directly hit the bar instead of jumping over it. No, my eyesight wasn't, or isn't that bad. It is just that I didn't get the right perspective to plan my jump. Hmph.

Back to SM Sir. Does anything in India work without politics? Some people in the colony raised objections about the dust we kicked up playing in the lawn. So the management forbade SM Sir from coming to the colony, or some such thing. Bang. He lost out on a place where he could conduct ASHA's activities. He started having it elsewhere, many, many kilometers away. We were too young to travel so far, and going every day was out of the question.

We gradually lost touch with him. A pity. I wonder where he is now, and what he is doing. I hope ASHA is still functioning in some form or the other, and giving kids some respite from sedentary school life.

Next: Celebrations

Township Tales - A shady hangout

There was a nice, leafy, woody area in one part of the colony which we called "C-type", after C-block, next to which this area was situated. It also happened that the house that we lived in for a major part of our stay in the colony, overlooked this area. In fact, my table was next to the window overlooking this place.

This area also housed the main water tank of the colony. We always dreamed of climbing the spiral stairway inside it, all the way to the top, but we were never "old enough" for it. This place also had the "pump room", and the vicinity of the pump room seemed to be the hangout of the electricians, plumbers, etc., who worked in the colony. In later years, the iron man of the colony, i.e. The Dhobi, put up his stand here, just underneath the passion fruit creeper, full of gorgeous passion fruit flowers.

This place formed an important part of our non-game activities. Chatting, planning, one-to-one bonding - stuff like that. My earliest memory of playing in this place was just after the rains when it was teeming with earthworms, and we used twigs to cut the earthworms in two, and watched both halves wiggle.

When we were learning about Harappa and Mohenjodaro at school, my friend (the 25-years of "best" friendship one), whom I will call Bab, and I, went to C-type, and dug the earth with stones and twigs, hoping to find "ruins". Sure enough, we found a piece of a clay pot, and a stone with a very neat shape. We were quite sure that we had unearthed some ancient ruins, and that the stone was a stone-age implement, and the clay pot was an important relic. We even named the new ruins "Bashru" ruins, and even discussed whom to contact, and how to keep this discovery a secret until we found more evidence. Later that evening, our parents brought us back to reality. :(

C-type was the picnic venue too. We would decide to have impromptu picnics, everybody would run home and bring whatever there was at home, starting from half a packet of Parle G biscuits to a couple of bananas. Or even home-made chakli or "mixture". If there was time, we would run to the house opposite the township, where they stocked Nilgiris products, and bring some snacks (I would bring Vanilla drops).

One of us would bring a mat or a bedsheet, we would spread it out, sit on it, share all our eats equally, hog, and then go back to play. Such simple pleasures, really!

And oh, since my mom's kitchen overlooked this area, she would sprinkle water at us and then hide :) I, of course, knowing my mom, would know where the water came from... my friends were left puzzling over it for a long time!

Next: Sports enthusiasts.

Township Tales - Playtime in the Lawn

One fine day, we woke up in the morning to see that our lawn had new guests. A slide, a merry-go-round, an "A" monkey ladder, and a round monkey ladder. We watched with bated breath as they affixed it to the ground with cement. We couldn't wait to try them out, but no - they had to be painted. So, painted they were. And they told us that we could play on them in the evening.

I haven't seen such a turn out before that or ever since. All the kids in the colony were out in full force that evening. There were queues to play each game. Come to think of it, we were pretty decent kids - we queued up, didn't push each other - quite a feat for kids so young, I must say. The paint hadn't dried yet, but we were least bothered. By the way, the frock I had worn that day bore the stains of wet paint forever.

As time passed, the attraction faded. But they were still special. The slide was the favourite. We never climbed the slide from the steps. It was usually from the slope that we climbed, and slid back again. Even the sliding was not done sitting decently on our bottoms. We slid lying down on our backs, on our tummies, on our tummies head first, on our backs head first, running down instead of sliding.... you name it, we did it.

Then we started climbing the slide from the supporting poles at the sides. Have you seen these men climb coconut trees? Just like that. One of my school friends had visited me once, and she saw me climb up the slide from the side, like a monkey. She was shocked and thrilled at the same time. The goody-goody Shruthi, who is neat and quiet and does her homework regularly - is actually a monkey! My friend had gone to school and spread the word. By being a monkey, I had become just that much more human!

There was this kid who loved to climb the slide and then pee down the slope from top of it. Yeah. Yuck. And invariably, after he did this, someone would carry mud up and pour it down the slide, so that there were streaks of mud down the slope. Till today, I don't know who washed it, or whether it was washed at all, but after a few hours, it would be shiny clean, and then, ensuring that someone else has slid down it before us, we would follow suit.

The merry-go-round was for us adventurers. Sitting on it was for kids - hmph. We would stand on it and ride it. It was this little four-seater thingy that you see in children's parks. We would bring it up to speed with our feet, and then we would stand while it was turning. If we leaned backwards completely, it would slow down. The moment we leaned forward, towards the center, it would go at dizzying speeds! Without our knowledge, we were imbibing physics ;) In hindsight, it was a pretty dangerous thing we did.. but we were never scared!

The "A" monkey ladder was, you guessed it, shaped like an "A". We would sit at the apex and discuss "important" issues. And kick with our feet those who came to eavesdrop by sitting on the horizontal bar of the A.

The "O" monkey ladder was by far, the least popular. It was shaped like an O, sort of, if you looked at it from atop. We devised some game that saw us all inside it, and the "Out" person was outside and had to catch us by putting her hand in and trying to touch us. Dangerous game, I got hurt very often during this game.

Do you remember this programme called "Alpha Plus" on television? It was a sort of competition that tested physical and mental skills. First there was a military kind of race, where the participants had to climb nets, jump walls, hang on ropes - that kind of thing, and the second part was a kind of quiz. Well, we adapted it to suit us. We would note the time taken by each one of us to climb the slide, slide down, run to the merry-go-round, go two rounds of it, go in and out of the "O" monkey ladder, and then cross the "A" monkey ladder, and reach the starting point, and the quickest person was the winner.

For some reason, writing this reminded me of the bottle-brush tree, with the spiked leaves, and red flowers shaped like the brushes used to clean bottles with - the tree with a unique smell. I had even forgotten this tree! Phew! why did I remember this? Was it our starting point for Alpha Plus? Perhaps. I don't remember. Strange are the ways of the brain.

Next: A leafy area in the township.

Township Tales - Fads

Kids - impressionable, to say the least.

Remember the series on Jesse Owens and Nadia Comaneci, aired on TV? After the Jesse Owens series, out came our shorts and running shoes, and we ran and "trained" morning till evening. We played long jump, high jump, sprinted, marathoned, and what have you.

But the Nadia Comaneci series drove us crazier. Overnight, we turned into gymnasts. We were pretty convinced that by the year 2000, one of us would be India's Olympic gold medallist. We cartwheeled day in and day out. There were bars in the car shed, on which we hung and swung, and tried to perform great feats. We ended up with calloused palms, and nothing else to show for all our efforts. This fad died out as suddenly as it had begun.

Then there was this period when Tennis was a craze, but we had only a Badminton court. So we named ourselves after Tennis players and played Badminton. I was Jennifer Capriati, for some unknown reason. My sister had to be Steffi Graf. She was Steffi's greatest fan on earth at that time. She even had a lifesize poster of hers hanging in the room. This fad also passed quite quickly.

Then one of us got a cycle. Overnight, all of us had acquired cycles. We learnt cycling, fell, bruised ourselves, and then once we had the hang of it, we cycled all around the lawn, on the main road, other roads, hit each other, gave each other "Dubs" (pillion rides).

I had a problem - I couldn't get down gracefully from a cycle. I would brake, and then jump. In hindsight, I must have looked like a clown. But back then, I didn't understand why the boys would wait and watch me until I got down and then burst into laughter. Many days I went home in tears. I have no idea when I learnt to get down gracefully, but I did, pretty soon.

Oh, a word about my Avon cycle. My dad and I went to buy it in a street off Commercial Street, and ate at Woody's while it was being set up for me. I chose a green cycle. 700 rupees. Not your ordinary olive or bottle green cycle. It was a light green, which faded into white. It was very unique, and to think of it, funny. No wonder my father asked me half a dozen times - "Are you sure?" But in my eyes it was beautiful. Unique. Rare. It couldn't be missed. I didn't have to, like others, look for my cycle in the cycle stand. It just stood out. Even after I started taking it to school, I had no problems like the others - "I have parked it near the third pillar, blah blah". I would walk straight to it. Perhaps the others used my cycle to mark theirs - "I have parked it near the green cycle" - who knows!

And then it was skating season. Somebody got roller skates. And then all of us got roller skates. I bought mine at Olympic Sports shop next to Mac Fast Food on Church Street, off Brigade Road. 140 rupees. Mine had rubber wheels. Ahem ahem. Which didn't harm the surface skated on.

We skated mostly in the community center. I don't remember the learning process at all, but I seem to have picked it up pretty soon. We did nothing but skate all evening.

But I had gone crazy. Skating had taken over my life. I wore it all day long, and I mean all day long. I would have even gone to school skating if it had been allowed (I anyway used to get dreams that I was skating in the school corridors after school hours). My addiction was so bad that I never walked at home for a long time. I only skated. I wore skates while doing homework, while eating, drinking.

I even wore skates to the Indian-style toilet once. Really. Just to prove a point to myself. My mom told me repeatedly - don't lock the door, Shruthi. Careful, Careful. She stood outside, wringing her hands, waiting for the crash and the cry for help. It never came. I came outside, triumphant. I even washed the skates, because they had been in the toilet.

Another time, there were guests, and since I loved to serve tea in a tray, my mom made the tea and asked me to bring it out and serve. She had forgotten that I was wearing skates. I skated into the kitchen, picked up the large tray, with about ten cups of steaming tea, and skated into the living room, pushing the curtains aside with my elbows. The gathering fell silent. They held their breaths as I served them tea - one by one, one by one... only after the last cup was safely in the hands of the last guest, did everybody breathe.

Even now, I rate skating as one of the greatest joys of life.

Next: The Lawn

Township Tales - Games we played.

We were a lot of us in the colony, and there was hardly a boring moment. We played a huge variety of games, adding and subtracting rules, making variations - never ever tiring of it.

Running and Catching - Of course, the old favourite. And we played it with many variations.
Sudden Touch - where, the moment you are caught, you lash out and touch the person again, and she is out again, and then she touches you immediately, and you are out, and this could go on unless one of you dodges your way to safety.
Short chain, where you are safe if you hold on to someone else when the person who is "Out" comes to catch you. Long Chain - When the "Out" person catches you, you join hands with her, and together catch the others. Then you catch the third person, and the three of you go as a chain to catch the others.
Lock and Key - When somebody comes to catch you, you say "Lock", and you are Locked, she cannot catch you. But you remain "Locked" until someone else comes and touches you and says, "Key".
Tree Tree - We had lots of trees in the Lawn, and in this game, all of us gather at one tree, and the "Out" person names a tree, to which you have to run without getting caught. You are safe as long as you are in contact with any tree on the way, or in contact with a person who is in contact with a tree. We even had names for the trees - Fatty, Thinny, and so on. By the time I left the township, Thinny was very fat indeed!
We played variations of Tree Tree too - Pole Pole, Bush Bush, and when our dads bought cars - Car Car.

Then there was my pet hate - Hide and Seek. The problem with this game was that if you were "Out", you go around the colony looking for hidden people, and you have to find every single one of them. But before you found a person, if he jumped out at you and hit you on the back and says "Dubba!" you have to go back to be out. When I was Out, I was always Dubbafied. Along with that insult of being Dubbafied, was the physical hurt - my back stinging with the resounding slap of Dubba. So whenever I was out, I used to wait until everybody hid, then run back home and curl up with a book. And then my friends would come looking for me. Ha! Some kind of indescribable joy that was! I then decided that it would be kinder to just not join in the game!

There were other girlie games, that involved a lot of clapping and hitting shoulders and thighs and chanting stuff. I think I enjoyed them. There were other Statue games, where you shouldn't move or you are Out. These were for hot afternoons.

There were other games - variations of Dog and the Bone, and something called Crocodile Crocodile which involved colours.... we also played Kuntebille (hopscotch) quite a bit - with a small piece of asbestos sheet that we called "baccha".

Badminton was another favourite. We would emerge with our rackets, and since there were so many of us, but only one shuttlecock, we didn't play matches, as they would take long. We played a kind of Round Robin game, where you have to stop playing if the Shuttlecock hits your racquet and falls in your own court, and another girl takes your place, and so on.

But invariably, the shuttlecock would get stuck in the jacaranda tree. Then we would waste half the time trying to retrieve the shuttlecock. We would throw one chappal into the tree. The shuttlecock would come down, and the chappal would get stuck. So we would throw the second chappal, and - you guessed it - the second chappal would get stuck and the first would come down. After a lot of effort, we got all our belongings down, along with a shower of pretty mauve jacaranda flowers, and then the game would continue.

We played a unique game of football - boys vs girls. Our Lawn had a waist-length hedge. The gap in the hedge on opposite sides of the lawn were the goals. The moment football was announced, my friend Su would run home and come back in an old Jari Langa(traditional silk long skirt, with a zari border). She would be the goalkeeper, and would stand at the goal, and spread her legs wide, so that the skirt was stretched taut, and covered the entire goal. Any prospective goal was foiled by the ball bouncing back promptly from her skirt. The girls always won. The boys protested. "Not fair. Su is wearing a langa." We would chorus, "If you want, you also wear and come, who asked you not to?" And then we would roar with laughter. The boys would fall silent. After a while,they stopped playing football with us, what a pity.

We played cricket sometimes. My knowledge of cricket was even worse then, than it is now. Despite being in the batting team, I would field, and I once accused the umpire of not taking a catch. Well. I was that bad. But I could hit a mean sixer. And that was perhaps the sole reason they took me into their teams. And no, I haven't broken any windows.

Next: Fads

Township Tales - Getting into Trouble

I was quite the quintessential Miss Goody-two-shoes. But what is childhood if not for the occasional rebellion? I did get into trouble sometimes.

We were not allowed to go out of the colony gates unsupervised. There was a bar at one end of the road, and a lonely Water Supply Board area on the other. So it was a strict no-no. But once, someone told us that there was construction going on somewhere on our road, and there was a huge mound of sand with CLAY! So shall we go? I went. Without permission. My heart thudded, but a sand mound was too tempting. As I sat there, playing, my luck ran out - my dad , coming back from office, spotted me. My poor dad is one of the sweetest dads ever - he has hardly ever raised his voice with us. My mom too, for that matter. But yet, I was shocked and scared beyond belief. My father didn't even react. He gave me a friendly smile and a wave and proceeded towards the township. But I cried all the way back. I went home, and my dad and mom were talking. My dad had perhaps not even thought that the event was important enough to tell my mom, they were probably talking about something else - but to my guilty mind, they were discussing what to do with me. I went right in, confessed and apologized and cried - my parents just said - Don't do it again. And I am sure, they laughed up their sleeves at me later!

There were a couple of public toilets in the colony. These stank royally. We hardly went near them. But once, my mom saw one of my friends use that toilet. She told me, "Look, that girl used that toilet - make sure you don't." So, obviously, I just HAD to. It made no sense actually. While playing outside, if I needed to use the toilet, the toilet in my home was closer than that stinking public toilet. But since it had been forbidden, I HAD to go. And I went. My mom's friend spotted me. And told my mom. When I went back home, my mom was wild with rage. "Kaal muridu kaige kodthini!" She said. (I'll break your legs and put them in your hands!) I believed her. And howled all evening. [That was the worst scolding I have got in my life from her. Really. I am a spoilt brat.]

Then there was this time when a friend told me that tamarind leaves taste as good as the fruit themselves, and so I plucked a handful of leaves (I don't recall how I could reach the leaves, though) and ate them, and puked all over myself. This time, my mom was more concerned (about my health or my stupidity, I don't know) than angry, so I was let go with just a warning.

One more. We weren't allowed to go up to the terrace of any building. The doors to the terraces of all the blocks were always locked, except that of one block, which had a separate spiral staircase from outside. Though climbing this staircase was explicitly forbidden, I had gone up once. And had been so overcome with guilt that I had come down almost immediately! I was that goody-goody. Yawn.

Oh, and here's another incident - strictly not one where I broke rules... but it is kind of unforgettable. One boundary of the colony consisted of a low parapet, on which were iron railings. Jasmine creepers hugged these railings. Once, I climbed the parapet to pick jasmine flowers, and then I jumped down. My skirt got caught on the railings, and for one moment, I dangled by my skirt. The skirt then tore, and I landed on the bed of the Jasmine plant with an undignified thump. Right on the spot where my friend Pi had buried her dead goldfish. I escaped unhurt, but the skirt was one which I loved, and it had torn so much that even my mom's magic fingers couldn't repair it satisfactorily.

Next: Games.

Township Tales

For nearly twenty years of my life, I lived in a township in a quiet road in beautiful Malleshwaram.

Today, if I am a friendly, confident person, it is entirely due to growing up in that township. I spent my entire childhood there, and naturally, I have some wonderful, unforgettable memories. A couple of days ago, I thought, "Oh, I must write them all down - I might forget" - and naturally, my blog popped into my head. So, be prepared, I am going to subject you to some nostalgia in, I hope, a series of posts on life in the township.

I was a very shy child. When we moved into the township, I was about four years old. There were already a number of children of my age, and they would play outside every day. No matter how much my mom pushed and prodded me, I wouldn't go out to play with them. So, my mom took down from the shelves her treasure of excellent, educative board games that she had brought back with her from Germany, and she started calling those kids home on quiet afternoons to play the games with me.

I was now comfortable as I was on home ground, and slowly, as the kids became my friends, I ventured out to play with them, and soon, my mom reached a stage where she must have wondered - "why on earth did I encourage her to go out and play?" - coz I didn't want to come back home.

I grew up with those kids, and am in touch with many of them even now. There is one, among them, who has been a "best friend" right from then, until now. We will be celebrating 25 years of friendship next year. Another of them is C, a wonderful person - I know you must be reading ... I am sure you will enjoy this - you were the one who first put this thought into my head :)

Our township was a public sector colony - all our dads worked in the same place. There were 68 houses in all. There was a Community Centre, where we could play indoor games and read India Today, Filmfare and Wisdom. There was a big lawn, which was definitely a lawn in the beginning. But as it saw more and more of our games, not a single blade of grass could be seen in that poor lawn. The newcomers to the colony called it "Ground" - more appropriate. But for us, it remained the "Lawn" until the very end. This of course, was the centrestage for all our games.

There were a lot of trees in the township. There were some in the Lawn, and lots of tamarind trees behind one of the blocks. Naturally, the story was that ghosts lived there, and we would not go there after six pm even for a million bucks.

Our regular schedule during school days was - come back from school, gobble up something, do part of the homework in a flash, and out to play - and not going back until our moms had called us a hundred times, and after many, many "Amma, five minutes". Then, rest of the homework, dinner, and sleep. There was TV, in its ancient avataar, with only good old DD, but it didn't stand any chance - playing outside was far more attractive.

During holidays, we would get up, bathe, finish our breakfast, and run out to play. Then, back for lunch, sit uncomfortably still through the afternoon.. [Our moms - Don't play outside in the hot sun. We - Ok, can we play in the cold sun? Hyuk hyuk]. The moment it turned 5 pm, off we went again, and during holdays, we were allowed to go back outside after dinner (no running, though). Sometimes.

Next: Getting into trouble.