Awesome Blossoms: Horn OK Please (23 page)

I looked around, there was quietude. The trees, the road, the time; all of them stood still for a moment and listened to me as I prayed. I prayed for the safety of all the people who were subject to such incidents.

I thanked heave
ns for gifting me a new dawn…

***
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-
TWO

By K R Sreenivas

***

If you carry your childhood with you, you never become
older.

- Tom Stoppard

Chakrapani Street

S
treet names in India have always excited me ever since I was a little boy clutching the fingers of my maternal grandfather, Rama Rao, whenever he would visit Chennai (then Madras) where I was born and had spent the first six years of my life.

Chakrapani street, where the two-bedroom house was located, is so dear to me not because of the way the name rhymes, but because of the fact that those memories fail to leave me. The life I have lived there is somehow a part of me, though I moved away from there back in 1974. Probably not many in Chennai know about Chakrapani, the street in West Mambalam after whom that little road across the Egmore-Tambaram suburban railway line was named after. No one even cares to know now. But it had all the trappings of a little Indian street, bereft of much brouhaha, but packed with independent residential houses. It was my world then. Little boys would wear short knickers and run around, and the older boys would wear bell-bottoms, a fashion now long lost, and chat up for long. They would only disperse back into their respective homes when moonlight surfaced. The moonlight used to serve as the warning bell for the motley group signifying the time to get home and start reading the lessons that they learnt in their classrooms, preparing themselves for the next day at school or college.

Recently, I just did a check of street names in Chennai, just as in any other metropolitan city of India... Veerabadran street, Naickan Street, Samiyar Street, Gajapathi Street, Velu Street, Ashokan Street, Village Road, College Road, Veerapandi Street, Ganapathi Street, well, none as nice as Chakrapani Street. Or maybe it’s my bias that is showing up. Somewhere at one end of the street is a place called Five Lights. So I went to find out why it was named so, much later in life. It was as simple as it gets: There was a huge lamp post with five tube lights on it to provide better lighting at the junction. The bus would stop at Five Lights and people wanting to travel to Chakrapani Street and thereabouts would get off there. Well, there are lamp posts now with a hundred lights. So will we get names such as hundred Lights and eighty Lights, I wonder. What is the rationale of naming roads as such?

Street lamps were not many, may be one every 500 meters with ordinary tube lights. Now, the lamp posts are much closer and the streets of Chennai are lit up with neon and fluorescent lamps.

Chitter-chatter would happen under the street lamps in the good old days. Children did not have so many activities to do as they need to do now-a-days. At best, one would go to the Russian centre to learn and play chess. But probably very few would get such opportunities then. The teenagers would discuss more of hockey and athletics than cricket. Sunil Gavaskar had become their hero in the early 1970s after he scored the highest for India in the tour of the Windies. But still hockey was the heart and soul of India and the teenagers would walk around with hockey sticks, and not cricket bats.

That has changed now, though. You can rarely see boys walking with a hockey stick. The cricket kit is more popular and in some parts of the country, football is getting a lot popular. A reflection of India's current interests and passion. The dress code today is a jeans trouser for the elder boys and Bermuda shorts for the kids. And discussions mostly happen on social networking sites rather than face-to-face. The moonlight is no longer an augury, now it has more to do with updates and downloads on an iPad or a smart phone.

When you go back in time, it was an era when elders at home told the kids not to open the door for anyone. There would be people called `
Gudu-gudu-pandies
’ making scary sounds to the beats of voodoo drums, who would come at the entrance of the house and tell a tale to two asking for donations, there would be men and women coming over to sell vessels in exchange for old clothes and newspapers, there would be people called ‘
Killi joshiams
’(Card readers with a parrot) coming with parrots (my dad had parrots in our house and it would wake him up daily calling his name out at the stroke of dawn) to tell you what is lucky for you and what is not, and then there would be vegetable vendors bringing in the grocery and fruits at your door step. No day would pass without this rigmarole. Moms would hide their children away from the
Gudu-gudu-pandies (Soothsayers)
, and shoo them away.

So much change in the way children are being brought up now, with gadgets in their hands, waking up and going to bed watching television, going to the malls, ice-skating, going on treks, bag-packer trips etc. And you would now shop at a superstore, send kids for daily activities; spiderman, superman and batman are today’s icons for kids and almost every kid would have a spiderman or a batman dress. During the day, more sales people drop in by your house, doing a verification check on you because you bought a SIM card, or fixing a cable for your television set and giving you a demo for one of the many electronic goods that you have purchased.

Comparisons cannot stop. Back in the days when I was still a child, there were no such traps. At best you could buy was a radio, which was one of the means of instant information and entertainment. A technician from the BSNL might come to fix some fuddy-duddy wires of your telephone line or an electrician would come to fix a bulb. Technicians and electricians were literally treated like gods. They are even now! You need to wait to get an appointment, God! I could reach the prime minister of the country faster perhaps.

But those were the days I enjoyed playing in the garden, running up and down the little path in the house that my parents had rented. My cousin Praphulla akka, the only close relative from paternal side, used to dress me up every day while my mother was busy tending to the baby girl, my li’l sister, who was born in 1970. Praphulla akka showered me and my sister with all the love of the world. 

When grandpa Rama Rao came visiting us from Tripanithura in Ernakulam district, Kerala, he was probably a sad man, having lost his wife (my grandma) sometime ago. I don't remember my grandma's face, since she had seen me when I was a toddler and she died just around the time when my sister was born. The gap between my grandmom's death and my sister's birth must have been a few days and no one in the family told my mom about it. My mom had her premonitions, but she got to know about it later from her sister, who lived in Indira Nagar, also in Madras. She still lives there.

My first memory of that house takes me back to the days when I was left there to be taken care of when my sister was born. So, one morning when I was told that there would be a li’l girl I would have to take care of, I was curious to know. Then my mom arrived with a toddler in her hand, and beside her was Praphulla akka. They let me see the toddler, and I was told to give a peck on the toddler's cheeks.

The next few minutes, I tried hard to grab everyone’s attention, but it seemed they were more interested in the baby that mom was holding. I probably felt a bit sad, but I decided to put up a brave front. I was just about two years old then.

Once they were confident that I was getting used to the situation, they told me that it was time for all of us to leave my aunt’s 11th cross street house in Indira Nagar and go to my home in Chakrapani steet. I was both happy and sad. Happy that I would be back with my mom and Praphulla akka, who I was very fond of, and sad that I would not get to play with my cousins in Indira Nagar.

My parents started calling my li’l sister `Bobby'. The year she was born was the year when Raj Kapoor directed the film ‘Bobby’. It remained one of the most popular movies of yesteryears. When I grew up, I came to know that the movie had a star cast of Rishi Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia. Those popular numbers still ring in my ears and are one of my favourite songs from the old numbers of Hindi cinema. When I grew up, I was upset with my parents for giving me my pet name, which I felt was not as fashionable as my sister's. My parents called me Babu and so would all my uncles, aunts, cousins, and some very close family friends. I would question my parents on the pet name that they had given me and they would reason with all the love and affection that they had Babu and Bobby, their two little darlings. Still I would argue with them, but well, you know Indian parents.... So whenever my friends and relatives give birth to children, I make it a point to caution them so as not to give some unfashionable names – many would give names like Tinku, Bittu, Kutty etc - but to be mindful of what they name their children, even if it were just pet names.

Back in the days of Chakrapani Street, I remember that I was as naughty as one can get. When I was three or four years old, my grandfather had come over. I was all excited and he would take me for a walk every evening and I used to enjoy his attention, since I was the only child in the family he would shower me with affection and would actually carry me in his arms, my mother would say later in life.

One evening during the walk, I just happened to notice some dhoti clad man, can't remember his face, blowing a cigarette and walking ahead of us. At one point, he put the cigarette butt down and kept walking. The curiosity got the better of me and I left my grandpa's hands, stopped by, bent down and picked up the cigarette in my little fingers. Just as I was about to put that cigarette into my mouth, all I knew was I got a tight slap. The  general store shopkeeper came running to me and placed his mighty hand on my tiny face, pulled the cigarette out of my hands and gave a mouthful to my grandpa. I was bemused, but the shopkeeper to whom I am very thankful to this date, since I have never ever touched a cigarette after that day, must have been a righteous man, I keep thinking.

Rama Rao went back to Kerala after a few days of being with us. I would go to school at Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan, then and now Chennai's best school. I did my LKG and UKG there. My mom would drop me to school every day and pick me up in the afternoon when the school bell rang.

When I would come back from school, I would wait for the evenings, since one of our neighbours, the Sharmaji family, who also hail from the Udupi region from where my ancestors hail, would come over and spend time with us. My father looked upon Sharmaji mama as an exalted ideal of a father as he was the one who, along with his wife, arranged for my parents’ wedding. My father grew up being brought up by his mother, having lost his father when he was barely five. I grew to become very fond of the Sharmajis. Bharathi akka, Sujatha akka, Summi akka and Bhaskar anna, would come by and sometimes Sharmaji mama and mami too would come over and there were days when we would go over to their house as well.

I had grown so fond of them that I would hide one of their slippers in the garden of our house. When it grew dark and when it was time for them to head back, they would realize that their one footwear was missing and then they would find out that I was the culprit. They would beg me to return their footwear. After being promised chocolates and toffees, and that they would visit me again the next day, I would grudgingly go and pick up the other slipper and bring it back for them. The condition of getting their footwear back was they would not follow me to where I was going, lest they find out where I was hiding them. I miss those little things now. Visiting families hardly happens these days, especially with busy schedules that we have at work. I don't know how they managed it so well those days, and how badly we manage it these days.

And then, there were our landlords, Kamakshi mami and uncle. My parents told me that they were nice people. Kamakshi mami, later I learnt was the Headmistress of a leading Madras school in T.Nagar, those days. And uncle was a journalist, in fact the News Editor of The Hindu. Little did I know about it, but I used to find him asleep in the afternoons when I returned from school, and would go over to their house and play with him while he was still sleeping. So one day, I decided to do some work of art and with a bottle of red colour paste, I painted it all over his face, drew what I thought was great art work, and left his bedroom and ran back home, while he was still asleep. When Kamakshi mami returned from her work, she went a bit hysterical on noticing her husband and she thought he lay in a pool of blood. Uncle woke up to her screams and it was only then when she realized that it was not blood. She came over to our portion of the house and started telling my mother about the episode. That was when I broke my silence and told Kamakshi mami and my mom of what I had done. My mom was very upset with me and wanted to beat me up, but Kamakshi mami told her that I was still a child and not to bother. "Don't beat him for that", she would tell, and then took me with her and played games with me for sometime. My mom was seething with anger when I came back. I realized later she must have been embarrassed with what her little one had done to the landlords. Their son, Dinakar, went on to become a businessman, did well in Chennai for sometime, later he shifted to the US, and on my first trip to the US in 2002, I visited him and had dinner at his place. Kamakshi mami too did visit me at our Chennai residence, before I had moved to Bangalore. As coincidence would have it, I went on to become a journalist, first with The Indian Express (later The New Indian Express) in Chennai, and then with The Times of India in Bangalore and now in Goa. I too developed those late sleeping habits of a journalist and hence would wake up late. Thankfully so far no kid has come to my place and done any art work on me while I was asleep.

I was fascinated by the bus conductor's whistle then. Every time my parents would take me on a trip in a Pallavan Transport Corporation (PTC) bus then, I would be enchanted by the control exercised by the bus conductor. His whistle would bring the bus to a halt and his double whistle would get the bus moving. What a joy, I would wonder. So then I used to think that when I would grow up, I would love to become a bus conductor. My parents would laugh then, but I was indeed so hung up that I would demand that they buy me a whistle. I would keep blowing the whistle as a little boy, so much that my mom would get fed up and hide the whistle. I would get it back when I cried the loudest. Today's children have other fascinations, like watching some cartoons on television, or song sequences and Bollywood movies. Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Salman Khan hold their attention, making it easier for the mothers to feed their little children. Those days, there was no television. So there was no real entertainment or learning opportunities.