Stirred up memories

I don't know why but lately I recollect so many things from my childhood. I hardly have, all these years. I have been having a very "packed" schedule lately, and the nature of my new job is such that I solve problems every day, and problems that completely stretch (stress) my imagination and thinking. May be this is the reason that when I lie in bed exhausted, I think of the innocent days from years back. Here are some snippets.

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I was four. We used to live in a small top floor house for rent. My sister was not born then. Mom was cooking dinner, and I was downstairs running around on the streets playing, when suddenly this man adorned in layers and layers of white robes, worn in Dhoti style, his forehead bedecked with limestone and vermilion patterns came by, beating a copper gong and begging for change. I was terrified out of my wits seeing him, and ran head over heels (and you should know this - I was a CHUBBY kid). I ran, looking hither and thither, and fell into a ditch. I still have that mark on my right knee. I went up and everything was normal- I got to hear some words of wisdom from my mom, and got my wound cleaned up and all. But the emotions I went through were very strange, and funnily enough I never thought of them consciously until today. When I fell in the ditch, the man looked like he felt very sorry, and his body language, with one arm extended and a foot placed forward said that he wanted to come over and help, but he restrained himself because he scared me. When I looked up at his face, I felt a strange mixture of emotions - I was still afraid, but I also felt sorry for him because he looked sorry, and I saw vulnerability in an adult who scared me! Besides, I felt so ashamed that I had got so scared and reacted the way I did, causing this man to feel guilty. I felt guilty to have made him feel guilty! It's weird. I have never felt that mixture of emotions again in any other circumstance of my life thereafter.

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When I was four, my mom used to come to bed after working in the kitchen. Part of her saree used to be moist from all the insane amount of washing and cleaning she used to do. I used to love going to sleep with my leg on the moist saree!
(Opposite of what I am now - I can't tolerate cold and am sensitive to temperature changes in the order of a few degrees even!)

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I was five. I asked my mom "What's the last number?" She said there was no last number! She said you could add one to any number and you'd have a number that was one bigger. My first glimpse into infinity, and I was intrigued. Didn't understand it at all!

***
I was still five. I wondered why we had only 10 digits (numbers), and repeated them to get bigger numbers. But never asked anyone this question. Years later it was answered anyway, the decimal system was after all just a convention (perhaps because of the ten digits in our hands that we used for counting in the early days), and I was introduced to the binary system. :-)

***
I was six. I used to do well in class. I was in first grade, and my teacher, Ms Lalita loved me. She gave me a blue nylon rose with a safety pin in it, which I could wear on my dress. I don't know where that rose went. :-(

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I was six, and every evening when my Hindi teacher used to pass by our house to go home, I'd have just gotten back from school and gotten rid of the burden of carrying those stupid uniform clothes on. Every time I'd see her through the window, I'd run out, in my inner slip I used to wear, before I could even put on fresh clothes. Sometimes she'd have walked a whole block before I could get to the gate outside our house, and I'd run barefoot, without "proper" clothes on. I'd run just to say "hi" and come back running! How inane is that?! Once she told me, very nicely, very sweetly (she was a really sweet lady), "Once I cross that part of the road there", [pointing] "don't come running, OK, kid?" And I felt a great sense of rejection! Haha!

***
I was six and a half and my sister was born. I went crazy over the baby. I used to take her out and make her sit on my lap and watch the sun go down every evening.

***
I was seven. I had begged my mom for "sketch pens" (as we used to call them then- they were like markers you could use on paper), for a year then. She was against kids using those. For one, the ink got to the other side of the page, and often on the next page in the book, and sometimes, even to the next two or three, depending on how capable the kid using them was. For another, kids used to take the refills out and paint with them and mess up their hands and clothes. And once the refills dried, they'd stick 'em in water and reuse, making an even holier mess! She asked me to stick to colour pencils and crayons. But I had to have sketch pens! Every kid in the world (at least my world) had them. Then one day, she was bringing me back home from school and she said she had a surprise for me. I was dying of curiosity and asked her if she had got me sketch pens. And she said "I am not telling you anything. You can come home and see for yourself". When I went home, I leaped in joy seeing that she had bought a cheap black and white TV second hand from an uncle, but I was still a little disappointed that I didn't have my sketch pens. Then she went to the cupboard and got out a brand new sketch pen set! Thus started my life of black and white confetti'd scenes with colours on the side! :-) And umm... let's just say I strictly followed all the invented conventions of using the sketch pens. :-)

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I was eight. For the first time in my life, music moved me to tears. I felt odd and embarrassed, and didn't know what was going on. I just felt like I'd peeped into some reality outside of the world around me.

***
I was eight, and my favorite uncle died. Another uncle of mine had passed away when I was three, and apparently I took it badly, but I don't remember any of that. I don't remember him. I am told that after it happened and the funeral was over in my mom's hometown, we came back to Bangalore and my mom got me a cake that evening to cheer me up. And I flung it at her and asked her to tell me where my Mama (maternal uncle) was. Anyway, this uncle whom I lost when I was eight was very dear to me. It was my first experience of seeing death, a dead person and the wailing and all that. I yelled and yelled trying to will him to wake up, stupidly trying to hypnotize myself that a miracle would happen because of how much I loved him, but he never got up. And for the first time, I learnt that there are situations when we,the older and the younger alike, are completely powerless. I also knew what it was like when the world had one lesser person who loved you. He was in the Merchant Navy. I used to collect his old coat buttons. They were solid and golden coloured. Where are they now? :-(

***
When I was nine, the Satan got into me. I quarrelled with my mom, did horribly in my studies and tortured my sister. :-) That sums up everything that followed (up to my teens anyway) :-)