Childhood fun

Now that I am going to become a 'senior citizen' in a few days' time, I am dreaming more and more of things that I used to do for fun in my childhood days.

There were two brands of toothpaste that we used, Binaca and Colgate. The Binaca-s used to come with tiny rubber models of all kinds of animals, saving up which as toys was a bonus. Alas, while Colgate carries on bravely, Binaca has gone out of business. What I remember best is using the thin cardboard boxes that enclosed the toothpaste tubes to build make-believe buses, cutting open little rectangular doors and windows along the sides with a razor blade, and nicking myself sometimes while I was at it.

On mornings when I woke up with a thunderstorm raging outside and there was no compulsion to set off for school, I used to pile up pillows and bolsters around me on the bed and pretend to be a captain sailing his little ship across a wild and billowy sea. Those who have read some poems in Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verses (A good Play, My bed is a boat) will be able, perhaps, to share the thrill and joy that I felt, and still imagine can sometimes feel when the clouds roar and the rain falls in torrents at daybreak.

During school vacations my grandpa frequently left me at evenfall at the gate of Children's Little Theatre (aka Aban Mahal) close to our house in Gol Park Kolkata after buying me a ticket, and I spent a couple of enchanted hours watching children little older than me enacting wonderful fables on stage. Two of my perennial favourites were Jijo and Rooplekha (I still sing one of the ditties from the former, tupi chai tupi, and I managed to fall head over heels in love with two successive heroines who performed in the latter!)

One image that keeps coming back is digging a tunnel through wet mud with a friend in our garden, and the triumphant joy we felt when our fingers met underground. Great explorers discovering new countries could hardly have felt prouder of themselves.

Trying out new shoes (only once a year, at Pujo time, and only those which were to be worn to school) was a tickle like few others. The first time they came out of the box, I always put them on and walked about on my bed. And reading Tintin comic books... I have read them in e-book format, and watched all the movies, including the Spielberg stuff, but I would still like to curl up with one of those illustrated books,if only I didn't have every line and picture in every book by heart.

In two of the houses I lived in during our sojourn in DSP township, I could clamber up the walls to the roof, and there I was 'monarch of all I survey'. I spent many a happy autumn night sleeping on one of those roofs when I was in my early teens, after having rigged up a lamp hung from the chimney, and feeling like a great engineer over the achievement. At no other time have I felt so happy and full of vim waking up at sunrise, throwing off the dew-sodden coverlet and slipping downstairs before my mother's angry voice could summon me. 

Making portable fire-fountains (tubri) with a team of friends on the occasion of Diwali was pure bliss, but I have written about that before, so I won't repeat myself.

On winter afternoons my mother sat together with her friends on the outer verandah of one of the houses in the neighbourhood, while we children indulged in horseplay around them - it was quite like one large, happy family - and the highlight of the occasion was when the young peanut vendor arrived, his tiny ponytail swinging from his shiny shaven head, with his trademark cry which sounded to me like 'aye badambhay chanachurey....'. He put down his long wicker stool and doled out his wares, warm shelled peanuts roasted in sand, accompanied by hot dhania chutney served on large sal leaves, and we ate together with our hands, squabbling and squealing with pointless laughter: few five-star dinners have ever tickled my palate half as well. Which brings to mind the many chorui-bhaati s we organised, traditional neighbourhood picnics the likes of which today's kids will never know.

Even at 15, while reading for my secondary level board examinations, I went off after lunch with an air-pillow tucked into my schoolbag along with a textbook or two and took a bus to the railway station. I lounged the whole afternoon on a wooden bench on the thinly crowded platform, studying only occasionally and paying much more attention to the trains coming and going (some still drawn by thundering, steam belching iron dragons in those days); waited for the chaiwallah to wake up from his siesta and serve thirsty people like me, then came home. My parents, leave alone scolding or even objecting, hardly even bothered to ask: they must have been very funny people, but this weird habit did no harm to my examination results. Today's parents will probably die of shock just to imagine their children doing something like that.

So, on the whole, it wasn't such a bad childhood after all, though nostalgia rarely makes me feel sad. Good times, well enjoyed, and happily left behind.

If, Reader, you liked reading this, you might do me the kindness of wishing me a happy sixtieth birthday. It is due in eight days' time :)

P.S.: According to Google, there have been a thousand visits to this blog within two days. A personal record! In comparison, the number of comments is measly. How unkind (or at least insensitive) most people are... especially since I am the sort of person to whom people have come whining and snivelling and asking for all sorts of help or at least a ear to lend to their tales of woe or a shoulder to weep upon for ages and ages, and I have never been short of time for them. Maybe it has been well said that your rewards are waiting in heaven, and you should have very low expectations of your fellow man...