Childhood Memories

I am trying to run through my childhood…. My years of growing up, coming to terms with life which was as at the same time stupidly funny and profound. I am trying to go back to the earliest day in my life that I can remember. Trying hard.

Sometimes there are bits and pieces, some days are in order and are continuous. Some were happy, some were painful. Sometimes I relate to them, can find words to articulate the experiences I have gone through, sometimes memories have become old and unclear. They have started to wear off like the old photographs in my Grandma’s album. The moment you look at it, you know this is a beautiful snap but time has erased some of its beauty and now is presenting itself to me as some Jig-saw pieces. Let me have the fun of putting it in order.

I have always tried to maintain a Diary and in some occasions I have been fairly successful in documenting some of my days (mostly it was written during the brief drowsy moments before sleep seized me). But somehow it is more exciting to look at those unclear photographs of my memories and try to figure out the beauty of it.

One characteristic of my childhood that I vividly remember is that I was constantly out of sync with rest of the world around me. I lived mostly in a world created by myself, where I chose the characters, the setting and the environment. When I first read Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip, I could immediately identify with Calvin – mainly because I lived my childhood like him. Not as cynical, but surely as detached from the rest of the world. But as years went by, I slowly started recognizing life around me. Today, I still retain 30 to 40 percent of this trait – In fact I have a world tucked away in my privacy, in my mind, I sometimes steal a moment of secrecy to look into my bathroom mirror and act out few of my fellow citizens (of my world). But I also have my saner world, as some might call it, the one I actually enjoy much lesser, the one in which I need to struggle through 30 days to get my bank account filled so that my bread and butter can be taken care of. Given a choice I would love to remain in my world, one I created some 20 years back, when I was kid, and risk being looked down as an insane and mentally unfit fellow for community living.

My mom tells me that, once back from school, I used to finish homework and milk and run to enact a play in the courtyard of my house. I hardly remember what it was about and from where I picked up inspiration for it. But I remember the hero of the play was called “Maccedona” - God alone knows what it means.

I used to walk from one end of the courtyard to the other muttering rubbish (in my mom’s words) – probably for me it was highly intellectual dialogue of my play or was it life itself. At times I used to gallop on one leg, indicating travel of my hero on a horse. I remember the swift movements of my hands, my mannerisms indicating an adventure. Aah, now I remember, probably I was inspired by the Greek tales that I learned in my school.

I am still trying to go back to the earliest day I can remember in my life.

Something else I remember about my childhood was that, I was never academically inclined. That does not mean I was less curios of the intricacies that surrounded me. I could never get myself to sit in one place and mug all that I was required to. I had questions on everything, if I found answers for them, then that was education for me. Sometimes I could not find answers, no one would provide them. There is a C&H carton, where Calvin asks his dad, how load testing is done on a bridge and his Dad gives him some stupid answer. I have received a lot of stupid answers like that – not from my dad, from others around me.

I used to ask questions, more of them and question each answer given. I still have that trait. Some people find it irritating but for me, I derive my inspiration and learning from asking questions.

My sister was a very dominant inspiration and source of learning for me in my early days. We were two kids and our parents used to work. So most of my childhood, it was the two of us. The earliest image I can remember of me now is that of my sister giving me a bath, putting talcum powder, combing my hair, dressing me up etc. Once both of us were ready – this would be around 5 PM; we would stand on that high step in the corner of our old gate and wait for our parents to get back home from work.

To be continued…