My Life...Chapter 2, All in the Game

My Life: People, Places and Moments (Cont’d…)

Chapter 2, All in the game

Two years later, I moved and joined the school in Vadakkanthara village, my father’s place. The de facto Administrator of the school was Paattu Maash (meaning music teacher, but he taught us everything else). He was my mother’s neighbour in Ramanathapuram village from where he commuted to Vadakkanthara for work. He believed in never speak unless spoken to, and his few responses were in monosyllables. He was happier left alone. While walking he would lower his head to avoid having to greet, or interact with, anybody. 

Routinely, after the post-lunch first period - 2.45 pm to be precise - he would hurry across to our house (100 steps far) and ask my mother: “Meena, can I have some warm water to drink, please? My throat is parched.” My mother knew what he really wanted, and would offer him a cup of coffee. He would gulp it and rush back to school to be on time for the next class. He did this twice or thrice a week. On other days he graced my cousin’s house. The ladies understood the old man’s predicament. He wouldn’t set his foot in a hotel, one couldn’t expect him to walk three miles home for coffee, and he felt restless without an afternoon coffee.

This gesture in no way minimized the punishment he awarded to me for errors and omissions - to stand upon the bench, or be at the receiving end of his cane. On a solitary occasion he displayed a soft corner for me. Soon after World War II when shortage of goods was the name of the game, our school received a bulk supply of milk powder. God knows from where – Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, New Zealand or Australia. All I could fathom was that if a remote school in less known Palakkad could get such large quantity, what would be the supply at the national level.

I helped him in its dispensation within the school. At his suggestion, I brought a two-litre empty container from home.  He filled it with the milk powder and asked me to take it home. I felt on top of the world at that day’s earning, and proudly presented it to my mother, only to be told casually to keep it aside. “We will give it to the maidservant tomorrow.”  She probably was content with the milk our two cows yielded.

Venku Maash taught us mathematics. He was a fire-brand, given to short temper. You never know what would provoke him and when he would flare up – highly inflammable in other words.  His name was used in the same way as Gabbar Singh of Sholay in later years, to instill fear in children. On a particular Friday afternoon as he concluded his class, he gave us home work and said: “Bring these unfailingly tomorrow.”  Quite unwittingly I replied, “Sir tomorrow and the day after are Saturday and Sunday. We can bring them only on Monday.”  This kindled other students to laugh aloud, and he took it as an affront. That was enough incentive for him to award me corporal punishment to last the weekend.

Getting photographed was an event in those days. The school arranged for a group photograph, my maiden appearance-to-be in front of a camera. Accordingly my father, a cloth merchant, got a special dress stitched for me.  Everything was arranged; the photographer got underneath the black piece of cloth and was all set to click when my friend Mani from behind tickled me. I had already booked and paid for a copy of the photograph, which now serves me as a relic with my back in front.

Some sentiments too go with this school, though not for a good reason. My father’s academic pursuit took a turn for the worse at this school.  It was his English class. The lesson done, the teacher posed questions to students at random. A question was directed at him. He drew blank, fumbled or the answer did not measure up to the level, qualifying for punishment. “Stand up on the bench,” ordered the teacher. He refused. The teacher repeated it.  Father did not budge. The third time the teacher thundered, “I say stand up; do you get it?” Any other student would have wet his pants at this decibel. But my Dad quietly packed his belongings, stepped out of the class, and the school, never to resume studies. The best of persuasion by grandfather did not alter his decision not to return to school. So grandfather, a firm believer in destiny, asked him to join his wholesale and retail textile business. Thus started my father’s full-fledged association with textile goods even as adolescence had still not bloomed in full.

Once cholera epidemic swept Palakkad. Dr Venkatachalam, family physician to a few households, was summoned to administer cholera vaccination to one and all. Children flocked around in large numbers as they would on such occasions. It was decided that he would vaccinate children first, just in case vaccine-supply fell short of demand. No child would come forward for fear of the pain it inflicted. Dr V played the child psychology card. “I know Sundaram is very brave; it doesn’t pain him at all. Even on more painful occasions he had not cried.” It was news to me, but I had to give in to his honeyed words. I stepped forward to be his sacrificial goat. The strategy worked. Other children began to fight for the next spot.

My childhood was not without its embarrassing moments. When I was 8 or 9, my mother allowed me for the first time to accompany the old gang - my brothers and cousins - to a movie. It was Ezai Padum Paadu, the Tamil version of Victor Hugo’s classis, Les Miserables. After stealing the silver candlesticks, Jean Valjean, the petty thief, was escaping at midnight when the night patrol police spotted him. He squeezed himself under a manhole, and waded past the sewage, full of filth.

“Strange, it stinks in our bench-row here when they show the sewage scene on the screen,” wondered members of my group. I kept mum. While returning home at 10 pm, I was yards behind them. Fearing they had lost me, they turned back, and saw that my one hand was cupped firmly at my rear end. They got the answer to their sewage-scene doubt. An advance party rushed home to alert my mother.  She kept all the passage doors open up to the backyard and, on arrival directed me straight to the bath area at the end, gave me a cold-water bath scrubbing rather mercilessly with pothangai, as she blamed herself for having given me permission. For the next few days, ‘Sundaram Padum Paadu’, not Ezai Padum Paadu, was the hum of my cousins all the way to school.

(To be continued)