BHARATH-A 20Yr Sojourn

CHAPTER:4

Cochin was a wonderful place right from people to the weather. One good thing about cochin was most of them knew English. Even a butcher knew English! Yes , kerala was truly a highly literate state.

My school "chinmaya vidyalaya" was located in vaduthala. Malayalam was a compulsory subject. However the school authorities relaxed the norms for me. I was allowed to study 1^st standard Malayalam in the first sem following which I was supposed to shift over to 3^rd standard Malayalam in the next two sems. The school had a semester system,where in we had 3 semsters. Each semester ended with a term exam. Once that exam was over the next sem exam didn’t test on the portions that were already tested in 1^st semester. This made things lot easier. The workload was reduced to a great extent. Even the school ended by two. This allowed me to take up some extra curriculars. My dad arranged for a music teacher, though I don’t remember having any keen interest for music. We had to get a harmonium as the music master wanted that as a pre requisite for teaching.

Daily five to seven, I had music classes. It was a big bore. I just went through the moments. I learnt a few ragas and songs for a couple of months and gave up after that. One of my dad’s associates owned a theatre. He used to arrange for movie tickets on weekends. I remember seeing Jurassic park over there.

At school I was completely at ease, Thanks to the cosmopolitan nature of my class. There were people from different places in my class. I had a friend by the name of Abhishek. His father was owner of “Bheema jewelers”. He used to come in chauffeur driven fiat car.He called me amul baby as I was pretty chubby those days. One more good friend of mine was Kartika. She helped out in completing my notes whenever I was absent and helped out a lot during exams.Then there was ameena who I admired for her beauty and brains . She was the topper of the class.

One of my best friends at cochin was shankhar. My mom was strict with regards to my performances in exams. I always feared the results. It was Shankar who used to come to my rescue, most of the times making me understand that I had actually done better than a section of class and there was no need to worry. There were times when he went upto my mom and told her not to scold me. He was one nice guy I regret losing contact with.

Apart from the regular subjects we had crafts, drawing , PT and bhagvad gita. I struggled with drawing and bhagvad gita. Drawing classes were a nightmare . The drawing sheets and crayons were horrifying images for me. In craft class we made various decorative pieces which I still preserve. PT we mostly played dodge ball. Cricket and football were out of bounds for us. It was only for high school.

My mom took great pains in learning Malayalam and then teaching me. She learnt it from the doordarshan teaching channel!! And it began yielding results. I got decent marks in the first semester exams and I made a smooth transition to 3^rd standard Malayalam. Bhagavad gita was really tough. There were 18 chapters and we had to by heart the whole thing and recite the ones the teacher asks. That was a daunting task.

My mom kept herself busy by teaching in a school for mentally challenged. She also learnt car driving though my dad was reluctant to let her drive. We got a sunny and my mom used to drop me at school on that. I enjoyed the drive along the railway track to school.

On independence day, I got my first opportunity to venture into extra curriculars. Having learnt carnatic music for sometime I sang well. So I got a chance to sing “Hind desh ke niwasi”. There was also a fancy dress show and I dressed up as Nehru.

I made couple of friends at HPCL quarters. But I didn’t get to spend much time over there. Occasionally we ventured to the marine drive. The scenic backwaters was a view worth a watch. There was a floating restaurant over there. My other hangout spot was driving park, where I got to drive pedal jeeps and scooters on real roads. It was like real life complete with signals and zebra crossings.

My dad made frequent trips to pune for attending training programs. He got me chocolates from the famous nathu’s sweets over there. I relished them a lot. My pet collection widened with a mini aquarium comprising of fishes and snails. My dad also got a special kind of birds which didn’t fly. We could hold it and play around and they made no fuss about it. But over a period , their wings got strengthened and they managed to fly away.

The love birds met a sad end. One of them died due to ant bites(Bloody ants..i hate them!!). After a few weeks the other one died when a cat attacked and devoured it and left only bones(sob..sob). The fishes were often attacked by the snails. The snails squeezed the fishes to the walls and the fishes died of suffocation. All these were sad moments and we decided not to have any more pets.

My dad wrote CAT and various other MBA exams. He managed to get a seat in Philippines to do MBA. But he let it go as he didn’t want to leave me(love u dad ).

Two years on there was a sudden change in mindset of my dad. Those days I was pretty dependent on my parents and I guess most of them would be at that stage. But probably I was a bit too dependent. I didn’t know how to tie lace(I still don’t know :P), how to wear a shirt and other silly stuff. This made my dad think of putting me in hostel so that I could learn to do things on my own.
One of my dad’s colleague's son was studying in 8^th standard at vijnana vihar in vizag. The friend(jobless fellow!) suggested my dad to put me in the same school as it gave good value education and was disciplined.

There was an entrance exam to be written for getting into the school. And believe it or not .. there was a crash course to crack that exam!! Amazing! people make money out of every damn thing. After my fourth standard I left my great school and friends at cochin. I moved over to vizag and underwent the crash course for half a month. It was a horrifying experience. We were packed into small dark classrooms and made to attempt loads of questions from dawn to dusk. I had made up my mind to fail the test at any cost. But god had different plans I guess. As even my worst performance got me into touching distance of getting admission. I just missed the cut off. My grandfather was Assistant police commissioner at vizag. He put some influence and got me a seat in that dreadful place. I was disappointed as all my plans failed and I had to stay away from my parents for 1 year. It was something I had never imagined of.

My hostel experiences and stay at vizag shall come up in next blog