THE GANGS OF PALLIKKUTH L.P SCHOOL, CHANDAPARAMB

The idea of forming gangs is something I have found it hard to understand. Gangs just gets formed. Oops groups is what I meant. Now I haven't studied psychology, but my master of all trades father says he had studied psychology as a subject. Probably that had some impact on me, I keep thinking about the possible permutations and combinations that ever led to the formation of a group.

It was the month of June, and for the first time in my life I wore the white n blue uniform that the school kids at PALLIKKUTH L.P SCHOOL, CHANDAPARAMB wore when I used to be a mute spectator at the "anganvadi" (play school cum kindergarten). I was pretty reluctant to go the play school, but the big ground, the long building, and loads of children including the ones from my family and neighbourhood always made me eager to be part of this wonderful world called schooling.
                                                 
I was ready with my uniform, and I hated it that only my shirt was tucked inside my shorts, while the others had it out. When I got my first school kit, that had slate with my name written on it and pencil, mother informed me that I would be going to school with andu, muthu, immalu. Now immalu was in 4th grade so she was the most senior and andu was in 2nd.

I and muthu were going for the first time to school. We both were to join school together, we both had the same nickname and we both are family. My parents had to prepend my date of birth to 26th of may from July cause I had to be five to join grade one.
           
The bonding between us were always amazing, we played outside every now and then we got a chance to. During recess I walked to the extreme corner on the right of the big ground and looked at the kids at the anganvaadi and felt I have achieved glory. There were kids from all sides of the village, the west, east, south, north and the centre.

Year passed by, immalu got promoted to 5th grade and left for the U.P school. We were only 3 guys since then and we started mingling more with kids from other sides. We were from the centre, and we had other kids who joined us, but we made all the decisions as to what to play and where to play. Unknowingly we formed a group, and thanks to the mainstream Indian cinema, we enacted the gangs.

We walked together, made a cricket team of our own, and some times had fights with the kids from the other side. But we always won, none of the kids actually dared much against us cause my uncle was the senior Arabic teacher at the school.

That was the time when a guy from the railway gate side came to me and challenged me to stick chewing gum on the hair of a guy from the east side. That was a simple job, I didn't think twice, I had a big babool in my mouth that I took in my hand stuck on his head between his hair. I walked back to the guy who challenged with a punk rock bgm I never heard before in my life. But that was more of a self realization for me of the fact that chewing gum if stuck on hair hardly came of it without pain.

The boy was crying and for the first time in life I felt betrayed by the guy who knowingly challenged me. The recess was almost over and the bell was about to ring when the half bald Gopalakrishnan, the senior teacher at the school called me to the varanda outside the staff room. And kids had gathered around in huge amount as if there was a magic show happening, I was in the center with him and the kid with chewing gum on his head was crying. He pulled my hands out, took a step back and waked me with a stick. My hand was red, swollen, and I cried bad.

Andu probably ran out of the school compound and called NANA PA (grandpa) who was just outside at the tea shop. When he came to see me, I cried further, he was always over protective about me.

He took me out to the tea shop and got me "pazhampori" and tea. Later he dropped me back to school and shouted at the teacher for having beaten me so bad, and hell yeah me and my gang did hi fi. We some times sang songs about the baldness of the teacher who bate me. We rejoiced our victory, random kids praised us, others stayed away.

That formed my first group that turned into a gang even before we realized that we were a group of kids with similar liking and love for each other.

T.R.K

Thalla Kozhi - The mother hen

Not so long ago I feared walking through the backyard of my house to the small market in my village. The houses in this part of the world have big compounds and most of your neighbours are your relatives. The houses have always two gates or more, one would be for the outsiders to come and the other would be through the compound, cutting across the few houses in the neighbourhood to the roadside and into the market.
That was always the side I used to walk to the market. The compound is filled with dry leaves of sundry trees, the coconut fallen scattered on the ground, pepper creepers on few trees, an electric post and not to forget the little birds those kept the bgm going. The best thing about my village is that it has all the calmness and innocence of an old village with loving people and all the facilities that could give the metros a competition.

Off all the creatures in the backyard were hen a d her kids. Something that is common in animals and humans are the love for their kids, parents are always protective. The hen was also protective, if anyone goes near her she would shake herself and get ready to peck you, sometimes run after you and you are stuck in a dilemma whether to run or stay there try and shoo it away and get pecked by her.

Every time I walked through that side to the market she came to attack me, I used to get past her at times, at times I have stood staring at her as if it was the beginning of a martial art sequence in a Jackie Chan movie. Day by day I hated walking through the backyard to the market and this hen had been the prime reasons of all which I didn't disclose to anyone in the family.

Sometimes I used to think about it and feel bad for it. She stays in a house with her kids, a small house which they sometimes would never know who made it. Not guarded by foxes if any had come down from the small mountain near by, or the pythons those crept by ones in a while. She didn't have the freedom to walk out without fear, a stone released from someone's hand might see her handicapped or kill her kids. Yet she lived her life to the full, broke the shackles of her fear and walked out in search of food with her kids, protecting them and attacking anyone who passed close to her.

Few days later on a busy evening I decided to walk by the backyard to the market, and to my surprise the hen and her kids where not in the vicinity, the next day morning too I couldn't find them blocking my way. For once after so long I felt I walked slowly through the backyard.
Evening when I got back I saw my uncle covering up a small hole in a corner of the compound, as he walked back to the veranda of the house, he informed that the rotten smell last night was of the hen that used to walk around in the compound. That had been found dead under the long branches of the coconut tree piled up around a water apple tree.

I felt sad on losing a creature that spread a message to the busy mankind by its life. It had very short boundaries to live in but it lived with freedom, fearless, happy. We have endless boundaries compared to her, we are still tied up, lost in the big world.

T.R.K

The Legacy

I was three and more of a kid who was anxious to know things. I was told I was never shy of talking to anyone. That was the first instance of conversation i had with my grandfather as a kid that I remember now. He came after the morning prayer from the mosque and appeared in front of me from the morning mist. A black framed specs, a woollen topi of black, black color kurta suit and a white pajama.He was elegance personified, I never saw him young, he was always that medium sized man with great energy. He told me loads of stories when ever I sat beside him on an eve.

As times passed and I grew the conversations with him too changed. He was never angry with me, probably because I was his only grandkid who met him only once in two years. And I always loved the fact that he gave me more attention than anyone. He was calm, composed, and pleasant. His life was very simple and had its own style and elegance.  
He had built a school after his retirement from being a professor and a unani medical practitioner. The school was pretty small of all the schools I had seen in my life, but it's significance was the best among all the schools I had seen.

Built in a more under rated village of U.P where kids never went to the primary school, where the parents never felt the need to educate their kids, where the government itself didn't have a proper school, where more than three fourth of the people lived under the bpl, the english medium school was of great significance.

The pain he had in putting up the school, getting books and stationary for the kids who paid 75rs for their term,the transformation of a freedom fighter and a social activist in his early days to a social worker who worked for the well being of the uneducated sans retirement, I found a hero in my grandfather.I always wanted to help him once I would start earning, the last time we met in delhi he was still as energetic as any one in his mid forty would be,had loads of plans for the development of the school in kathiraon,the major one being accredition of cbse syllabus which still looked a distant dream.

We discussed,debated on many topics, anna hazare to satyam scam, Islamic socialism to its functionality and benefits to the democratic set up and there was no end to the conversation, till I left Delhi. He probably saw me get on to the taxi and stood near the gate till the taxi faded off from his sight, I never turned back to look at him for I knew I would see him with tears and I didn't want to carry his sad face in my memory.

Its exactly six months to our last meeting and iam back to Delhi, but this time, all I have here is his memories, his books, his writings, his dresses. Probably he has gone back to Banaras to his village "kathiraon",and would be at the head's chair in Minnat Jahan Razak modern academy where he normally sat on any working day. I know that is not true, but I like to keep it that way, I like to dream that he is still there and he would still ring me someday with his polite sound on the other side of the phone that would address me as "babu".

He lives in me and probably many more of those to whom he was a hero. I would never want to go back to "Kathiraon" and not see him there, standing at the door with his innocent smile. His legacy would continue.

T.R.K

Monte-greens

I was 5 and the only kid to my parents and was a huge fan of cricket. Don’t remember how it all happened, I was a huge Indian team fan, me and the kids in the hood followed everything that the Indian team did on the Panasonic color television imported from Saudi in the neighbor’s house. Life was much free then, I didn’t have to think twice before doing anything, we got the bats carved out of the branches of the coconut tree, five rupees rubber balls that was funded by fifty paise shares by each of the kids, stumps made out of the unused firewood, and a foursquare barren land in the hood that was our home ground.

 Sachin was always the hero; we distributed the lemon toffees that cost 10 paise when India won. As the craze for cricket grew in us, we tried our hands at making the leg pads which never materialized mainly due to the anarchy of the parents. When we couldn’t afford the five rupee rubber balls we tried making them using the plastic wastes which also ended up as a failed backhouse R & D. Grand mom was the savior to us as she helped us tie the plastic covers together and make a round shape out of them tying torn cotton cloths around. We hired the R&D from my grandmother.

We played matches with the kids who lived on the other side of the road, kids who were not any associate of the P.C family, kids who lived on the other side of the fields and kids who lived near the big mosque. We made sunglasses out of old x-ray prints and their frames with thick paper so that it looked exactly like what the players wore on the screen. We tried to dive like the Australian wicket keeper (the Indian wicket keepers never dived then) and often the skin peeled of our elbows. Life was all about playing cricket in the sun, setting up matches for egg puffs (pronounced as pupps) and the broken tamarind branches that used to run behind me when Ammi didn’t see me back home after dusk.

Like the craze for cricket the craze for the products that the players marketed also grew. Everybody loved drinking boost and buying the sports star magazine which had stickers of world cricketers. That was the first time I saw a television commercial that had Sachin drinking a dark brown liquid. At first I confused it as boost, and later realized that it was nowhere near it, I couldn’t read English then and never knew what the black liquid with a round logo in a 350 ml soda bottle meant.

As a kid I always wanted to drink it, I showed the bottle on a flex board that again had sachin with his happy smile, to my father and he told me since the color of the drink was dark it was not good for kids of our age. And I hated him for that not because he didn’t get me the drink but he was degrading Sachin in my mind, Months later when I happened to go with him to the school which was in the neighboring town his colleagues and subordinates showered all their love on me.

They took me to the canteen and offered me juice and soft drinks; I never knew how soft drinks tasted then. One of them kept repeating few names of the drinks for me to choose and all I could understand was “PUPPS”, and I told yes to it. I was waiting for my favorite egg puffs (Pupps) on the table when the dark brown drink that Sachin promoted on the imported Panasonic color television in the neighbor’s house arrived with a thin long straw which was bigger than the straw I had seen on the mango fruity juice packets.

The uncle there told me to have my “Pepsi” and I realized that it was called “PEPSI” and he was never talking about the egg puffs (Pupps) that I thought. I was happy, over jubilant for few reasons, the first being that it was something Sachin drank in the commercials, I was the first among my friends to drink Pepsi in the company of elder people and I got something that my father said NO for. I had a wide big smile, with all the hyper excitement, I kept the straw in my mouth and pulled out a big sip which crossed the limits of my tongue and went direct to my throat causing a choke and an upward flow of the liquid to my nostrils and I coughed bad, leading the liquid burst out through my nose and I remained senseless for few seconds for which I didn’t have a measure then.

PS: Moral of the story, be it at age of five or age or 23 years and 360 days, never do things that your father prohibited you from.

Ramadan Kareem

T.R.K

Satyamev Jayate

I have always loved travelling in a train, be it a short one or the ones that take almost two or three days. I have never hated history, neither have I loved it to a great extent that I ever wanted to study history as a major in my life, Never the less history has attracted me. I have always loved seeing the places of historic importance and that could be the reason why trains fascinate me to an extent.

Having spent almost two months over the books, preparing for a professional career I was kind of drained on excitements. That’s when I decided to leave for Delhi and U.P. Unfortunately I never got a train ticket to and from Delhi to Calicut, and the excitement of travelling alone in a train for around 36 hours was lost. I had to fly.
I have always hated shuttling in a flight; one of the prime reasons could be that, whenever I have travelled alone, the flight is either over crowded with those boring passengers who never knew there is a lighter part in their lives, or when there are nice ones specially the so called “hot chicks” around, I always get a seat two rows behind her. And this phenomenon continues, always!

The only train journey I had was the one from Delhi to Rampur (A place in U.P), and I wanted to enjoy every bit of it. So I made my brother sit in the middle seat and I took the window seat of the chair car. Like any other trains in India, this one was also over crowded, but since it was a reserved compartment the good thing was that people don’t bother to disturb your privacy. Initially I was confused whether we boarded the same train; I trusted my brother to know the direction towards which the train should be moving, for it has been a year since he was in the north. The situation became creepy when the train started moving in the opposite direction. I enquired with a family sitting adjacent to my seat, and they responded as if they herd the name Rampur for the first time.

On becoming a bit restless, I moved to the toilet area of the compartment, that’s the place where most of the people with open tickets sit. They didn’t look dangerous to me, unlike the people who are poverty ridden in the western countries; BPL people in India are submissive, with a bit of hesitation in my tone I asked a guy in white Pathani suit, about Rampur, not that I didn’t know much about the city, I just wanted to confirm that the train actually passed through Rampur. All my doubts where cleared with positiveness and I felt like I had just won a million dollar bet.

The summer heat had almost killed many in Delhi; one of the newspapers had quoted. But the buzz in the train was that of “SatyaMev Jaythe” being aired and the social topics it discussed. There were few college goers who were pretty much into a heated debate about this show. The free ticket people at the doorsteps had something else going in between them; it is a bit difficult to pick the local slang they speak, even more difficult when they speak with “PAN” in their mouth.

The train stopped for a longer break and people started getting out buying snacks and drinks. I was always excited about getting out on the platform whenever the train stopped, be it short or the longer stops. My father always stopped me from doing so whenever we travelled together, that could be the reason I still find it exciting. I was standing on the platform and talking to my brother through the window, someone fell on the doorsteps banging his face on the door. That is when somebody shouted he has ‘fits’.

I didn’t know how to react; the lady standing next to me sipping coffee was trying to find a way to go inside the compartment now that this poor passenger fell down and almost broke his jaws and who is still rocking himself because of the fits. I talked to the police guy standing next to a snacks shop; he came over n told its just fits. He ordered one of those college goers to pass on his leather shoe, so that he could make the guy fallen down with fits to smell it. The only answer the college goer gave was that his shoe is costly enough. That’s when a lady in her forties dressed in an old salwar khameez, came up to the fallen guy and gave him water. Cleaned the blood on his face, pulled him from the door steps, and comforted him.

At first I thought she probably was the guy’s mother, but then came to know she even didn’t know where this guy was going to. The police guy later returned with bottle of water for which he probably didn’t even pay and asked the lady to give it to the guy with fits. The train moved on, and I was sitting thinking about the reactions of each and every passengers. The college goer was sitting in one corner, he was the one who was talking of social causes, the lady who was sipping tea and was worried about her way back into the compartment had been talking to her kids about helping out others, and this old lady who didn’t even know the guy helped him first.

We speak of Satyamev Jayte and being a good human being right from our school days, in our religious classes, but then it took an illiterate, village lady in a semi torn salwar khameez to help out a guy suffering fits amidst the rush of a train journey. Shame on our education system!!

T.R.K