When I was a very small kid, we were living in a small town. I was four years old. Those days we were admitted in schools only when we had completed five years of age. Now I read about babies in the cradles being shown flash cards with 'lessons' about colors and shapes 'to help them fare better in the competitive world'! Poor things!
All the children under five years of age used to stay at home. How did we spend the time? We were roused from the bed sharp at 6 AM (as my mother adhered to the Indian custom of getting up early in the morning and welcoming the new day scrubbed and clean after our bath). When I got up, sometimes I would help my mother draw the 'kolam'. Then after ou bath and breakfast, all the kids in the neighbourhood used to gather in one of the houses in the street and play any of the indoor games-kallangai, pallankuzhi, snakes and ladders and thayam and many more indoor games which could be played sitting indoors during the hot daytime-all the games handed down from generation to generation. Each game had its own song that had to be sung along when the game was played. These games developed hand-eye coordination, shape and sizes. We learnt counting in the course of the game-sort of play and learn, I guess. Definitely better than being shown flash cards!
In the evening we gathered in the street and played all sorts of outdoor games like 'kalla, manna', 'pandi', hide-and-seek etc., These were all games played by both boys and girls till the boys could join the older ones for their own 'kittipul' and 'kabadi'. We were playing throughout the day and were learnig teamwork, and
dealing with failure and successes, without knowing that was what we were doing!
If we felt tired we used to 'discuss' all the things we saw around us and offer explnations of those things. Radios had made their arrival in small towns. This was before the advent of transistors. So, the radios were as big as a 14 inches TV. We had to buy a licence to have one and there was a long ariel wire that went across the terrace between two poles. Our house possessed a huge Philips radio which had been placed near a window. We could see its back from the outside verandah and when the radio was playing we could see some lights through the air vents. I recollect how we were convinced that there were little men who were giving speeches and playing the musical inetruments. We vied with one another to prove how we could actually make out the features of those little men we could see through the slots!
Throughout our playing, we had to be called again and again by our mothers to have our meals, so engrossed were we in our games! In the end we had to be dragged inside with the occasional slap administered! I recollect that once I rushed to join my playmates with a 'pappad' in my hand still unfinished and a crow swooping down to grab it! What a shock I got!
When it got too dark to play we persisted in playing 'kalla, manna' changing the name to 'shadows and lights' to make use of the shadows cast by the moon during the brighter nights. [In this game the catcher will declare whther he will catch those standing on 'kal(Stone) or 'mann' (sand) to our question of kalla manna? (stone or sand?)]
When it was supper time all had our dinner at our homes and gathered again for another round of play, this time it being around the knees of our mothers. The mothers (all being stay-at-home, not a single career woman in those days among the middle classes), having served dinner to their husbands and left them to complete reading the newspapers or listening to the news on the radio, would have finished winding up the kitchen. The school-going children would have finished their homework. They would sit at the 'thinnai' (raised verandah at the front of the house-usually open to the street where any passers-by who wanted to rest their feet could sit-and were offered buttermilk or cool water by kind houseowners in those days) of any house surrounded by the children. In a little while, some woman would start telling stories-usually from the Maha Bharatha or it could be any imaginary story depending upon the person. Listening to the stories, the small kids would fall asleep one by one and the respective mothers would make them lie down on their laps or after sometime take them into the house to lie down on the mats which served as beds. Then the women would have a round of 'grown-up' talk and then retire for the night. What a laid-back way of life indeed!
Nevertheless, my parents sent me to the nearby elementary school with the neighbour's kids just to keep me engaged for some hours of the day (and perhaps one less child to keep an eye on, as two of my siblings were toddlers still). My name was not in the register but I could listen to all the lessons taught to the students of the first standard and learnt to sit still. I picked up the Tamil alphabets and the numbers during this unoffcial stint at school.
One day I went to the house of the girl sitting near me (a complete stranger to my parents as she lived in another street) when she invited me to her home. I never knew that you need to inform your parents before you venture into the outsid world! When I failed to turn up after school hours my parents were worried and had dispatched all the neighbours, who offered to help find me, on bicycles to search for me. By this time my dad had returned home from office and he was also searching for me on his two wheeler. In the meantime I had finished my 'visit' with my friend and was walking back home. I spotted my father on his two wheeler coming towards me on the street and hailed happily 'Hi Appa!' and was rudely shocked when he hit me on the head asking where the hell had I gone? This was one of the very few times I got a slap from my father!
