Childhood innocence stays on

Chetana Vaishnavi

CHILDHOOD is innocence personified, and if you never want to grow old, you must carry your childhood with you. I keep carrying my childhood with me and forget to count my age, which, I believe, is just a number. A flashback of innocent memories reminds me of Julie, a very senior girl who harassed me when I was pushed by my parents into an LKG class. 

In Mumbai, during the mid-50s, when English-medium schools were introduced, there were many senior boys and girls studying in our class. 

Julie would draw scary pictures and show them to me and I would bawl, which would give her a kick. She would then burst out laughing at my discomfort. 

I can’t forget that burly woman peon who was in charge of milk and biscuits given to all physically weak students as part of the midday meal plan. When such a student would be absent, children doing well in the class would be allowed to enjoy the fare in his place, and thus I would be sent as a replacement at times. I would wait beside the milk crates very patiently, but this heavily built (now I know how she achieved this feat!) woman would not bother to look at me. Shy, as I was, I did not ask her for milk, but instead, would pick up a bottle from the crate, watching other children drinking it. The peon would thoroughly bash me up for that. Scared of the woman, I would dread every time the teacher sent me out for the milk.

Growing up is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another. The next funny incident was when we were finishing the fourth standard and my classmates scared me about the fifth standard. I decided that instead of going to the next class, I would go back to the first standard repeatedly, after completing the fourth standard each time. We were four sections in each class, whereas in the fifth, we would all be put in a common section. My classmates terrorised me about an “exceptional” girl, Philomena, in another section, who always stood first in her class. 

But when, against my wishes, I was sent to the fifth standard, I stood first in the class and made myself Philomena’s enemy! 

Another incident I refuse to forget. One evening, while sliding down in the playground, another student rushed behind me deliberately to scare me, and I tumbled on the ground and fractured my left arm. In the KEM Hospital, my right foot was plastered and I noted that if your left arm is fractured, your right leg should be bandaged! Of course, the doctors realised their mistake and rectified the damage (a boy had come in with a fracture in his right leg). You must be thinking how dumb I used to be. You are absolutely wrong, because I am still very dumb!