3 posts tagged “childhood”

By the time the guests had brushed the cookie crumbs off their dresses and stood up on uncertain feet that were still tingling from pins and needles, father was already at the end of the long verandah, holding open the gate with a tight, false smile. What followed was a tightrope of conversation that steadied with mother, only to be toppled over by dad.

"We loved having you guys over today. Its been such a long time!"

"I hate to say this, but you should leave now. The roads are going to be crowded in half an hour."

"Come back soon!"

"Go safely."

He was the emperor of grumpiness and unsocial behavior. He hated having anyone over at home, except his own siblings and old school friends, with whom he could chat in his broad, Bangladeshi dialect about the "good old times." Brother and I were ashamed of him and revolted as soon as we realized we had the right. "We hate you, Daddy," we panted (because we were still a little scared of him), "why don't you like anyone visiting us?"

"Because I have you two!" he said, very surprised, "Why would I need anyone else?"

"Daddy, you're so boring! We don't want to be with you!"

“Well then, I have your mother." His eyes twinkled.

"Mother! She's nearly as boring as you!" we exclaimed, "What will you do with her?"

"We will read the poems of Tagore together," he said, and his eyes still twinkled.

And that's what they would do, evening after evening. Take out a volume of Tagore and read to each other. They were the most boring couple in the world.

"When I was young, tasks of writing often caused me difficulties. Almost all my writing then consisted of essays or answers to questions set as homework. Writing these essays and answers confused me. I felt that the teachers (or my father, who sometimes oversaw my homework) and I were aiming for different ends. For me, writing meant writing. I would of course answer the question, and keep to the set word count; but apart from that (I thought) I was pretty much at liberty with style and choice of words. For example, to a question like, "What happened when Silas Marner's gold was stolen?" I felt it was perfectly alright to end my answer with a sentence like, "And then Silas Marner let out a scream, and the anguish of it pierced through the village night."

But my teacher thought otherwise. While she corrected our homework, I would invariably be called to her desk. We would then have a talk.

- Swati.

- Yes.

- Where did you get this last sentence?

- I wrote it myself. (proudly)

- But its not there in the book!

- I know. But don't you think its logical that Silas Marner will scream in grief when he finds out his gold has been stolen?

- Ok. Good. But henceforth, just stick to what George Elliot has written. And no big words.

We had these conversations many times during my junior school days. Sometimes the teacher/ my father would get angry, and then they would draw a long thick red line through my answer. I would have to rewrite it. Sometimes I would have to rewrite it many times over. It was very much like a battle of nerves, wits, egos, and justice.

This dilemma troubled me less and less as I went up to high school, and then to college. In these years, I had to write more and more of analyses. As long as I knew the established theories and could explain them well, my teachers did not mind me writing out my own thoughts. In fact, they encouraged independent thinking, new ideas, and arguments. By this time, I had realized and accepted that though I loved writing, I was not a good writer. Though I sometimes had good thoughts, my language- both Bengali and English- was simply not good enough to write and develop these thoughts. This realization did not bother me. I was just happy to write.

In this phase of my life, I also worshiped my writing like my God, and treated it as an inviolate thing. If I wanted to bunk class, or not do a chore, I could easily tell practiced lies, like, "My Mother is really ill, I need to go home," or, "The Professor has set us a tough assignment, I must go to the Library." But I could never bring myself to utter falsehoods like, "I want to go practice writing now, and that is why I can't attend your class." First, I didn’t want anyone to know about my writing. And second, the last thing I wanted to do was to use it as an excuse, or tell a lie about it.

When I think back, I can only smile fondly at the intense child that I was. I also smile for all the people who are at this moment adding their own lines to school essays, or missing work to write out their thoughts.

I still write, not because I like my writing, but because I like to write. Sometimes I think I write because I do not like to talk. However, what I do definitely know is that in many ways, my writing is the most important thing in my life. This thought is frightening, and I still have not come to terms with it."

Just as all civilizations have an underbelly, we had an under the bed.

Perhaps it was not the underbelly (I hasten to clarify), but more of an underground. It was almost as if an alternate home life was going on down there, a sort of a counter culture.

For example, I revolted against calcium supplements and threw my daily calcium tablets under the bed- down the little gap between the bed and the wall. (I hate calcium!) My brother hid his new cricket balls there, away from the prying eyes of his friends. When he wanted a new pencil or an eraser, he hid his old stuff down there too. He also had epilepsy as a child, and was forbidden from swimming, cycling, etc. He got his back by using the floor under the bed as a "swimming pool", and by lying down on the old red floor and practicing his "swimming". If you peeped under the bed on most summer days, you would find a little child lying there, flaying his arms about and practicing his butterfly and breast "strokes".

In her later years, when our grandmother had Alzheimer's disease, she stayed with us for a couple of years. She was failing fast, and doctors had prescribed, among many other things, a strict diet for her. But she loved to eat. She often sneaked out forbidden food from the kitchen and hid it below the bed- coconut-jaggery balls, spicy Indian trail mix, cream and custard and so on.

And of course there was my brother's nurse, Tulsi, who hid our parents' books and magazines under the bed, so that she could read them late at night, after work, and take them to her mother when she went visiting. Tulsi was an intellectual, and when my parents realized this they let her have free run of their books, and there was no need for her to hide her reading material under the bed any more.

But that was the thing. Everyone who used the under the bed abided by a silent code, and ignored how the others were (mis)using it. The only time the truth was swept out (literally) was during the monthly cleaning, when all four of us- brother, grandmother, Tulsi, and me- stood in a line and quailed with fear at mother's sharp-tongued reprimand.