Just loved that account with the half-murders and gold smuggling. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron come to life except this was real life, haha! My 70s childhood summers were full: My brother and I used to walk 2kms to the swimming pool at 6am so we could swim between 630-8. Then we walked back home. Up and down for at least a month. I remember it as a time of some innocence. I wore a frock like a lot of girls my age did in the Air Force Crowd but on the way back from the pool, I only fastened it at the top quite unworried about the gaping back despite my mother's scoldings. I was about 9 or 10 and really unaware...We also biked back and forth sometimes dodging doodhwallahs on their bicycles and dirty truck drivers who hurled obscenities. I used to go around the traffic island in the early morning traffic and had to wait for my little brother to catch up. How he did it is a total mystery. Our daily and ordinary lives were so precious and I only recognize it now. When I see what Palestinian kids are going through...
After the morning swim, there was breakfast - yum cucumber sandwiches and a boiled egg. Then, an hour and a half of holiday homework and then...no rules, no tasks...and the Aadoo tree awaiting us in the backyard. My brother would get my mom to tie a turban with a blue cloth towel. I went just as I was to climb the Aadoo tree. We'd both sit on a branch and shake it to make it sway like the Bay of Bengal in Vizag where we usually went for the other month of the vacations. Below the tree there was a mini-shed with a treasure trove of gardening tools all very useful for our adventures as farmers. We'd shovel and hoe without helping my parents one bit with real gardening tasks. We'd seen the construction workers eating chillies, onions, and chapattis and of course, my mother had to prepare this for our daily adventures in the backyard up on the Aadoo tree. I haven't climbed a tree in decades but am considering signing up for a tree climbing course in Atlanta... My room was the epicentre of the make-believe world in my house. My brother's hockey stick was my mike and I belted out total scat without batting an eyelid. My brother was there but what he did I don't remember much. What does activity mean to a child anyway? There is a restless, endlessly curious connection with the world that is a natural state and the physical body is as much a part of it as the mind. He tumbled around the bed, stood on one leg, fixed his turban and did some other finnicky things...it was all great fun. Sometimes we played in the closet lining up all the shoes and tracing our own feet on paper like we had seen the mochis do. Shining our shoes for school or for my dad wasn't really a chore - we loved it. Then there were the great train journeys from Delhi to Vizag with a "halt" at Kazipet Jn where the bogies switched tracks...a few times there were coal engines and we arrived nicely "sooted". India was such a miracle, an absolute kaleidoscope of sensations. There were the ravines of the Chambal Valley that we hoped to pass quickly (Phoolan was a real threat then), Agra, Itarsi, Jhansi, Nagpur (for oranges and batuvaas) and then the changes after crossing the Vindhyas - the rocks of the Deccan! In A Passage to India which I read in my undergrad degree at Delhi, there was a description of a great hollow rock, the Kawa Dol, that balanced on another rock. Such a familiar sight on our journeys...and finally arrival at Vizag...bougainvillea and whitewashed walls and the smallness of everything that was just the right size for a childhood. It just made the Bay of Bengal even bigger. And yes, I could say a lot about the beaches but it was the way there (as always the journey is better) that was 90% of the fun. Up and down the slopes passing the buffaloes and the adjacent milkmen's colony; the ISKON temple; the house where a classmate called Poornima lived and then down and down until there was only the mad rush on the sand to the sea. I'm very, very grateful in Vancouver to have a little bit of Vizag via the sea. I'm finding it hard to write all this and not think of my Dad who taught me to swim and who passed away last Sept. His photo is here on my desk and I've put his Air Force Peak cap on it. I'll stop there but this is a great thread. Loved the other childhood summers described on this thread too... Cheers. Radhika On Sun, Apr 14, 2024 at 9:06 PM Shenoy N via Silklist < [email protected]> wrote: > Lovely piece, Veena! Here are a few recollections of my childhood > > I grew up in Bombay and it was a very different Bombay. We lived in a > small house in Malad, a distant suburb that my uncle, in a fit of pique, > called 'the armpit of Bombay'. My father had a busy medical practice > there, which meant he couldn't move very far, and the house was small. It > was perennially run over by out of town relatives. My parents, who had to > sleep in the kitchen sometimes, under the dining table at other times, and > often in the little balcony, depending on how many people were living in > our house, desperately wanted a larger house. But the only one my > father could afford turned out to be in the middle of a mangrove forest > swamp. They took it without another thought. > > When we moved there, I was ten. There wasn't much to do. We would play > cricket but if the ball went into the mangroves, as it often did, everyone > had to chip in to buy a new one, which caused great fiscal problems. And > the mangrove forest had its fascinations. It had little waterways in which > fisherfolk would row little canoes, fishing for crabs and small fish. They > were generally nice, friendly folk who would give us kids rides in their > boats if we asked nicely. Sometimes they would charge 25 paise. I remember > one time, thanks to the generosity of a visiting uncle, I had an entire > rupee in my pocket. The fisherman to whom I offered this was so > overwhelmed, he took me all the way to Versova, which Bombay folk will know > is a good 15 km from Malad. But through the waterways, it's quite close. My > rupee had still not run out, evidently, because he took me out into the > ocean. I remember being terrified. I didn’t even know how to swim. The > gigantic waves buffeted the canoe around like it was a leaf. My fear seemed > to amuse the fisherman. I think he genuinely thought I was having a great > time. Eventually we reached shore in Versova, an entire universe away. I > didn’t have a penny in my pocket but such was the kindness of Bombay, > people gave me rides all the way back home, which is a story in itself. I > got off at the Versova jetty and found a BEST bus there. I went to the > conductor and asked if this bus went to Malad. "Malad?" the conductor > asked, with unconcealed astonishment. I tearfully told him my story. He > asked me to get into the bus, which went to Andheri station, stopped > another bus theere which went to Malad, and handed me over to that > conductor with a brief account of my tale and a "mulga veda aahe" (Marathi > for "the boy is crazy"). This other conductor dropped me off to Malad from > where I walked home. My parents of course had no inkling. If I had drowned > and died, I’m sure no one would have known. This sobering thought sorted me > out for good and I started doing better at school. > > And there were the murders and ‘half murders’. This latter term always > fascinated me. A half murder, I now realise, is a failed murder attempt. > Back in the day, I thought of a precise, scientific killer who would stab > someone just enough to kill him fifty percent, and would spend hours trying > to think of what it might mean to kill someone fifty percent. But on with > the story. Where were we? Right. The mangrove forests. > So the mangrove forest and the fisherfolk’s boats made it an ideal > conduit for smuggled gold. These were the glorious days of socialism when > the powers of the day had outlawed gold entirely, making gold smuggling the > number one industry in the country. Steel making, agriculture, automobile > manufacture, all came a distant second, third and fourth. The gold would be > brought in big boats which would moor themselves outside the 12 mile Indian > waters limit. Small canoes and fishing boats, like the one that had taken > me to the ocean, would row there and carry small consignments of gold back, > which they would hand over to the landing agent and receive a handsome fee. > The gold bars would be sewn into jackets which the fisherman would wear, > and hand over to the landing agent, who would then wear it under his shirt > and transport it wherever instructed. The personnel involved in this supply > chain were called jacketwallahs. Naturally, none of them acknowledged that > they were in this trade, but Bombay knew. Whenever a jacketwallah passed > by, there would be surreptitious nudges and nods with “jacketwallah” > whispered. An uncle of one of the boys in my class was a jacketwallah and > he was the coolest guy we knew. He used to wear Ray Ban sunglasses and > smoke 555 brand cigarettes. That boy was our window into the dark > underworld of the jacketwallahs. Ever so often, the thought would strike a > jacketwallah that if he simply disappeared with a jacket, it might be > written off as an accidental death. Gold bars are really heavy. If you wear > a jacket laden with them and fell into the waters, you would drown without > a chance. If I feign a drowning, the ingenious jacketwallah would reason, > and laid low for a while, I could trouser all the cash and live happily > ever after. > Sadly, this almost never worked out. Retribution was swift and brutal and > the corpse would usually be laid out in a visible spot in the marshes as an > example. Our class mate would whisper “Murder!” and all of us would run to > the spot in the lunch break to get our glimpse. Usually, the corpse would > have been moved, or if it wasn’t, by the time we reached there would be a > lot of policemen who would shoo us away, but once, I saw a murder victim. > It was a young man, his face pale, mouth slightly open and no sign of any > blood. It was super scary but gave me a thrill nevertheless. Then I > realised I knew who he was. I had seen him around school. He was a relative > of a boy a year junior to us. It’s strange how death affects us if we know > the deceased person, even slightly, as opposed to a stranger. My thrill > turned to sadness and I lost my interest in going to see murders and half > murders. > > Thanks and regards > > Narendra Shenoy > >
-- Silklist mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist
