My (tor)mentor

Another recollection of my childhood  days……….for those of you who had the patience to go through the previous blog…”An Ode to my Young Master”!

When you are 4 years old and you have only one cousin brother (4 years your senior) living in the same city as you (Bombay) whatever he says, is the law!

Those were the days when summer holidays meant packing up your 'trunks' and bedding and heading for the village. It was an annual feature. Perima and Madan, Amma and me. Train tickets would be booked in advance. The glee on my mother's face would match that on my father's! Her's for her trip back home his for being left home alone back home!!! Me?? I was the officially appointed family 'grinner'!

Traveling by train was 'fun-time'. The steam engine would hoot and whistle its way through the tunnels. Soot would fly across the skies and the engine would bellow out huge clouds of smoke! But what was happening inside was more fun!

The First Class compartments those days was a compact 4 berth kind. There was usually a separate washbasin and an attached toilet within the confines of the compartment. The bunks were big and broad, or may be for that young age they seemed to be big and broad. (In comparison the bunks provided now-a-days seem narrow, and one has to sit up and lie down again to turn over!!)

Madan was not only senior to me, he was by my standards then, taller, and agile like a monkey and awfully smart!

He would have already made up his mind that he wanted to face the engine so as to be able to face forward while traveling. He knew that if he sat straight away at the window of his choice, he would be forced to give the seat away catering to me and my tantrums.

He was the smart cookie. He would 'pretend' to opt for the other window. Then he would shower praises on the seat, the sight, the scenery, and the breeze blowing on the face, the works! (He did exceptionally well in his later life in marketing!!…He had a head start very early in life!). The more he sang the praises of the other seat, the more restless I'd get. No amount of reasoning or persuasion from my perima and amma would make me believe that the window seat I had was the best!

If Madan was occupying what he considered to be the best seat, then I HAD to have it come what may!!! Thus he would trick me of my prime seat and continue to have fun at my expense through the rest of the journey! Naive, nincompoop that i was i always fell prey to his pranks!!

Another thing he loved to do was make me ape him. I turned out to be the best 'ape'-er! He could easily climb onto the upper berth. If he was up, could I be far behind???

Amma would huff and puff to put me on the top berth.(Those days I was called cute and cuddly and chubby!! Now it is plain obese!) No sooner was I up on my side of the berth, Madan would jump down! And there I was stranded on the top berth looking at the world pass by through the topsy turvy window!This see-saw of up and down would continue till Amma got tired and fed up and I got a good spanking!!

Madan always had the last laugh!

By the time we arrived in the then good old Madras, I'd look like I had put in a weeks service in the coal mines of Newcastle! It normally took about 4 kind souls and a tank of water to bring back the golliwog to a little girl!!

A further overnight journey took us to our village in the Thanjavur District. Boy! What a homecoming it used to be! Thatha (Grandfather) used to be there at the station at an unearthly hour of 04:00 hrs to receive us. So too were B & J(my cousins..children of my eldest Perima).

Once the quartet got into place hell used to break loose in the house!

Gosh! Just thinking about those days make my eyes wet!

In nostalgia world.

(Its such a pity these days that cousins do not get to spend time with each other during holidays and the like.  At the most a wedding in the family turns out to be the only get-together.  Sad, but true! )