The Games we played..7

Have passed the 5th standard also included some upgradation in playing. I had understood to listen to Hindi commentery and understand many things better. Since most of my friends also went on trips to their native places – nearly for a month, I was left alone with the ball.

My cousin venkatesh who lived in NR colony came to my rescue. He said things like playing cricket with bigger teams which left me drooling. I pleaded mom to allow me to go and play at his house. Since it was en-route to her office, i was allowed to go and play there on one condition – I will be back when she is back en-route from office. This meant 6 hours of cricket play time.
Very normally we only hear and think about things that are possible immideatly and not worry of distant past much – a thought re-inforced in our investment ways – isnt it?

We got a old house with 22 yards length and about 14 guys to play around!! Wow that was cricket. We divided into teams and played till the ball was broken or disputes raged and had to stop the game. Any way the game resumed next day – past being buried and everybody still are friends.

Here, I made new friends like madhu, srinivas, prateek and many people who are called by nick names – these names have stood the times till date and we dont know their original names!

I was introduced to other games like tree climbing – Yes, it was initially the gauva tree which had tiny gauvas and was the bitterest of all. But, we had climbed the tree with great difficulty without elders seeing and definetly enjoyed our fruits of labour ( pun intended).

My mother decided that I was a grown up boy now and its good to learn cycling. Children follow and ape their parents in their early years it seems. My father worked for Bangalore Transport Service and hence used to allways travel by bus and never learnt cycling. I too tried to do the same but mother threatned and cajoled me into learning – saying it would be helpfull in future – now I know!

Mother secretly convinced my friend Nagendra who had already mastered the art of cycling to teach me and agreed since he was within 200 meters of my house. One fatal tuesday afternoon mother gave Nagendra money for hiring the small cycle ( my bargain that it should be small lest I fell or wanted to get off the flight early).

Balaji cycle mart loaned me the cycle. Even though I had fear and excitement written all over, it was fear inside and excitement outside. I sat on the seat like a king ( our politician style, never knowing when its going to be yanked under you) and started pedalling while Nagendra and his assistant pushed me on the road.

Luckily it was a dead-end road and no traffic at all. I managed to act the art of pedelling while Nagendra did the hard labour of pushing – cursing himself for having agreed to teach me. This episode was repeated a couple of days more much to the amusement of the elders in the neighbour hood who said ‘mohan was a kid, how big person he has become, learning cycling‘.

I too started enjoying the cycling outings and gained confidence. Even Nagendra had to push only little now-a-days as I got the hang of the pedlling stuff. The only problem was that I tended to look at the rotating wheels in front and not at oncoming traffic.

The saturday at 2.30 PM is still etched in my memory. I was wearing my favourite white knickers and blue shirt. Nagendra wanted to demo mother that I was the king of bycycling now. Mom and my friends were watching. I slowly mounted the pedestal like a F16 fighter pilot – smiles et all. The push was given and I started off yelling the ususal instruction ‘fast beda kano‘ etc.

Half way through my friends clapped and mother was also beaming. I asked Nagendra to help me slow down as it was going down a bit of inclination. Nagendra’s usual helping hand did not do the trick. I shouted and turned back at Nagendra who was behind me.

Lo and behold – Nagendra was not there. I was cycling all alone. No wonder everybody was clapping. Suddenly panic struck me and the fact I was not facing forward added to the confusion. Nagendra shouted from distance. Brake hideo!!

The next moment the KEB electric pole decided to hit me in full gust – I had allways told Nagendra that poles are bad in my road. Eventually the tyres skid into the road side gutter ( thank god it did not have slush – story otherwise would have been quite smelly) and fell down.

Collateral damage was accounted for. It was my pride which hurt more than the limp on the leg!

I was red in face and seething with anger like a boiler about to burst, I shouted at Nagendra ‘ yako kiye bittidu?‘. Now everybody rushed and pulled me out of the gutter. Some turmeric was pasted and Ii decided that was the end of my cycling days.

Nagendra was beaming like a brides mother who got her daughter wedded successfully to the unsuspecting groom spelling totally doom!! He had finished his assignment of teaching me cycling and that was the technical demonstrator!

Even though this experience ultimately helped me in cycling for the first time when I was in Junior collage. Till then it was Nataraja service as commonly referred to walking in our group.

The one car per family policy

A great set of thanks to Sri CheluvaNarayanswamy who has bestowed with immense wisdom and intellect to promote – Jamless roads in the urban jungle of Bangalore immideatly and Karnataka at later on stages. Considering his unique preposition, the Govenment MAY extend the following curtosies too:

a) Ensure every family can have only one child – Every couple on delivery automatically get approved for sterlization program with monetory and insurance benefits – obviously the sucess rate of sterlization is 80% in the world but 20% in our local land. Department people can create fake deliveries, fake couples and enrich their coffers.

b) Ensure every family gets only one job. Aint it sufficient to eradicate joblessness for youth in this country? With this master stroke, any politician can claim to have eradicated this evil design forever. You can create fake families and provide fake jobs but real salaries. This enriches the officials private purse anyways.

c) Ensure every family gets only 2 meals in a day. By doing this great service – poverty is alivated and the politician would be smiling away. You can create fake families with fake children so that real food is pelfiraged and sold to needy at great amounts. Needless to say the officials private purse is filled.

d)Ensure every family has only one wife who delivers children – funny it may sound as there are religious possibilites of multiple wives – all legal for some reserved category while its illegal and punishable for others. By equating all such restrictions of single wife – this enforces only one child per family, one job ensures to eradicate the population explosion too. You can create fake wives who deliver real children to fake families. This enriches the officials private purse.

Having conquered the aam admi’s real problems the politican is in trouble. He only has to provide good goverence, roads, drinking water to masses. Well, these are purposefully kept pending for next election promises.

Meanwhile the politician and clan laughes away to ill gotten wealth while the country is taken for a super big ride – thanks to Road Transport Deparement headed by an able minister with super thinking capacity.

Readers are requested to send in their additional “one per family” restrictions to the department directly. Any good suggestions which helps the official grow his unofficial balance gets an award - the golden cockroach which enables you to have 2 childeren…needless to say all the above rules dont bind you any more.

Hip Hip hurry to RTO!

The Games we played..6

The highlight of 5th standard was the realization that we are grown up brats and were just 2 standards away from 7th made our hearts warm. We could now be grown ups shortly and this worked many misleading wonders in life.

We would play games called capes. It simply meant you should have a capital K written somewhere on your body. When ever the other party calls out your name and say capes, you need to show the K or you would be hit nicely on your legs. Elders often wondered why those ghastly looking K was adorning everybodies hands , legs just like cult symbols.

We were also majorly into collecting the following items – Cigarette boxes, Match boxes and stickers.

We used to build partnerships and exchange duplicates with others. There were some guys who went one step further and played with cigarette boxes with big stones. The game simply meant different cigarette packs had different values. For example a Scissors pack was 10, Wills 20, Kings 40. So both the partners would place equal denomination pack stacked on roads around which was a rectangle drawn in red brick or stolen chalk piece and hit it with flat stones called ‘bacchas’. Who ever got the packs outside the rectangle kept the packs and won that much. We had a full RBI type of valuation for every new cigarette pack found. The same applied for matches too.

Stickers were struck in our notebooks and this rage went on for a couple of years. We used to get stickers when chocolates were purchased in bulk. I used to stick phantom, Bruce Lee and assorted gods stickers on rough note book and show off.

Gayathri teacher was little unique and new to the SSM school culture. She was the first person who introduced us to the BhagavadGita and made us chant the slokas in the evenings just before the final bell rang. I till date thank her for those good deeds.

I remember this 5th standard for the great amounts of krishna janmasthtami sweets I devoured. Due to this I had to frequent the loo nick named london with regular punctuality – so much so that Gayathri teacher wrote in my dairy to stop feeding me those extras. But little did she know that it was my neighbour padma aunty who fed me while mother had signed the dairy and stopped my quota.

Middle term exams came with such speed, i just did not know what to study or write. The highlight of this year was the navarathri celebrations. I pulled my mom to commercial street and purchased quite a few dolls including animals and decided to do a small park. My mother who was amused at a boy asking for dolls – obliged with a smile.

The park meant – spawling some sand from nearby construction house, creating the perimeter fence using broom sticks, caves which contained lions,tigers, birds on tree including a Mr Mohan looking after the whole thing. To add a touch of greenary ragi was sprinkled with water. Lo and behold - it sprouted and my park turned green overnight. I was so overjoyed looking at it, unfortunately the same had to be taken and thrown out after 5 days!

After the navarathri holidays, report card was looking quite bleak and with threats that I will not cross to the next year – made my mom to look for a tution teacher. A couple of them came and went – with no change in my intelligence or inclination to study. But correspondingly my interests were high in working with coloured beeds with which my aunty would conjure up beautiful dolls etc.

Najundaswamy who lived one road away this time took up the challange to some how get me pass the maths test. I used to call him nashyada nanjundiah - a name that held on till he died due to the pungent smell of that nasal filling. LCM and HCF were real tormentors to me. It never registered in my bird brain. Finally in desperation najundiah sir told me – take 2 and keep dividing. Using this charm I somehow managed to pass the final exams with 37 marks in maths – an achievement as usual – celebrated with lots of fun and pomp.

By now, my addiction to cigeratte packs were so high, where ever we walked, I allways had an eye on the road and gutter to pick up the new or fresh ones. This irritated my father and grand father. I was admonished that if another report of me searching gutters came in, my stock would go up in flames – personally.

I moved my stock under partnership for cooling off effect to umesh’s house. When activity picked up the temper of his mother, the same was moved to sudhir’s house. Finally to evade that going up in smoke, we pasted them into old lekhak note books and passed it around with envy while elders smiled that finally they had made us see light!!!

Final exams came and went. Thank god as Gayathri teacher was quite benovalant, I passed out into 6th standard. The same sweets but with more threating sayings like – you are a grown up boy - did not do much wonders but we had discovered some more new things to play around now.

to be continued….

Bali Pashu

The word Bali Pashu reffer’s to the sacred sacrifice done at the alter of God from deciples for granting wishes. There are many types of sacrifices done to God from fruits, dishes, animals and even human beings at times!!

The law of the land has recognized that killing an animal or person is against law and considered as a crime.

Just yesterday a television channel was showing how a group of villagers who were about to make about 10 lambs/goats as bali pashu’s was saved from death.

If killing animals as sacrifice is cruelty, then killing them for food right from our 5 star hotels to the smallest daba on road sides is also violation of law right? Then why are they spared?

Am definetly not saying dont eat non-vegetarian food but just pondering about the dual standards here.

Laugh it out – 9

Santa singh and Banta singh decide to take their budding construction partnership company abroad and bid for the under sea tunnel between France and England. Their commercial bid is so compitetive, the land up with the interview commitee for selection purpose.

The committe is wondering how 2 gentlemen who have never seen a under sea tunnel lest build one – fire off their questions.

Management : Understand that you gentlemen can build the under sea tunnel as per specifications?

Santa : Yes, myself santa singh and himself is Banta singh.

Mangement: Good. So, how do you plan to go about doing this project

Santa: Myself will start digging from France end.

Banta: Myself will do digging from England end simultaneously.

Management: (little amused) What if you dont meet undersea ?

Santa: Then you get a tunnel free of cost

The Games we played..5

There was a host of board games with her. We could choose board games from SPY, chinese race, memory etc. The biggest hit was the Mine a Million. Here we purchased our own barges, boats, trucks and mined away the ore to a distant country for earning maximum money. This some how was a big hit with the gang – mostly because we knew the theme while the others were little tough to get through our bird brains.

There used to be mine-a-million session starting from morning 10AM ( we had brunch before starting off and this was good with grownups around the house) and ended somewhere round 4 or 5 pm when somebody won the game or there was a dispute of sorts. This non-stop nonsence used to puzzle the elders but kept thier grins hidden as it kept the entire gang out of trouble with neighbourhood.

When Mrs MuthuLakshmi found that we were in no mood of even thinking of returning the boards, she put in a word with my padma aunty. These boards have come from Africa to be given as presents to one of the cousines in chennai. Would we be good enough to return those? Off course wasnt I the land lords son? People those days feared and respected the land lord while the land lord feared the rent control act.

I hurridely cancelled the game session and went into a hudle well away from the regular play room into the opens and behind the usual Govenment School grounds. We all had fallen in love with the board game and somebody removing that meant a big void. Only a child will know how precious the game is which is usually otherwise measured by cost by adults.

With tears, we wanted to go and hand back the games to Mrs Mutu lakshmi. I hit upon an idea. Why not replicate the game? After all it was a cardboard stuff with plastic entities. The idea was a instant hit!

We decided to pool our resources and decided to have a go at it. We never shared this secret to anybody lest they laugh at our idea. I promptly went with all the board games to Mrs lakshmi and requested for 2 more days to return the mine a million alone. She too laughed and said OK, keep it for a week if you want but surely I need to send it with my husband to Madras this week end.

We planned the project eloborately. We drafted the writing skills of Sudheera, the colouring ability of sumantha. Umesh was the scissors man – cutting lorries and barges. I was the site supervisor providng gum’s, sketch pens. I also took 4 old calanders and 2 of them put togather became our poor mans board.

After lots of painting and drying, the game written by hand looked like the crude cousin of the original. We copied all the hand bill details, the notes etc. We used the gulugangi – a red coloured small thing as replacement for ore in cardboard barges and trucks.

After ensuring everything was dry and usable, we purchased a big set of dice from Bhavani Bangal stores on DVG road and returned the mine a million with zillion thanks to the owner.

The dry run of the session was very good. Everybody got back to their original ways and the elders at home were amazed at our dupilcating skills.

One highlight of this entire excercise is – it was a team effort. We all pooled our resources and never bothered about ownership. Since the heavy calander was difficult to transport, we just rolled and pushed it under of grand fathers cot! A bata shoe box doubled up to hold all other things like currencies, play cards, dice and gulugangi. What I later learnt in corporate trainings in terms of teams was practiced by us to perfection in our childhood days!

Holidays are numbered again. Like all good things and bad things – these end too. When it was just 10 days left for 5th standard to re-open, I had to sit and write the copy writing for 2 months in kannada!!! We were expected to write one page per day.This was a pain – a literal pain in the hand. The elders curtailed our mine a million times until we finished the quota of atleast 18 pages per day – as calculated by padma aunty so that we break even on the school opening day!

A new year means many new things – Uniforms, Shoes, Socks, Ties, Belts and off course those brand new books which are difficult each year.

A new teacher Gayathri took over the 5th standard chaps. First day itself we found out she was inexperienced.

to be continued….

Laugh it out – 8

A man was called by police to the station and the following conversation took place.

Inspector : Your name is..

Man: Raju babu sir..

Inspector: OK, raju babu… do you have a credit card?

Man: (Surprised) Why Yes I mean No sir.

Inspector: Yes or No?

Man: I mean I had a credit card, but it was stolen 3 months back.

Inspector: Do you remember the details of card?

Man: Why yes sir, it was issued by Katchara bank numbered 123412341234332

Inspector: Good. (opens a plastic cover and flashes a card). Do you recognize this?

Man: ooh. Its my card!!

Inspector: Raju, why did you not complain about your lost card to the bank people atleast?

Man: (Shyly) Sir, the theif was using the card more sparingly than my wife!

Scissors story

Recently myself had to travel to Bombay from Bangalore on some official business. I checked in and flew out 15 minutes late because the incoming Air craft was delayed due to Air control at Bombay.

I had finished my business trip and checked in at Bombay. As usual it was announced that the flight is delayed by 15 mintues because incoming Aircraft was 15 mintues delayed due to air traffic jam at Bangalore. Wondering who has to be blamed for this. Bangalore aircontrol is blamed at Bombay and viceversa!!
The security had kept my bag aside and asked sir - you have scissors in your baggage? - thats not allowed and threw it into dust bin!!

I protested saying I have travelled with it from Bangalore and it was allowed. The answer was a sad grin and sorry from the over worked hawaldhar.

My questions included:

a) Can scissors be used as weapons to hijack and threaten people on flight from Bombay only? Why not from Bangalore – why its a threat from other side only?

b)Is it a money making racket of police personell or are they short of scissors?

c) It was not a coincidence that even my collegue had similar experience a couple of months back – are the police trained differently in different regions of this country?

d) Lastly, a fake bomb call should have actually beefed up the security checking at Bangalore airport and caught this offending scissors?

As the adage from a corporate trainer – Different strokes for different folks!!!

The Games we played..4

Dr HSV worked for St Josephs college in the kannada department as a reader initially and finally became the head of department. Since his sons were the closest friends of mine, quite a major chunk of my holidays were spent in their home and he treated me and my friend Umesh as part of his family itself – so much so we went to see SuperMan in Nanda talkies as one family!

We used to meet people like MN Vyasa rao , Nissar Ahmed , Lakshminarayana Bhatta, Subbanna while playing our customery games in his house. Never did we know that these are the doyens of the kannada culture!!

There was a big cement floor in front of the house tailor made for our cricket. Already the youngest sanjay had broken the glass pane of HSV’s room and the same was plastered with brown paper and prajava vani news papers.

We used to start of very early in the day. Initialy we started playing cricket using rubber balls. These were lost very quickly as we could hit hard at them and they travelled double the distance. Also they would land in gutter and taking out the ball was a big risk – if some adult watched us!. Finally the noise of the rubber ball threatned HSV’s peace and he declared that any more noisey cricket, the bat would be burnt for next days meal.

We all met at the backside of the Government School. We discussed ways and means of continuing our masala game. Like a buddi jeevi we sat and thought for a new ball which would be noiseless. Veda came speeding with his cycle tyre and said ‘sorry kanroe, halu tharabekithu – thengige jwara‘.

An idea hit sumanth who said, why dont we play with a rubber banded ball? It meant cutting those cycle tubes used in our playing tyres into small pieces. I produced my favourite kite making scissors while we forced veda to give up his tube inside the tyres for reinforcement.

We took a small pound of lekhak written paper from sanjays double line note book secretly where miss had written poor and wrapped around thick wads of cut tyre bands around them.

This new ball was tried. The problem was it was quite small and majorly madhu had to land up with a bruised eyes when the rubber band ball hit him at full force in front of the KEB pole while attempting the pitch catch!!

It became normal for us to get burised like this and we still found the ball wanting. We did not have money to purchase tennis balls which were the order of the day. At 60Ps, a rubber ball itself was costly.

My mother had a wollen knitting machine and had quite a few old wollen sweters and mufflers of odd size and colours. I just chanced and pleaded her for one of those for playing. Using my stitching skills, I took a pound of news paper and stitched upon it, the wollen muffler in thick wads. This was the new soft ball.

This soft ball invention of mine was a instance hit. It did not produce the sound, did not travel long when hit the hardest and also did not bruise anybody!!!!

I became an instant hero. Suddenly the boys became malcolm marshall and ran the bowling run up so much to get pace that they would be panting by the time they reached the bowling crease itself!

Cricket used to be played in everybodies house now because of the soft ball since it also did not break anything like glass on contact. My skills were in high demand and other kids tried to duplicate my efforts with disasterous efforts. Example were cotton socks missing for younger brothers, mysterious dissapearance of mufflers etc. The elders did not find out the reasons anyways and blamed the rats which were in quite good vote bank numbers then.

The middle 80’s was the era of board games. There was this ludo, snake and ladder which was only for girls. We sighted our first board game BUSINESS and got instantly hooked on to it. The banker post was a prominent post given to anybody good in maths.

The arrival of a new tenent for my house ( we had rented out a portion to pay the loans) from nigeria recently, opened a new vista in gaming for us – no Xbox stuff anyways!. The lady of the house Mrs Muttu Lakshmi became very friendly with me and one day showed me many board games. I got lost after counting eight different board games and requested can I play and return those please.

On hearing the YES, I jumped in joy and declared to my friends on the top of the well stone that we would be playing new board games next monday!

to be continued…

The Games we played..3

Holidays meant a very little bit elevation of the summer heat – but that was mostly an afterthought since we did not care much about those rudimentary things but concentrated only on the 3 letter word called fun.

I had been introduced to some good set of friends at new house – but mostly kids who were school drop outs, kids who mostly played on the streets and gutters. But how will a kid understand all these neuiesences of life? Irrespective of the middle class strata all the kids joined to gather – literally hand to hand and played games for fun.

Prakasha was the lead nuiecense maker. I remember his leadership ways aka Tata in stealing things for the annual holi celebrations. He would have 2 teams. The first team would knock on the doors and ask for alms. Meanwhile the second team would climb up using every possible way on top of their houses and look out from vantage points. If the first team got some dried wood, cloths or things that are easy to burn, no problem but in case the house owner got stubborn, a special whistle from prakasha would mean – steal everything in sight – including those paper mache made items kept on top of house to be dried to sun.

They would buy coloured powders and have a great blast. The evenings would ensure that all the collected firewood, cloths, paper is made into a crude effigy of kamanna – the lord of desires and burnt with dancing kids around. Each year the gang yearned for a bigger kamanna next year!

Kids gang up pretty easily. The biggest talker and action person is the leader. All of them listen to him with rapt attention and carry out the words with respect – like military training. There is not dual logic of why should I do it? Who is he? Self appointed leaders are questioned only when an other leader gets in way.

Each leader is also loved for some great help rendered to individuals in the team. One of the kids in the gang wanted to know if lakshmi pataki could be burst in air. Off went one of the guys to buy the 1Re big cracker – mind you, the amount of sulphur and pottassium nitrate in that is enough to have ringing noise in your ears.

Prakasha took the pataki in one hand, as having observed his uncle light up the wills cigerrate, he too cupped his hand and struck a match. With expertise he lit the fuse and all of us moved back 4 steps in awe.

Eeyye said one of them hearing the hissing noise of the fuse… prakasha waited and calculated the length of fuse and in one swoosh threw the cracker up. It was about 20 feet up in air very near to the KEB tubelight it burst – a loud bang which resonated – only to be matched by the jumping, joyfull kids around – showered with pieces of paper from the lakshmi pataki. This became a folk lore in our street when parents admonished kids to light up the small kudure pataki from distance.

One of the wish I had was to fly a kite very high in sky. I had learnt how to make kites from my father but too small a person to fly it. Most of my attempts decorated the electric poles and my signature deccan herald kites drew the attention of prakasha. One day he asked – can you make a big kite for me? In escatacy of knowing that he would launch it secreatly from the next door neighbours roof top – i agreed.

In the afternoon when mom had gone off to work, me and prakasha brought the choiciest of news paper and some rice for making the kite. Most of the kids ate ragi balls and was not good for kite making. We prepared the kite and kept it in the hot sun for 20 minutes. Prakasha climbed up the roof top and asked me to come too. Leaving the house unlocked, in glee, with his help and one another kid. I got on top of my asbestose sheet top – only to burn my feet and make a rock dance!

Eeeyo..ee kade baro – he gestured. There was the shade of the big coconut tree next doors. Now the question of finding the right breeze and launching was pending. The kite was handed over to some kids on road. They waited holding the kite high like a Zubin mehta in his composition. Once prakasha’s shirt coller twirled in air, he guestured and immideatly like Rohini series of rockets by ISRO, we launched our home made kite. Every body had that question wether the kite would survive as a commercial one.

The kite with initial hiccups soared into the blue sky. I remember clapping in joy and thanking him. It was a cool 1 hour we were on top and remembered that mom would get back home by 4pm and requested prakasha to get the kite down. Finally after loosing some thread which was tangled, we got the kite down and carried the treasure inside house.

Mom got wind of this kite business by my neighbour who had seen all. We were given a good admonishing not to bake in hot sun and drink gallons of water. We were asked to fly the kites only in early mornings or evenings when heat was bearable – but where did the grownups know that wind is highest when temperature is high?

One of the other games played was buguri or the latest bay blades as my son does. It was more simple in those days. A small top was selected based on money one had in pocket. A nail of equal length was given to me from my carpenters son next door. He stole his father big sutti or hammer. We got to a open field with a well – because it had solid stone slabs – perfect for nailing the top and cutting off the edge so that it would rotate – an art mastered by siddoji – carpenters son.

We used to play this indoors on red oxide cement floor and see how long it would rotate. My cousin venkatesh had a top we called sleepy. This small top would rotate nonstop for near 3 minutes for one twirl.

I was fortunate to have suhas, sudhir, sanjay and sumanth – all sons of Dr H.S.Venkatesh murthy the kannada lituerate as my friends. He incidentaly also is the song writer for the serial Muktha. He used to lock up in his room and write poems and chase all of us out as we created a near racket while playing games. We had invented a game called soft ball cricket. This was played next to the window of HSV.

to be continued….