My Childhood

This is my blog post number 1960, which is my birth year. To celebrate, I am presenting a chapter -the first- from my autobiography.

Chapter 1: Childhood

 

I used to suck my thumb. All children do. At least, when I was growing up, they did. And when I grew up and had children, they also did. I played games like marbles, jhaad bunder (monkey on a tree)- where you have to jump on a stick placed strategically under a tree, from a branch above if you don’t want to get “out”- and many of the usual ones like hide and seek (only sometimes it was called Ice Pais, maybe named after ‘I spy’ played in some western countries).

I also vaguely remember collecting tons of mangoes in buckets on stormy nights in a big yard in a big house in a small town in A.P. There were four or five mango trees in the yard. I also watered some plants- I mean with a hosepipe in our front yard. I rode the bicycle very often, when I was old enough to do so. The club (run by the company where my parents worked) was another place I frequented. Badminton, Table Tennis were games that all the kids played, and so did I.

The small town school that I went to was not unique in any way, but it must have been doing something right. For, I did pretty well academically, and managed to grow up without an accent. That may not sound like a big deal, but I was to find out later in life that the early damage that an accent can inflict on you is tough to erase- it’s inscribed on your tongue, so to speak. I felt this most strongly about the ‘mallu’ accent, but many others are equally strong, I guess.

Movies were a strong influence. In a small town and minus television, any Hindi movie that was released (usually months later than its Bombay release) was a must-see. My first distinct memory is of a Rajesh Khanna blockbuster-Aradhana, with its superhit songs and a handsome R.K. in a double role. Another a little later was Anand, with its unique blend of philosophy of life and comedy. Many other movies of the day – Mere Humdum Mere Dost, Shikaar (Dharmendra), Anjaana, Jhuk Gaya Asman (Rajendra Kumar), Prince, Tumse Achcha Kaun Hai (Shammi Kapoor), Jigri Dost, Aulad, Humjoli (Jeetendra), and Jewel Thief, Guide (Dev Anand) followed, along with a lot of others in between.

This interest was to remain with me lifelong. Hindi movie music, captured in its prime by Radio Ceylon and Binaca Geet Mala, a weekly countdown show compered by the incomparable RJ Ameen Sayani, really fired our imagination. His skill with words, his silken voice, and the music…it was a heady combo- subhanallah!

Kishore Kumar with his divine voice was another youth icon that I instantly fell in love with. His songs, many of them tuned by the genius called R.D. Burman, became a rage. From Aandhi and Amar Prem to Kati Patang was a virtual feast for music lovers, and I soaked in every one of those masterpieces. Later, I came to appreciate the more serious numbers, though at the time, growing up, the more exuberant and romantic songs were my favourites- Tum Bin Jaoon Kahan, Nadiya Se Dariya, Yeh Shaam Mastani, Yeh Jo Mohabbat hai, Yeh Jawani Hai Diwani, and so on. There were some good songs from other music composers as well, but the R.D. Burman tunes seemed a class apart. Some other popular Kishore Kumar songs were from the movies Dushman, Blackmail, and Julie.

Bobby was a cult movie of those days. I was as besotted with the lovely 18 year old Dimple Kapadia as anyone else during that time. Many years later, as I was leaving for the U.S. to get a Ph.D., another Dimple movie, Saagar, was to be my last before my departure. She was probably 30 then, but as sensuous as in the Bobby days.

Another interest was cricket. I chose to play cricket in school (HPS, Ramanthapur) at Hyderabad. I was an opening bat, and we played without helmets in those days. We played league cricket matches every Sunday in season, and everybody in the cricket team was treated like a hero whether we won or lost. We had a very enterprising fast bowler in our team, Pritipal Singh Gandhi. His favourite trick was to get the runner out when he started walking out to take a run, before the ball was bowled. This technique was perfected by Vinoo Mankad, and some people referred to the runner as being ‘Mankaded’ when he got out that way.

I fielded in the slips, and one of the horrors of that position I remember was dropping Saad Bin Jung (Tiger Pataudi’s nephew) who played against us in an inter-school match. But I had a few good catches to which I held on too. Harsha Bhogle who is now a famous commentator was also in my rival team in school. Later, we both studied at Osmania University engineering college, and went on to do our MBAs from different IIMs- he to A, I to B.

One of my vivid memories of the cricket outings is when we won the prestigious Pentangular Trophy (this tournament was played between the Public Schools and the Kendriya Vidyalayas). We got treated by the school to a lunch and a movie- Lawrence of Arabia, at Sangeet cinema.

Our cricket coach in school was Mr. Habib Khan- a tall, imposing, focused but friendly guy who coached us all very sincerely, particularly in the basics. I sometimes wonder looking at the Indian cricket team, if they had only learnt batting and bowling from him…..

We had in our hostel a geography teacher we used to call Dracula- I have even forgotten what his actual name was. He was, unlike the name we had given him, very friendly, and used to let us make tea in his room late nights when we were studying for our exams. That was really helpful for some of us “maggus”.

I had been one of the first to join the new branch of the Hyderabad Public School at Ramanthapur when it started in 1972. Some of the friends made there kept popping up in later life. Ram Seshu, who became an advertising whiz kid with MAA Bozell, and Praveen Gottipalli, my friend and competitor for the first rank, who went off to the U.S. and now has a foot in India and another there. Some others, I never saw again.

There was a guy in the hostel, Mohiddin Khwaja, with whom I made good friends. His dad was in Air India posted in Saudi Arabia, and he seemed to get a lot of exotic stuff like perfumes from abroad, which was a novelty in those days. Another guy, Uttam Kumar, became an entrepreneur in Hyderabad with his granite company, but we never met after school. I did meet Srinivas Rao, a roommate who became a homeopathic doctor, and was the son of the owner of the best homeo store in Hyderabad called Ramakrishna Homeo stores on Bank Street. We also had the son of G. Pulla Reddy Sweets’ owner in my class, and the son of a cloth shop owner, Nadir Sadruddin, who always stood out in his terricot uniform.

A lot of teachers in school were very close, as we lived together in boarding school. The Physics teacher, Mr. Chandrashekhar, was a really sweet guy. The English teacher, Mr. Anjaneya Sastry, was at his eloquent best when he taught us Keats and Shelley’s poetry. I can still remember him describing the “little birdie” while teaching us Ode to a Nightingale. He was also famous for certain words that he pronounced in a funny way- for instance, England for him was “Englaand” and his Hindi was also anglicized! We had a very strict guy, Mr. Mathan, for P.T., and his gaze was enough to get everyone **** scared. Mr. Venkiah, the bio teacher, was famous for his long winded sentences, which he expected us to write down (copy) verbatim.

The school days were mostly fun, though I also liked the vacations when one could relax and play some other games at the club, or meet boys and girls (especially girls, as I was in a boys’ school) from other families back home. We had two friends, Manoj and Subodh, with whom we played a lot of Bridge (the card game) during the holidays. My brother and I were the others in the foursome. We played for hours, usually taking breaks only for lunch. It was an excellent way to pass the holidays in a hot and dusty small town. I still miss those Bridge sessions.

My parents also had a lot of Bridge-playing sessions with their friends at home, and I sat and watched these. A lot of the families were good friends, like the Tilaks, the Kenjales, the Kaushiks and the Talpallikars, and we, the next generation, also met a lot of times later, in India and abroad.

A lasting memory of the 1975 summer was seeing Sholay in 70 mm. in the grand old theatre called Ramakrishna (owned by the film star N.T. Rama Rao). The stereophonic sound effects, and the movie itself, were really awesome, and the only comparisons that came to mind were some grand Hollywood movies like Mackenna’s Gold, or Where Eagles Dare, in terms of the impact they had on me.

My childhood was spent in the coal belt of Andhra, in towns like Kothagudem, Bellampalli and Ramagundam. The distinguishing feature of these places was the heat, but there were compensations like the club, good company of other kids, and some scenic rivers- Godavari, in particular, which ran close to most of these places. There was also a picnic spot on the river Kinnersani close to Kothagudem, where the club arranged day-long picnics regularly. I even remember a couple of moonlight picnics, which were a lot of fun.