Memoirs of My Childhood - 1
Those were the days of my childhood life. I remember quite vividly the days when we would wander in the riversides and forest corridor without any dream of life. Born in a lower-middle-class peasant family I had never dared to dream big, but the petty dreams would make my heart leap and jump. I would scream with joy with my friends when I saw the airplane flying high above our heads. I would celebrate the moments with my friends when we found any ripe fruits or bird nests. I would go to school but it was never my priority. In our family, work was more important than school. I would look after the cows and buffalos in the nearby fields or the river beaches. Looking after the cattle was my extreme duty mainly on holidays. Going to school was not as compulsory as working in the field. So if there was any work in the field like seedling, planting, or harvesting the crops, we would skip school. Sometimes, I would enjoy looking after the cattle herd rather than attending school. The school was never a favorable place for me rather. I didn’t find any fascination towards school then. In fact, it was like a jail where the students were crammed into narrow and dark classrooms and were treated like goats and oxen. None of the students was capable enough to ask questions to the teachers. I would cherish the solitary walk chasing butterflies and swimming in the local pool in the meandering river. Till grade 8, I had no feeling of responsibility to be a student. I was a very average student. No teacher would recognize me personally. I was one in the crowd of nearly 100 students in a class. In fact, I was a shy boy with a sissy look. No confidence had germinated in me. Unlike very few fellow friends and classmates, the majority of us used to love playing outside school, and for that purpose bunking school was a must.
The biggest dream I had at that age was to run fast and touch the ball in the school ground because we were always deprived of touching the ball. I, along with a few of my friends, was very intimidated and downtrodden at school and on the way home. We were humiliated and insulted quite often. Hence we would always be onlookers in any school activities and programs. In fact, we were the victims of bullying but none could complain to the school authority about it. Our voices were not heard. Most often we were discouraged so much that we would never dream of approaching teachers and the seniors. In such a low situation, I along with my few friends would slither stealthily through the classroom’s half-broken window and disappear into the hedges behind the school building. Behind the hedges, there was a garden of a Tharu old man. In the garden, there were mango groves, coconut trees, jack fruit plants, and the most fascinating was a tree bearing small round balls of fruits with a sheer sour taste. It was called ‘Karuna’ and was a strange fruit to us. We would aim at that fruit in its season. The old man, the owner of the garden, was not that able to look after his garden with shrewd eyes. He would most often be found in his small bamboo hut lying on a typical rope bed made of jute and woven like a net.. Sometimes he was in his deep slumbering sleep. We would take a good chance, trespass his garden and pick up those strange fruits filling our shorts’ pockets and jump over the fence into the next field.
No school anxiety would overcome our minds. I remember quite vividly now how carefree we were those days. In the mango season, our first dream used to be the mangoes, ripe or raw, in the same garden. Nostalgia is so penetrating now. The bygone days leave a morose feeling in my heart. Picking the raw mangoes full of our pockets, we would sit under a grove on a sweltering day and eat with salt and chilly. On a particular day, we were cheering up silently among friends. Suddenly the old man coughed hard, breathed deep with a whizzing sound, and struggled to stagger from his bed that very day. We peeped through the grown-up paddy plants. His cough soared high and didn’t settle for a few minutes. The following day, we schoolchildren were going back home from the same country road, and we saw a procession of a few tharu folks carrying a dead body on their shoulders. We didn’t give much notice. Our mind was aiming at the mangoes in the old man's garden. We approached the garden but the old man was missing from there. The net bed was empty. We didn’t hear his cough, nor his breath. A dreaded silence loomed across the lonely garden. My friends’ eyes were wide and startled. I don’t know why but that day we didn’t stay there any longer. I remembered my mother. Our legs were not pacing but striding to get home as early as possible.
Since then we didn’t feel as free to go to that garden as before. Whenever we went there, we would get scared for unknown reasons. The silence and aerie sound would always put us into fear. These days, whenever I come across this spot, my reminiscences become strong and sharp. Nostalgia takes me back to those days, to my old days, to my days of innocence.
