Then people used to call me urulai (equivalent in English is barrel), I was supposed to be bit of a stout kid, very strange, but supposed to be true. People used to always ask my mother where she picked me up from, ok, I accept that they still ask that!
Coming back to the story, I was about four years old. That’s the age at which parents used ( I think they still) to put their children into a Montessori, on one fine day I woke up to be told that I am supposed to go to a Montessori and was advised to be a good boy at this place! I got a bit of attention on that particular day and also few days before the lead up to this day from my parents and people around. I didn’t know why, but I think I enjoyed it!
Then I was taken to this place and handed over to a teacher (at that time she was the second most beautiful person I had seen, of course my mother was the benchmark). It was the first day not only for me, but I think for the other kids too, I couldn’t understand why all of them were crying. Father told me to stay with the teacher till mother comes to pick me up, so I didn’t mind hanging around at this place till mother came. I didn’t have much to do, the teacher was too busy trying to handle the cry babies and I was their seated all by my self looking around. Then I noticed that there were people near the gate and the other kids were allowed to leave the place. I went near the gate to look for my mother, I was too short to see through the crowd and identify my mother. So I opted to just casually get out of the gate and search for my mother in the crowd. Later I got to know that parents were supposed to point their finger at the child and the security uncle was supposed to allow each child to go out of the premises. But I didn’t know any of this, when one of the other children went out I too opted to go out and look for my mother.
I couldn’t find my mother in the crowd. So I had a simple option of walking back home. I came out and walked along the Odeon lane then walking around the mara tree junction, and then took the short cut behind syberia to enter the school premises; from that point I knew the place very well, so didn’t have any problems in reaching the school quarters which we lived in. Only the walk upto mara tree was new. I think the distance between the Montessori and home was obviously less than 2 KMs, so no big deal!
I walked in to the house and saw that my mother was just getting ready to go somewhere, from behind I called her amma and expected her be very proud of me for making her work cut out, instead rather to my utter surprise all hell broke loose. She was surprised, stunned and now gave me an earful for coming alone. She knew that I was scared of this character called as nona(nona was the name they used to refer to a mentally retarded lady who used to to beg around that place, and when ever she sees a lady she called them “nona” to make her plea, I was told that she used to catch little children and take them away) and bereted me asking me “what would have happened if nona had caught you?”. Then my dad was informed about this episode, he had his set of questions to ask and then lot of advice, I think they informed to my Montessori teacher the next day. People around made it around to make it look as if I had given a slip to the Montessori on the first day itself and got home. Now this became one of the points that people at home used to introduce me to others, so that they can be better aware of me L
Later on when I grow older I got to know the “seriousness” of the my actions, the Odeon lane was supposed to be a very isolated place and worse than that the mara tree junction was notoriously known by people to be a place where after beheading human skulls were placed on display during that insurgency era. But how am I expected to know all this??? (probably If I was fed with this data in my decision making process, it might have been a different decision)
But it’s me, what I can do; I had all the logically innocent reasons to carry out those actions, but just like today even then, people never accepted that I was innocent. Lesson leant for life; all though I am innocent people will never accept it! ;)
