I was reading this blog posted by one of my friends a few days back and the blog about her childhood days reminded me of my own and that is where this post originates from. I have a paper one hour from now and still I am too tempted to type all this down :) When did I ever say that I was a studyholic...( I wonder if there's a word like that) ;) This is a Holiday special and hence a break from the regular serious stuff that I call my own philo.
There have been numerous occasions when sitting in a group of peers, people dwell back into their tiny-tot days and cite of incidences that range from the craziness about their favourite toy that they had or the silly games that they played with their friends from the locality. How they used to fight with the elder sibling or the long holidays at the granny's place with the bunch of cousin's around and discussing all the stupid thoughts gathered over the year. These talks always put me in a retro mood and then I think that how unconventional my childhood was...
Lets say that I was pampered in a different way being the eldest kid in my generation in my family. My grandparents and my parents and my uncles and aunts and the neighbours and the maid and every possible soul who was elder to me tried to contribute in my childhood...everyone wanted to put in their best effort to make me in "the best baccha in town". ( Before u have any misunderstanding, lemme clarify I never regret being taught by these highly regarded people, this all has made me the person u know).
It probably started when I was not even two when my Mom somehow came to the conclusion that I should be starting my reading exercise that time. When I barely knew how to speak complete sentences my Mom started her operation " Teach Manvi" and as they tell me...(I don't have that good memory ;)) I started reading the newspapers words letter by letter within six months. Accompanying my grand dad for his long walks was my favorite activity and although he never was reluctant to take me along, this drove my grandma nuts as my granddad used to stretch his morning walks to more than 5 km. Those walks used to be fun. He would tell me about the various shops and buildings that we used to pass by and my job was to read all the hoardings that we came across. Probably that was the best possible reading exercise I could have got.
My sis is 5 years younger to me. And so my formative years were spent without a same aged company in general...there were no kids in my colony and all the company I had was my family and I made the best of it. Mom used to spend all her time with me whenever out of kitchen. To account for the rest of the time, my grandma would tell me the holy religious stories. Those stories are the ones that form the base of all the stories I have heard after that. My grand dad was the one with less patience, he would get me story books rather than reading out the stories for me. Cartoon Network was a strict no-no at my home for the simple reason my Dad never liked it and so were the comics ( that I used to read a lot of them at my neighbor's place without my parents knowing about it is another story).
Coming a few years in fast forward, I remember the fights me, my dad and my grand dad used to have every morning for being the first one to read the newspaper very clearly. Reading stories and newspaper were the daily routines for me, never skipped. For the rest other things my Mom took special care. Summer vacations were not the so cliched " nani ka place" every year. It was a five year plan. Most of my summers were spent at Agra with a lot of distant cousins who used to come to our place just for the sake of the intermittent electric supply they missed at their grandparents place where they had come for vacations. Whatever may be the reason they were the people that made sure that my vacations had a lot of comics and Maggi parties attached to it. Apart from that, my summers also constituted of my grandpa waking me up at 7 to enjoy the cold breeze that was so soothing. Never again after that did I wake up so early...( Ahhh....wish I would still have the will power to get up early and enjoy the natural serenity...for the past few days this was my sleeping time.)
I still vividly remember my vacations in class 4 when I pestered up my granddad for stories and being out of reading material, he ended up buying the complete Mahabharat for me which was like 2500 pages of stories. That was one summers I really dint die out of reading stock and when my dad discovered that the whole summers i haven't been doing anything but reading the two volumes he got extremely furious and hid the 2 books which I could locate only after 2-3 years.
There was another occasion when I went to my nani's place in for summer holidays in class 8 when all the cousins hadn't come and I was as bored as hell....That was when I extracted a battered copy of Mrityunjay in a long forgotten and abandoned book rack.That book made me realise my reading power in the true sense of the word...I read the whole 700 page volume in one go from breakfast to dinner.Also that summer I irritated the local library guy by reading up all his books for my age ppl within 10 days and then asking him for more. ;)
Books had always been my savior time and again. Whether it be the tension of times when I was preparing for the engineering entrance or the times when I used to pacify myself with a M&B post every weekly test, if I did well...that was the way I treated myself. Or the time in engineering when I had nothing to do. Or the vacations or the journeys...Books are the companions who never betray me, the soul-less entities that cheer up my mood whenever I am in a bad one, the ones that take me into a world away from the cold cruel one in reality.
I end up by stating the utopia situation -" Nothing substitutes a good book with a coffee mug in a cold winter afternoon."
There have been numerous occasions when sitting in a group of peers, people dwell back into their tiny-tot days and cite of incidences that range from the craziness about their favourite toy that they had or the silly games that they played with their friends from the locality. How they used to fight with the elder sibling or the long holidays at the granny's place with the bunch of cousin's around and discussing all the stupid thoughts gathered over the year. These talks always put me in a retro mood and then I think that how unconventional my childhood was...
Lets say that I was pampered in a different way being the eldest kid in my generation in my family. My grandparents and my parents and my uncles and aunts and the neighbours and the maid and every possible soul who was elder to me tried to contribute in my childhood...everyone wanted to put in their best effort to make me in "the best baccha in town". ( Before u have any misunderstanding, lemme clarify I never regret being taught by these highly regarded people, this all has made me the person u know).
It probably started when I was not even two when my Mom somehow came to the conclusion that I should be starting my reading exercise that time. When I barely knew how to speak complete sentences my Mom started her operation " Teach Manvi" and as they tell me...(I don't have that good memory ;)) I started reading the newspapers words letter by letter within six months. Accompanying my grand dad for his long walks was my favorite activity and although he never was reluctant to take me along, this drove my grandma nuts as my granddad used to stretch his morning walks to more than 5 km. Those walks used to be fun. He would tell me about the various shops and buildings that we used to pass by and my job was to read all the hoardings that we came across. Probably that was the best possible reading exercise I could have got.
My sis is 5 years younger to me. And so my formative years were spent without a same aged company in general...there were no kids in my colony and all the company I had was my family and I made the best of it. Mom used to spend all her time with me whenever out of kitchen. To account for the rest of the time, my grandma would tell me the holy religious stories. Those stories are the ones that form the base of all the stories I have heard after that. My grand dad was the one with less patience, he would get me story books rather than reading out the stories for me. Cartoon Network was a strict no-no at my home for the simple reason my Dad never liked it and so were the comics ( that I used to read a lot of them at my neighbor's place without my parents knowing about it is another story).
Coming a few years in fast forward, I remember the fights me, my dad and my grand dad used to have every morning for being the first one to read the newspaper very clearly. Reading stories and newspaper were the daily routines for me, never skipped. For the rest other things my Mom took special care. Summer vacations were not the so cliched " nani ka place" every year. It was a five year plan. Most of my summers were spent at Agra with a lot of distant cousins who used to come to our place just for the sake of the intermittent electric supply they missed at their grandparents place where they had come for vacations. Whatever may be the reason they were the people that made sure that my vacations had a lot of comics and Maggi parties attached to it. Apart from that, my summers also constituted of my grandpa waking me up at 7 to enjoy the cold breeze that was so soothing. Never again after that did I wake up so early...( Ahhh....wish I would still have the will power to get up early and enjoy the natural serenity...for the past few days this was my sleeping time.)
I still vividly remember my vacations in class 4 when I pestered up my granddad for stories and being out of reading material, he ended up buying the complete Mahabharat for me which was like 2500 pages of stories. That was one summers I really dint die out of reading stock and when my dad discovered that the whole summers i haven't been doing anything but reading the two volumes he got extremely furious and hid the 2 books which I could locate only after 2-3 years.
There was another occasion when I went to my nani's place in for summer holidays in class 8 when all the cousins hadn't come and I was as bored as hell....That was when I extracted a battered copy of Mrityunjay in a long forgotten and abandoned book rack.That book made me realise my reading power in the true sense of the word...I read the whole 700 page volume in one go from breakfast to dinner.Also that summer I irritated the local library guy by reading up all his books for my age ppl within 10 days and then asking him for more. ;)
Books had always been my savior time and again. Whether it be the tension of times when I was preparing for the engineering entrance or the times when I used to pacify myself with a M&B post every weekly test, if I did well...that was the way I treated myself. Or the time in engineering when I had nothing to do. Or the vacations or the journeys...Books are the companions who never betray me, the soul-less entities that cheer up my mood whenever I am in a bad one, the ones that take me into a world away from the cold cruel one in reality.
I end up by stating the utopia situation -" Nothing substitutes a good book with a coffee mug in a cold winter afternoon."
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