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My friend N told me that his town Kurnool was better off. There was a rich landlord with a car who was childless (the landlord). He didn't know what to do with all his money and took pleasure in distributing ball candy (one colored ball each) to the street urchins immersed in their goli play. Ball candy were cheap and he used to buy them wholesale in a tin. It must have worked out @ a thousand balls and more for a Rupee.
So every weekend he used to drive his car and park it in the kerb and look out for children at play, collect them around him, and place one ball into every proffered hand @ two hands per child. But kids in the street were more interested in his car than his candy. So, some of them used to gherao him (like folks did the other day in Delhi to a visiting lady CM and her Finance Minister) while others were busy touching the bonnet and boot of his car. This used to so enrage him that he would pull out his stick from his boot and chase them away...so much for the love of kids of a childless zamindar.
That reminds me...in my youth I was dreaming of one day touching the wings of an airplane. That dream took fifty years to materialize...In the 1990s when the then Director of IIT KGP decided to convert the Old Building into the Nehru Museum, the Kalikunda Air Force offered an old World War II Hunter Fighter. This was duly dragged in and parked in front of the Old Building, together with an old Steam Engine gifted by the Railways. I didn't fancy steam engines since they were as common as crows (again) during my childhood. But I sneaked in beside the Hunter aircraft and gently pressed its wing tip...to my utter delight it felt like India Rubber...or was it my fancy?
So, Bus it was that we touched and fiddled with to our heart's content at Muthukur when we were school kids...and ran away when the driver, sipping his soda, spotted us. This reminds me of the Readers' Digest story when a candidate during an election of Australia spotted an urchin reaching for a doorbell in his constituency and lifted him up and rang the bell for him, and the kid then screamed:
"We are now supposed to run, don't you know?"
...Posted by Ishani
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In the early 1950s, in our seaside village Muthukur, our Nellore Bus was the only automobile.
We didn't have a 'motor cycle'. Yes, we did, for a month. We found a thirtyish dandy driving one with a terrific dhub-dhub-dhub on our empty roads just to show off. It must have been a third-hand Royal Enfield Bullet, the only thing India had then. But he vanished one day and rumors went that he was seeking asylum in his M-i-L's house in our village before he was caught and jailed. Apparently he was a Bank Manager in Orissa who swindled public money and Police were looking for him. Jailing Officers and Ministers was unheard of then unlike now when it is as common as sighting the Indian Crow.
We didn't have a car either except when our local MLA visited our village for a few minutes...During electioneering he took to the tractor bedecked with the Congress election symbol of Two Bullocks and Yoke:
So every weekend he used to drive his car and park it in the kerb and look out for children at play, collect them around him, and place one ball into every proffered hand @ two hands per child. But kids in the street were more interested in his car than his candy. So, some of them used to gherao him (like folks did the other day in Delhi to a visiting lady CM and her Finance Minister) while others were busy touching the bonnet and boot of his car. This used to so enrage him that he would pull out his stick from his boot and chase them away...so much for the love of kids of a childless zamindar.
That reminds me...in my youth I was dreaming of one day touching the wings of an airplane. That dream took fifty years to materialize...In the 1990s when the then Director of IIT KGP decided to convert the Old Building into the Nehru Museum, the Kalikunda Air Force offered an old World War II Hunter Fighter. This was duly dragged in and parked in front of the Old Building, together with an old Steam Engine gifted by the Railways. I didn't fancy steam engines since they were as common as crows (again) during my childhood. But I sneaked in beside the Hunter aircraft and gently pressed its wing tip...to my utter delight it felt like India Rubber...or was it my fancy?
So, Bus it was that we touched and fiddled with to our heart's content at Muthukur when we were school kids...and ran away when the driver, sipping his soda, spotted us. This reminds me of the Readers' Digest story when a candidate during an election of Australia spotted an urchin reaching for a doorbell in his constituency and lifted him up and rang the bell for him, and the kid then screamed:
"We are now supposed to run, don't you know?"
...Posted by Ishani
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