Chapter II: The first 3 years

And so, born into an ordinary Tam-brahm household in circa 1987, I successfully added to the noise levels of 71st street, K.K.Nagar. The following events would be narrated to me by mother, years later-

1989, and its Saraswathi poojai at home. Amma, wearing her yettu mozham sari (a highly inconvenient sari measuring 8 yards, worn by south indian women on festive occassions) decided to get her kids dressed up as well. So mesa got outfitted with a pattu veshti (silk dhoti) and my sister, I cannot remember with what (nowhere near as glamorous as me, they say ). Paati had come home to spend time with our family then and so what happened that day earned me her wrath, at least for a while. When the rituals came to an end, amma asked us all to pray silently for a few moments before doing the aarthi and offering fruits, sweets and other cool stuff to the goddess. Enter me. Thoroughly bored with the proceedings and waiting to sample the sweets, I devised a complex plan. Back then and even for a while in the early 90s I remember, there was a drove of pigs that made their usual rounds through the surrounding areas. Thinking about it now, my street never had muck, litter or anything that would attract pigs, but they still decided to hangout once in a while. So distracted as I was, I jumped at the first oink and with my plan ready, grabbed the nearest silver vessel I could find and ran out. The plan was simple and quite honestly, foolproof- I would pick up a piece of expensive pooja thingy and run behind the pigs. That would make amma chase me, at least for the vessel if not for my sake and I would successfully outrun her, take a diversion, run back home from the other direction, slip in quietly while my family would be standing outside anxiously awaiting the return of their vessel (and me) and grab a few mouthfuls of the sacred offerings. So amma did chase me, although with some difficulty owing to her sari and i ran like there was no tomorrow. The pigs ran too- seriously, you see a fat kid charging at you with a gleaming weapon and you happen to be a pig, you would run too. My plan was working well until the dominant male could stand it no longer. He stopped running and turned back to size me up. This I did not expect and was forced to stop or risk being charged at in return. Amma caught up with me and carried me home (quite unceremoniously at that).

I got no sweets that day and the silverware portion of my inheritance disappeared from my parents’ will…

1990, was around when I had my first real encounters with common backyard animals, the first being a depressed toad. How was I to know that the fella had problems of his own? We had a nellika (amla) tree besides guava and papaya, in our little backyard. One night, I walked out and under the nellika tree to examine the ground underneath it. I found the little fella, rather quiet for a toad and sitting motionless. In all innocence I picked him up, turned him around in my palm a few times, tossed him from hand to hand, played ‘car’ with him (something I used to do as a kid. Take hold of a toy car and run it on the ground and accompany that with car-like sounds of my own), played car-climbing-the-tree with him, played car-upside-down with him and finally positioned him like the laughing buddha next to the tree. Honestly, was it so bad? He took a leak on me and disappeared. Two days later, my hand sprung an allergic reaction to the toad’s parting shot.

The first cat I was introduced to was black as hell. He used to sleep on our window sill, but never deigned to drink the milk appa would pour for him. His meal almost entirely consisted of meat- chameleons (there were loads of them), mice, anything. But sympathizing with appa one day, he decided to sample our milk. What happened next discouraged appa from approaching animals (even with those that I would bring home years later). The cat fainted, or at least something to that extent happened. Appa discovered him lying motionless on our window sill later that day- absolutely motionless, after drinking the milk. In the evening, appa spotted him moving woozily across the street to his hunting grounds, as if in a drugged state. He never came back to us…

Later that year, I was admitted to pre-kindergarten at Padman Seshadri Bala Bhavan Senior Secondary School (P.S.B.B.S.S.S in short) and my parents were happy at that. Kindergarten brought new friends and new people into my life and interestingly, some of them would attend college with me years later…

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