Childhood Memories

My childhood memories are a bit hazy as I made a conscious effort to forget my past. My mother died when I was just ten years old. My father, who was not very old, married a village belle within six months. I was very bitter to some one taking the place of the ‘malkan’[my mother] of the household.

The new malkan turned the house up side down and changed every thing. She would not cook like my mother. A very good cook, Pandit Shivram was hired and he produced savory dishes which all of us liked very much. Those days I had to leave home at 8am for the school. He used to give me a couple of parathas with dal before I left for school. One day he served me plain roti and dal. I asked him for the usual paratha but he said” sorry baba the malkan has told me to serve you only roti and no paratha. She says ghee is expensive.” This was a great shock for a ten year old who had been pampered and cajoled to eat tasty food in the past. I didn’t know how to react. I went into my room and cried in silence for along time.

One day in my school I saw a group of boys ragging a youngster who was crying. I could not bear his misery and drove the boys away. We became very close friends for life.

Earlier In Chakwal, a small town in the Gujerat district of west Punjab, now in Pakistan I learned to fight for survival. I was the nursery class. One day I had a tiff with a class fellow. He threatened to bring his elder brother who was in class five to beat me. It was lunch break and we were standing in the compound. My other class mates advised me “ run away, his brother is very vicious and he will beat hell out of you”
I hesitated wondering what to do when I heard some one saying “ SHOW HIM I WILL CUT HIM WITH MY KNIFE “ I LOOKED UP AND SAW A BIG BOY ADVANCING MENACINGLY HOLDING A KNIFE.
I had a wooden plank in my hand. I held it with both the hands and struck him on his shoulder with all the strength that I had. He cried “ oh mar suthuia” and fell down. All the boys standing there cheered me and I became a hero. I had broken his collar bone.
This incident taught me to fight for my survival, a lesson which came handy to me all my life. I had to go to a new school every three years as my father was posted in distant places like Chakwal in Panjab, Mardan in North West Frontier Province, Campbellpore in Panjab, Jammu in Jammu and Kashmir and Dharamsala in Himachl. Whenever I joined the school, the boys would try to rag me and I would catch hold of the most vociferous of them and beat him with all the might I had. Next we would be friends and others would leave me alone. Interestingly I had to take recourse to the same technique early in my career in the newsroom of all India Radio where one of the senior editors tried to bully me.