School Memories Of A 59 Year Old Mother! (Part - II)

Thank you, BlogAdda!

First, I thought, I will skip the second part of my earlier post, School Memories of a 59 year old mother!...it might be boring.   Then, I thought, I had committed (!) and I have to write now! So, here are some more memories!

As I told you earlier, we had one period of drawing class.  This scrap book is from my VI Std. We used to take colour pencil box and water colour paint box to school on the day of the drawing class.  I had done better drawings, but somehow only this book survived! I had some science record books also! Thank god, I was not able to trace them in my old box...you are saved!

Even now, this is my favourite rangoli! I draw this in front of my house during festival days!

I remember seeing these types of drawings in my grand niece's books also, now!

Water colour! The butterflies look funny!

This is not good, but I remember carrying coloured, polish papers to my class! The green coloured paper is inserted inside the pink one!

My children had beautiful labels with the pictures of cricket players etc.  These labels were got from the shops free of cost, while buying note books!

My parents had 5 children! My mother didn't have time to monitor our school work.  Most of the time, we were on our own! We, brothers and sisters were close to each other and we were in our own world.  Somehow, it was fun! We used to play many indoor games like pallanguzhi, 5 stones, daayam etc.  Then, card games like ass, 'gor kaththe' etc. This 'gor kaththe' game (kaththe means donkey in my language, Tulu! Collecting cards to become a donkey, will be the close meaning!) is interesting! For 4 or more players, we use 2 packs.  Distribute 10 cards each. Place the rest of the card pack in the middle. Start the play with A Spade.  If nobody has that card, then start with A arts or A clubs or A dice.  If you don't have the spade, then pull cards from the pack one by one until you get a spade...it is fun watching people collecting cards! Whoever has the highest denomination card, starts the rounds.  If you have two same denomination cards, whoever drops the first card, should start the next round. After all the cards in the pack are over, then the game is just like our 'Ass' game. In our game, the player who gave the 'cut' plays first after giving the cut! We call it 'Ramesh Kaththe' too because this cousin of mine taught this game to us when we were very small! Now, all my relatives play this game during get-togethers!

I had this habit of drawing faces everywhere...

This is an old cutting of the players of the 1971 India-England match - I had this cutting in my scrap book! I had written the names of the players too! One more link of the players of the same match is here

People were crazy about cricket in those days too but they had to go to the stadium to watch the match or hear the commentary in the radio! The radio commentators were very famous.  I remember watching some clips in the theatre, before the movie started, before the 'Indian Films Division' documentaries! We used to admire Ian Botham - he was a jovial person and interacted with the spectators while standing near the fence during the match! I think we started seeing foreigners in these clips, otherwise we never came across them earlier, no TV and except in Hataari and one or two other English films, we never came across seeing white people! I got familiarised with the rules of the game from a Tamil magazine, 'Tuglaq' - yes, Cho Ramaswamy's magazine (now, he is famous for his role as a 'think tank/adviser' for Jayalalitha!).  The game was explained with drawings!

I remember while watching the matches in theatres, as soon as the match was over, the spectators used to rush in to the playground and hug the players! If any player makes a hundred, some people would come in and hug the player! Now, the spectators are fenced off!  The players too, as soon as they hit a hundred used to lift their bat, first to the sun/god and then to all the 4 sides - to the spectators and pavilion.  Now, it is to the sun/god and then to just to the pavilion.  They don't seem to acknowledge the spectators...well, most of them.

My teenage hero! He is really very handsome, hmmm?!

Like any young girl, I also hero worshipped a film hero...Dharmendra! I don't know why I admired him...now, he is an ordinary hero for me...better actors were there and are there now (I think so, now!). He is good in comedy than serious acting, I feel so, now! I remember watching his 'Satyakam' (Hrishikesh Mukherji's) and started admiring him! The story was a serious one and a good one! My mother used to take us to movies in those days!  I had a collection of 10-15 pictures of Dharmendra but only a couple of them survived! This one is from an old, famous magazine of those days, 'Picture Post'! I remember getting angry with my mother because she didn't take me to 'Anupama', a Dharmendra movie! That was actually a good movie, I saw it in the TV, may years later, with my mother! My favourite is 'Chupke Chupke'! My sister was a Rajesh Khanna fan! We used to have arguments about our heroes! It sounds silly now!

I had this picture in my collection! The lady on the right looks like Bharathi, but it says Mala Sinha! I don't know why I had Dara Singh's picture ad.!

This is the end of Sandhya's story, for now!

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