CHILDHOOD WAS A STEAL !

Whenever I try to remember my childhood, I find quite a few incidents related to stealing. At the risk of losing my “respectability” (imaginary), I want to narrate a few of them.

Bareilly had a sugar factory and naturally a large quantity of sugar cane from the nearby fields found its way to Bareilly in the cane crushing season by the goods trains. These, if I remember correctly, were brought in closed as well as open wagons. Well, an open wagon full of juicy sugarcanes (apparently unprotected) was irresistible bait for the children’s brigade. We would swoop down on them and try to pull out as much sugarcane as we could handle and........ bolt.

There was a practical problem though. Our tiny hands were unable to reach the high wagons. But then there were elders ready to lend us a helping hand,”helping” themselves in the process.

Eating fresh, juicy and “stolen” sugarcane using bare hands and teeth was an incomparable BLISS!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My experiments with photography in 60's

Image
During my engineering college days (1963-68) at Jodhpur one of my obsessions was photography. Had my dad's Kodak box camera to play with.(He must have bought it in 50's.) This obsession led to activities (along with my friend Joshi) such as:- 1. Taking   snapshot   of lightening- finally succeeded by using 'B' setting in the camera. 2. Learned to develop, print and enlarge B&W photos by persuading the owner of a photo studio to let us use his facilities. 3. Tried 'trick' photography like photographing a person appearing to be standing on the palm of the other person (Inspired by a scene in the movie ' Maya Bazaar ' in which a giant sized Ghatotkacha holds a tiny Abhimanyu in his palm and torments him before realising that he is his own cousin.) 4. Photographing same person in double like both Dev Anands facing each other in the same frame. Here is a sample in which I have played that 'double Role'. This photo was taken by Josh...
Read more

My days in Germany 1980-81

During my service with BHEL in Bhopal and Bangalore, I underwent basic courses in German language which was required for deputation to Germany in 1980-81 for joint working with Siemens .  About six months back , after a gap of about 45 years, I felt like brushing up my knowledge of German so joined online course Duolingo. This reminded me of an interesting incident which took place while I was in Germany ( at Erlangen, Bavaria).   Members of our engineering team from Bangalore, who were posted, were fairly well versed in German language to manage day to day affairs. A few of engineers from Bangalore Office, who used to visit on official work for a short term (week or two) , used to be accommodated in a nearby hotel.They were knowing only engineering related German and so not well versed in conversational German.Therefore, they were advised to remember the name of the hotel and name of the street so that while returning from the office they could reach their hotel without any ...
Read more

My Train Journeys in 50's and 60's

Image
      My childhood was spent in Bareilly in North, far away from Shimoga, in Karnataka  and Parvatipuram in Andhra where my grandparents lived. So travelling southwards during our school vacations in summer was an annual ritual which we keenly looked forward to. Travel was invariably by Indian Railways. Bus or air travel was ruled out due to the distances and the cost factor. Of course, in my case we could avail of free travel by Indian Railways since my father was a medical officer in the Railways.  It used to be rather a long journey. Our schedule of typical journey by Rail from Bareilly (UP) to Shimoga (then Mysore State) used to be like this:- Day 1- Start from Bareilly in the night. Day 2 Reach Delhi the next morning.           Take train to Chennai (then Madras) in the evening called Grand Trunk Express. Day 3- Spent in the train. Meals usually from Railway Catering Day 4 -  Reach Madras in the Evening....
Read more