Monday 10 August 2020

In such a jocund company…

10 August 1994 | Down Memory Lane!

These jottings are from the same day, 10 August in the year 1994, (more than a quarter century ago!), when I was doing my Higher Secondary, in MCC School, Chetpet, Chennai.

[Dear gentle reader, per chance, if you feel my pathetic handwriting scribbles are a strain on the eye, you may please just focus on the words I've underlined in colour) 😊

Some of the words like ‘Yummy’, ‘Goalie’, (Goal-Keeper), Tinkle, Cubicle, Football, Gym, Coffee, roll call, bring to memory some of the glorious nostalgic moments of yore!


In fact, Yummy was our code word for our Ice-cream vendor who set shop just adjacent to the compound wall bordering our hostel.

Lanky and sprightly he was, with an amazing sense of humour and love for all of us.

We could have ‘accounts’ with him, since money in a hosteler’s hand was a rarity.


Another word is Cubicle - a stony protrusion for a bed lined up on either side in a dormitory, where we did our bedding in our own sweet chaotic ways, with mosquito nets for that precious protection from mosquitoes.

But again, mornings when you woke up, you would find for sure a lizard or two inside your mosquito net, as there were a little gang of mischievous boys who were known for these nocturnal pranks on their unsuspecting victims.

They would go near the bathrooms, were there was a surplus of lizards, somehow catch them with such patience, and then on the sly, put them inside our mosquito nets.

They did these ‘pranks’ only on those guys who 'sincerely' slept soon after their study time at 10 in the night.

Since for the mischievous ones, their night had just begun!

So even today, when someone utters the word Yummy or mosquito net, or cubicle, or Tinkle, or dormitory, although in different contexts, these words brings back memories of those good ol’ days from the past!

Tintin, Tinkle, and Asterix in that order, were our study-time distractions on all nights!

So even today, when I take a copy of a Tintin or a Tinkle, I recollect with nostalgia, how Shikari Shambu the faint-hearted hunter, or Kalia the crow, or a Suppandi, Tantri the Mantri, Nasruddin Hodja, Anwar, Raghu were our all-time favourite characters who provided us with the bestest company ever!

Like Eliot says in his ‘Four Quartets’, ‘Footfalls echo in the memory’ when we think on these objects, words or places!

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