Visits to the hospitals continue and it's my turn now. My long neck which has always troubled me is in the limelight again. My left side hurts occasionally and sometimes gives me pins and needles. Tablets have helped me at least for now and I hope it'll not have to be anything major. If I have to have an operation, I would prefer to have it when I'm 50 at least!
I think I'll finally continue with my biography. If I keep waiting for my mood to be really sunny, I'll go nowhere I guess. So here I go...
I was a troublesome kid always. I was whiny, thin and stubborn. My mother says there are so many instances when she has had to leave a function in the middle of her food because of my troubles. We were living in a small rented house those days with our owner's house attached to ours and another tenant(father's colleague's family) living in front. Our owner had three children - Rajakka, Poornakka and Vasanna, the last being four years older than me. My neighbours were the only people I was comfortable with apart from my family and I remember running to their house whenever guests came home. Hardly anything could tempt me out of this habit. It must've caused considerable embarrassment to my parents but I don't remember getting hit because of that. To add to all this, I was a pretty sick child too, till I was 4. My mother says that there was hardly any doctor in 20 km radius that they didn't visit on account of my cough/cold and fevers.
I grew up and just before I was 3, was sent off to nursery that we called Balawadi. I think I had started reading and writing quite early and remember decorating the house walls with them. My teacher for the next two years was Ashu Teacher, already in her late 50's and with an enormous patience with the ever-howling children. I cried for many months, I remember. Rajakka or Poornakka usually carried me to the school and it wasn't easy on them. I always cried for mother and the teacher had a tough time consoling me. She tried a lot - giving me sweets, toffees, pencils and whatever she could - but I sang the same old song - that I wanted to go home. I don't know how it started; I started sitting in the first standard class which was separated only by a wooden screen. The teacher there - Evelyn Teacher - was young, unmarried and had a smiling face and may be she reminded me of mother. She told me that she too wanted to be with her mother but all of us had work to do. She made the class monitor bring marbles and colourful chalk pieces for me. So I ended up spending most of my time in first standard itself. I used to follow Evelyn Teacher everywhere so people started calling me her tail!
