AECS Manuguru Diaries.P2. The Kings of Summer

As a kid I was never into sports. I played cricket occasionally but it did not interest me much. I was more into watching English movies and reading books. And among movies, adventure genre was my favorite. One of the things from these movies which fascinated me was a tree house. I always wanted to build one. One summer in my Eighth grade I started working on it.

Our school had a vast open land in front of it. It was dry with shrubs and bushes all around, punctuated with some trees here and there.It was something like the grounds in the videos of Serengeti that they show on the Discovery channel. This was a perfect place to build a tree house I thought. At that time I was good friends with a kid called Harsha. He was a strong healthy kid whose one goal in life was to become a soldier or as he called himself 'Army Man'. So everyone else did the same. So one fine day I told army man my plan to build a tree house. He was readily up for it and added in his own ideas.

It was the summer season then and summer is the season when magic happens. Our colony was transformed into a dry and desolate land every summer. The roads wore a deserted look in the afternoons, evenings were spent outdoors, rasna and roohafza were the order of the day and school used to finish early in the afternoon.

One fine summer day we decided to put our plan for a tree house in action. First we did several recces of the area after school time and identified a tree. But try as we may, we could not figure out a way to make a house on top of that tree so, in true kid logic, we decided to make one at the base of the tree itself.  So slowly everyday after school we made our way to the tree and built the house. First the foundation and the skeletal structure, which didn't take much effort.We gathered four stout sticks and rammed them into the ground at four corners. We built a mound of soil around the sticks to reinforce it. Next step was to build the walls. This we did by gathering many slender sticks and holding them in place by cords we got from home. Soon we had the house almost ready.  The roof of the house was also made in the same fashion. We covered all the walls and the roof with branches and leaves. So finally our tree house was ready.

But all of this was not without some hurdles and hiccups. This whole adventure had one of only two instances where I got into a physical fight with another kid. I don't remember how it started and what led to the fight. All I remember is me hitting him in the stomach and he landing a few blows on me. It ended as soon as it began. The funny thing about all of this was that later we became good friends and he even helped me in building our tree house.

Our tree building was interrupted briefly after two of my favorite teachers saw Harsha and me wandering off into the fields after school one day. I still remember the scene. Standing on the footpath which separated the road and the field they shouted our names and called us back. There we got an earful about the dangers of the field and the animals which roamed there. This stopped our visits for sometime but we soon resumed as soon as the matter was forgotten.

After our tree house was finished we spent some time visiting the place and spending some time around the house now and then. Gradually it was forgotten and we moved onto other stuff. Years later the whole place was cleared and there now stands a number of new quarters. Whenever I walk past that road I cant help but recall those carefree days when the top most priority of my life was to build a tree house in a dry field.

AECS Manuguru Diaries. P1. Dictionary saves the day!

Class 6.Subject Social Studies. Our much loved and feared social studies teacher Patnaik sir was explaining a concept in his usual eccentric way. He had a flair for making complex things easy to understand and to the delight of his students he always made the answers of questions in the textbook very brief and to the point. And he expected the students to be diligent and sincere in learning. His punishments were also very unique. For the boys he made them sit in between two girls. Yeah, that was 'punishment' back then. Sometimes when he was very angry he would give a good whack on our outstretched hands with a scale. So we knew that if he gets angry we were in for a bad time.

As he was teaching, suddenly out of the blue he asks the kid in the first bench the meaning of the word 'Republic'. The kid stands up but does not answer. Sir gets angry. He asks the kid next to him. He too doesn't know. Sir gets angrier. He then asks the kid in the second bench of the same row. He stands up and again no answer. By now steam is blowing from his ears. He asks the next kid. I was seated in the 4th bench and I asked my bench mate if he knew what the answer was because I did not. He replied in the negative. Sweat began to form on my forehead.I counted the number of kids in front of me and calculated when my turn would come up. I was 8th in line. I hoped the sequence would stop somewhere but as I was looking it was refusing to stop.Nobody knew the answer and Sir looked like he would have a fit. I was scared. Suddenly an idea stuck me.I always kept a dictionary in my school bag. I quickly took out my dictionary and started searching for the the word 'Republic'. I looked up once to see what number was going on. It was 6th. I had to hurry. Madly I flipped the pages and got to the 'R' section.Then I found my way to 'Republic'. Internally I screamed yes!! I quickly told the definition to my bench mate. No sooner had I told him his turn came up and he gave the answer. Sir was relieved and said 'good'to him and the witch hunt stopped.Before he turned away, he just swept his gaze over my face. I looked at him poker faced.I just hoped he wouldn't notice the tension or the sweat on my face. I think he didn't or maybe he did and chuckled to himself. Ill never know. The rest of the class heaved a sigh of relief.