I was born into an Indian middle-class family, and my father used to work for Indian Railways. He worked with big engines and other equipment that I had no clue about, and I grew up surrounded by tools and machine parts, which occupied two-thirds of the wardrobe. Sometimes, I played with them and tried to make sense of them, but I hardly could. My father sometimes would ask me to bring him tools from the cupboard, such as a spanner, a 12–13 double hand, or a 15–16 ring. I always wondered why it was called a spanner, and I still don’t know today, but that’s alright. My father even named his dog after one of his tools.
I hated going to school because it was boring to the core. I would cry and throw tantrums. Probably one of the biggest reasons why I hated school was because it was just dull, had no fun, and was mechanical. I still remember repeatedly writing A B C D on the slate until everyone could write them, then moving on to the next letters. You don’t need any brains to do that; just your hand. Most of the time, I stared out of the window.
I was homeschooled until I was six and a half years old, and I spent most of my time playing with the dog or the girls from the apartment. I was the only boy, and there were plenty of girls around. This went on for a while until I was enrolled in a school further away from home. I had to take a bus and walk a couple of kilometres to reach school, and there was no running back home during recess or lunch breaks.
The new school was Kendriya Vidyalaya, a well-known brand of educational institution run by the central government in India. What I loved most about the school was the big playground. I would eagerly wait for the games period, and we would run around playing cricket, football, and all sorts of things. Kho-Kho and Kabbadi were my favourite games, though I would have chosen football if it was not flat all the time. We still played with a deflated ball, though, and everything was possible under the sun. There were even days when we played football with a soft cricket ball, which was fun, though we struggled to get the ball under our feet. Most of the outcomes of a football game were torn shirts, torn shoes, and bleeding knees and elbows.
Torn shoes were a pain in the ass, as they were difficult to fix and expensive to replace, so we played barefoot most of the time. Everything was a possibility, and there were only solutions and possibilities. We were a bunch of kids having fun. If you ever face a difficult problem and can’t find a solution, go to a child, and you will find your answers. I am serious.
The way I’m going about this article makes it seem like it could end up being my next book, with publishers lined up to publish my work. I hope so!
How many of you readers would like me to continue further with this article?
