On Fooding... and on Schooling

I agree I have been out of circulation for a while. Simple, I passed out of high school long back. In fact my school days can be actually described as ‘Once upon a time way back in the 80’s….’

But, school is one thing I am glad to get rid of. I can’t think of anything redeeming about my school. Insipid text books, brown paper covered stuff, plastic water bottles, oiled hair braided with ribbons (O God ! O God! And I am agnostic), black Bata shoes, songs in morning assembly. Ok, I will stop here but you get the point. I am not a huge fan of my school days and I don’t miss anything. The only time I see my school is in dreams and that I have very little control on. But ofcourse, this is only one aspect of it. Otherwise, school gave me my best of friends and teachers, and ofcourse some lovely memories, but thats different. Here, am only talking about the generation gap and what effect it has on schools.

The other day I had sometime to kill so I went to a superstore with my daughter and started looking at stationery and stuff children take at school. I have no clue why I had missed on all this but the range of pencil boxes, lunch boxes, school bags totally shocked me. My daughter loves to shop for stationeries and accessories. She is not that fond of dresses!(wonder if the hospital guys goofed up somewhere!) but she just loves to shop for pens, pencils, pencil boxes, pouches, etc. etc. And I was surprised to see such vast collections in the store.

It made me think of the material stuff I had in school. Every year there was a shabby green ‘Duckback’ brand schoolbag and almost everyone had the same thing. It was a strong steady bag that lasted for years. I deliberately damaged mine every year to get a new one; I was not a good kid. There were only two or three brands of pencil, the common one being ‘Camel’ with white base and pink flowers. The funny thing is all this mattered. If someone had a pencil with different design she would show it to the entire class and we would all take turns on holding it with some reverence. There was only one type of eraser a white square with a green tip and some picture on it. Everyone had steel lunch boxes; I don’t remember ever seeing fancy lunch boxes with attached spoons and stuff (I saw that very recently when my daughter started taking them to schools).

But what I remembered most and missed was the food that was clandestinely available near schools. Apart from the usual junk food there was a guy who came with an assortment of wonders. Phantom candy cigarettes, NP brand rose mint, red and black churan, ber (really small and tart ones with rock salt), raw imli, aamda and mouri logens (this is what we called in Bengali for sweet aniseed that came in attractive packets, the most common being a joker). He also had little cards with photographs of movie stars, whistles and few small toys. For 2Rs. you could buy loads of stuff, only most of us never got more than that as pocket money.

But the person I loved most was the cake wala. This guy had an aluminum trunk (could be tin, well metal) and shouted “Cake bolo cake”. He had multicolored collection of pastries and it enthralled me. My favorite was the gulab cake with overwhelming rose essence and dark pink frosting. Even today the very idea of rose cake fascinates me.

However, life is not about sweet recollections. It’s not about ‘O, what fun!’ My mother did everything in her power to amputate junk food from my system. I had to hide everything. Of course, she caught me from time to time but I was good at hiding this stuff. Life, you see was a continuous conflict and mothers always won (somehow, now when am a mother I see changes, now daughters win - people like me are born losers I guess). Anyways, I wonder if anyone remembers Cadbury’s Double Decker chocolate. For some reason it vanished from the market and it was my favorite chocolate back then.

Somehow for a long time I thought my mother was responsible for it. I vividly recall that particular time bracket! My mother was particularly cruel. She forced Complan, Horlicks or some of those punishment concoctions down my system everyday. She had replaced my favorite Sharbat-e-Azam with some fruit squash, she had even commented on my addiction to Pan candies. Naturally, I saw my mother behind all conspiracies. But that’s not my fault, anyone who grows up on Bollywood knows that you are either good or bad. The End. And for me, during my growing years, my mother was the Villain - typical Amrish Puri stuff. Ofcourse now, my views have changed completely.

P.S: Maa, no matter how much I fight with you, crib and complain, I know you are the best - whatever you did during my growing years, were for my good only, according to you! So your intentions were genuine, so what if the ways were horrible! And I love you for that.