51. ADVENTURES IN SCHOOL
OUR schooldays in the 40s and 50s were quite joyful. We learned through our mother tongue, which was taught quite naturally. The syllabus was not heavy, the lessons were simple, the teachers were very good, there was no system of weekly or monthly tests and ranking. So, we were rather carefree. We had to pass the annual test, that most of us did any way! I remember only one boy- one Mir Mehboob Hussain- who could not pass the I Form (6th standard) for more than 5 years! ( Churchill had failed in a class three years!) His father had been in the Army during the I World War and was highly respected. Those days, schooling was not rigorous,we could bunk as and when we liked, teachers were basically kind and humane, and no one thought of asking the boy to discontinue! Compared to those days, the system is heartless today( and brainless). Our schools are indeed prisons.
There are many stories in English about school life and generally about the life of youngsters. None is of course more universally popular than Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
We might not measure up to Tom or Huck, but we did have our share of misadventures and escapades.
1876 illustration of Tom Sawyer
Owl Natesan!
The year was 1952-53. We were in the first form. Many boys used to come to school from nearby villages, walking up to 5 miles each day. In January, there had been a cyclone and very heavy rains. The teachers were very generous and did not mark attendance. Many boys from the villages could not attend, so formal classes were suspended.. We spent the days singing and telling stories. That is, till one day, this boy Natesan appeared in the class.
He used to walk from his village 3 miles away, crossing 2 lakes and fields on the way, with only a track for walking. The area was full of mango, tamarind, banyan and other big trees. There had been heavy rain in the night with thunder, lightning, and high winds. Some trees had fallen, and many branches broken. It was still drizzling, and the boy was drenched and shivering. The class teacher gave the long towel on his shoulder [அங்க வஸ்திரம்] to the boy to dry himself. And he enquired of us as to whose house was close by and whether he could run home and bring the boy a pair of shorts ( called 'drawer' in our language) and a shirt so that the boy could change into dry clothes. One of us stood up and started to go. By then, Natesan had toweled his head and bushy hair, had removed the shirt and was drying his chest with the towel. It was then that the teacher noticed it!
Those days our drawers were very loose and generous with huge pockets. Even so, Natesan's drawer pocket was bulging! The teacher enquired what it was and Natesan mumbled something ! Finally, he put his hand into the pocket, and took out a fully grown owl! The boys shrieked in glee! He explained that as he was walking by a fallen tree, he found the bird under a heavy branch and he took it out and kept in his pocket! We had not seen a live owl till then, and there were many beliefs about its sound and sight as an omen, good or bad! Many of us were even afraid of looking at it and touching it, thinking it might peck us with its sharp beak!
[ There is really a story of the famous bird photographer Eric Hosking losing his eye when a tawny owl attacked him while he was trying to photograph it - this I learned much later when reading books on photography.
But Natesan became quite cheerful, forgot his shivering in his high spirits,and was stroking the bird. The teacher asked each boy to come near and touch and stroke the bird! That day we lost the fear of the owl. We also realised that it was not ugly or ungainly as we had thought! The teacher asked Natesan why he had put such a big bird in his pocket, and whether it would not hurt it. He simply said: "What to do sir ! If I carried it in hand the village dogs would chase me ! My pocket is big and so there was no problem!"
By that time, his spare dry dress had come. Natesan became known as Aandhai (Owl) Natesan in the whole school and he became our hero! After all, he could touch, handle and fondle the owl! The biology teacher from the higher classes came, the bird was taken to a retired veterinary doctor, a relative of one of the boys, and after attending to the injury to its wings, Natesan was asked to take it back to the area where he had found it and release it! Some of us went with him.
By Biswarup Ganguly (Own work) CC BY-SA 3.0 Wikimedia Commons. At least those fond of wealth ought not to fear the owl or despise it!
Quail story
My next encounter was with the bird known in Tamil as காடை"kaadai"- a sort of quail (coturnix coromandelica). This is not to be confused with the quail as such, or with its Japanese variety which is now commercially farmed for its meat and money!
Those days, the native variety was found in certain hilly/forest regions surrounding our place. The native hunters would catch them and bring it in huge baskets to the village shandy (market) every Sunday. Each would be sold for 2 annas.
Our English teacher , Kreeda Rama Raju ( very great man and teacher-God Bless his soul ) was very fond of grammar. He felt that there was not enough provision for it in the syllabus, nor time in the class! He used to tell us that a man not knowing grammar was blind. So he would conduct special classes for grammar every Sunday for three hours in the morning, though it was a regular holiday. The headmaster had permitted him and the use of the black board, but not the regular class rooms! So we would sit under the shady shelter of the huge tamarind tree in the compound. I had difficulty in reading from the blackboard in the shade, so I would sit in the front row. (Later, it was found to be myopia). Next to me would sit a boy T.Ramaswamy, who lived near us. He lived with his uncle, who was a "sarack master" in a hotel. [சரக்கு மாஸ்டர்]
Sarakku Master!
Do you know what it is? Idly and Dosa are the staple items of snack for Tamilians sold in the hotels/eating houses. They are made of a mixture of rice and urad bean , soaked overnight in water and ground into a batter. Those days, there were no electric grinders, and this was done manually on huge grind stones, with pestle and mortar.
It was the sarack master who did the grinding, and it was his expert hand and eye that could tell the correct form and consistency of the batter, which would determine the quality of the final product ! He was thus a "master" - expert in his trade, though his job involved miserable physical labour throughout the day, and he was paid low. Politicians today talk as if all Brahmins had been always prosperous, yet this is how people struggled to educate their wards with meager income.
The weekly shandy convened near our school. One day this Ramaswamy got it into his head to buy a Kaadai bird and rear it in a cage. We did not know anything about birds, and had not touched a bird, though I knew something about mynahs. Our parents were orthodox and would not let us keep a bird in a cage at home. And we would not know how to feed it. But Ramaswamy said he would keep the bird in his house, but since he had only one anna, he wanted me to give the other anna so that he could buy the bird. We did not know where to get the cage, so I decided to make one with the materials available. So. on our way to school, we went to the shandy and got the bird. We were actually afraid, thinking the bird might hurt us with its beak, but the hunter told us that the bird was very docile and would not hurt us if we did not trouble it. He told us what to feed it.
Indian jungle bush quail. But our bird was not like this,either!
We got the bird, but how to carry it? Our drawers again were very big and generous with huge pockets. Ramaswamy put the bird in the pocket. We went to the class quietly and sat as usual. But soon trouble started. We were sitting on the bare floor and the bird must have felt uncomfortable.It started moving in his pocket and to explore with its beak! It would peck at his thigh with its beak, and he would squirm. He would lean to me and hiss something in my ears! The teacher soon noticed this and asked us to stand up. He enquired what the matter was, why we were disturbing the class. He was a highly respected teacher and I did not want to incur his displeasure. So, I told him about the bird! The whole class broke into tumultuous laughter- two Brahmin boys bringing a bird to the class, hidden in the pocket! The master asked Ramaswamy to take out the bird. He took it out of the pocket, but his hands were shivering! Immediately another village boy used to handling birds came forward and took it from Ramaswamy , handling it naturally. The boys were all taken up with the bird and the class could not continue! The teacher asked us to go home and release the bird.
Cage for a quail!
We went home, but Ramaswamy was not willing to let the bird go, so I had to build a cage! I had an idea and thought it was easy. We had at home some tin sheets of the size 18x24". I thought I would put holes along the edges on all sides, insert coconut stems through the wholes from the coconut broomstick and tie it up at the top, at about a foot! But when I started putting holes with a nail and hammer., I realised how tough it was! I spent over three hours but it was not a good job. Somehow we put the bird inside and took it to his home. The coconut stems were not strong , the gap between them was not close, and the bird was trying to escape! We covered the cage with a towel and reached his place. As soon as we opened the door, his uncle was standing there. Coming to know that it was a bird, he flew into a rage, and just slapped Ramaswamy with the back of his huge left hand! How did we think of putting a free bird in a cage? Was it not a sin for Brahmins? Would this flimsy cage stand? How would we protect the bird from cats at night? Or somebody might steal it for the meat! We rascals should be severely beaten for this! So saying, he took the so called cage and putting his strong hands inside, tore the coconut stems apart and released the bird. It was not the age for us to know. Even now I feel so sad. For this bird could live only in specific environment and I would not know how much it had to fly to get to its place, and whether it could. And this bird was known to fly only short distances.
Something more awaited us in school on Monday. Kreeda Rama Raju was also our class teacher. He moved the period for "moral class" forward from Wednesday to that Monday. In the first hour on that day, he taught us about how as Hindus we should not confine free birds and animals in cages. If we were born as hunters we might do it till we knew better; otherwise, it was a sin for others to confine free birds in a cage. In this connection he told us the story of Bhadrachala Ramdas. He had confined a parrot in a cage for 14 days in his previous birth; so in this birth, he had to spend 14 years in jail! Never again did I think of keeping a bird!
Mynahs and Manickam
Before this, I had had an encounter with another bird- mynah. We had many village boys in the class. They were bold, fearless and adventurous. There were two brothers - Singaram and his younger brother Thangavelu in the class. Their father was a mason whom they assisted on holidays. One day, they mentioned that their father was then engaged in work in a new housing colony where many buildings were in various stages of completion. Lot of mynas lived on them. (For the scaffolding, they would leave small gaps in the wall which would be closed only on completion. The mynahs would come and occupy them. They did not build nests.) They said it was so easy to catch them!
I had one friend near my house- one Manickam, whose father ran a firewood depot. He was interested in mynahs. So on a holiday the Singaram brothers, Manickam and I went to that housing colony which was a new area developing beyond our town. Manickam climbed the wall holding on to the gaps in the wall and put his hand into one of the top gaps, and came out with a mynah! He got another from the next one! Today, I shudder to think about it. We now know that birds think of nesting only when they are about to lay eggs! I really do not know whether there were any eggs inside! This disturbs me even today!
He caught the mynahs but how to feed them? We were told that they lived on grasshoppers,called in Tamil 'budathai' புடத்தை
So, our next job was to go to the fields beyond in search of grasshoppers! Manickam had an empty match box into which the grasshoppers were caught and put! I liked the mynah, but did not like catching the grasshopper! So I did not accompany him on his field visit the next time. After two or three days, he told me that the mynahs had flown away!
wonderful episode. unforgettable experience of the forgotten days of the present hurrying world. Thank you Sir.
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