For Tvisha – Age 7 (1973)

(Here is my mom in the center, and a few other ladies from our apartment building singing during the Ganpati festival celebrations)

Dear Tvisha,

There are several events during this year that are coming to mind very clearly.

School was full of fun with lots of friends, homework and exams. I was doing well too, and was in the class top 10. I will give all credit to my mother for that.

During our daily short recess in school that lasted only 5 minutes from 11.25 am to 11.30 am, the school arranged for those who paid for it, a refreshment that was usually a 12oz bottle of chilled Coca Cola. If Coke weren’t available then there was Energee, a flavored milk drink.

As soon as the bell rang announcing the recess, the kids would run as fast as they could to the long hallway outside the classroom where the refreshments were kept, pick one up and drink. We had a friendly bet to see who finished his Coke first (bottoms up if they could!). I used to finish first most of the times. Yes! :-)

Father Oscar succeeded Father Gaiety. Now that I think about it, Father Oscar had a brilliant idea by which he tried to pique the interest of the kids into the hobby of collecting stamps. During the long recess at 1 pm, once a week, he stood at the balcony on the 2nd floor outside his office and throw hundreds of stamps into the air to the kids below, and the kids did their best to catch and accumulate as many stamps as they could. For some years I had picked up this hobby of collecting stamps. I had several hundreds of stamps that I gave to another kid when I grew up.

At the home front, this was the first time that Krish, paati, your thaatha and I began living alone in the apartment that was full of people living as a joint family. Thaatha’s two sisters had been married off and they went to their husbands’ homes, and cuttle appa as you know passed away when I was 3+. Thaatha’s younger brother Ramudu found a job at the same bank as thaatha. Since his office was far away from where we lived, he decided to rent a small apartment near his workplace and moved there with his mother, who was my grandmother.

To be honest, it felt really sad to be without all these people who lived with us, and with whom we had such a great time. But then that is life - keeps moving, keeps changing.

The four of us countered this loneliness at times by doing more and more things together like watching movies, visiting Ramudu at his new place, visiting my relatives, taking more vacation trips, going to the park daily, going to music shows, etc., which was great fun too.

The best times during the year were the Ganpati festival and the Diwali festival. The Ganpati festival is celebrated all across Bombay to bring in the birthday of Lord Ganesha, and also to bring all kinds of people together to get a great sense of community.

We celebrated this festival in the building in a spectacular fashion for 7 days, bringing a 3 foot idol of Ganesha and offering the Lord daily poojas, and lots of food and sweets distributed to whoever came for blessings. There would be music playing on the loudspeakers all through the evening. The whole of Bombay had and still has a festive atmosphere during these 10 days.

We had daily shows that included Veena recitals by the some of the ladies in the building, magic shows, fancy dress shows, singing, etc. Everyone participated.

It was absolute fun. The final day, when the idol was immersed into the sea, was a sad day since everything would come to a standstill, and people would get back to their routine daily life from the next day onwards.

Another occasion during which the whole building came alive was during Diwali (festival of lights, to celebrate the triumph of good over evil). On this day we would wake up very early around 4 am, bathe, and offer prayers to God. We would then wear brand new clothes, and burst lots of firecrackers in our building compound.

My mother, who was a great cook, prepared so many different sweet and savory snacks. Imagine this: early morning at 5 am all the kids from the building, and even some of the adults were down bursting firecrackers, and wishing everyone Happy Diwali in their brand new clothes. After the crackers were done, we would then head to our each of our friends home and wish their family Happy Diwali, and devour any sweets coming our way.

There was exchange of sweets and savory items amongst the women in the building, including exchange of cooking tips, critical judgment of the dishes prepared and exchange of in demand recipes :-). I used to lend a keen ear to all of this.

To top it all off, there was a feast at home usually consisting of onion sambar, roasted spicy potatoes, rice, rasam, papadam, and rice payasam.

A tradition we always maintained on this day was to go see the latest movie in the theater. To this day, there are lot of prominent movie releases around Diwali, a sure fire way to earn revenues for the filmmakers.

Here in the US, mommy and daddy have made it a point to celebrate the above 2 festivals in a grand manner, so you can not only get a good understanding of our culture and our festivals, but also we can all have a great time with all your friends and their families on these occasions.

- Appa

For Tvisha - 2nd Grade, Age 6 (1972)

Dear Tvisha,

My first Television experience

This was the year the black and white television was introduced for the first time in India. All the programs were broadcast by a broadcasting station called Doordarshan, which was owned by the government. There were no cable companies.

There was a neighbor of ours, Capt. Mani. He was the first one in our apartment building to own a TV back then. He and his family were kind enough to let a lot of the kids in the building to come to their apartment daily in the evenings to watch the shows on the television. As you can understand television was like a magic box for us, something we had never experienced in our lives.

The shows we used to watch regularly would be a 30 minute program that showed Indian movie songs. Every Sunday evening we would get to watch an Indian movie. And twice a week they would show the Flintstones, a show I used to love.

Shopping and Chocolates

My mother (your paati) used to take me shopping to the local mom and pop stores around our neighborhood to buy regular non perishable groceries, coffee, etc. Like most kids I used to love chocolate candies with my favorite being Cadbury’s. There would be a fight with my mom every time we used to go to the shops, where I would want chocolate candy and she would vehemently deny me the same. But the shopkeepers, especially the shop from where we used to buy freshly ground coffee, would give me a free chocolate, usually Cadbury’s Eclairs if I listened to my mom and behaved well. That was funny.

So you see daddy loved and still loves chocolates just like you do. The chocolate candies I use to like and eat the most then used to be the Cadbury’s milk chocolate bars and Cadbury’s Plus bar, a chocolate bar filled with semi hard raspberry Jell-O inside. I am sure you would have loved that particular kind :-).

Broken Bones

This was the only time I have broken any bones in my body, and hopefully will be the last time. I got my right hand fractured. My brother Krish and his friends were playing a version of tag it in our friend’s apartment, running around at a good speed in the very small apartment.

I, who was very small in size compared to the others wanted to participate as well. I slipped while running and fell. At the same time one of the guys stepped over my right wrist and broke my wrist.

I didn’t cry by the way, but was in extreme pain. We went to the doctor and got my hand in a cast right away. What was worse than the pain due to the broken wrist was the itching sensation on my hand inside the cast, and I couldn’t do anything about it but bear it. Grrrrr!!

All Aboarrrrd

The trains that ran back and forth all over Bombay and from Bombay to other cities in India used to pass by very near our apartment building. As a kid I used to love the sound of the trains passing by at a high speed with their horns blaring. We had to resort to real trains since we didn’t have Thomas train amongst us in India during that time :-).

The railway tracks were pretty close to our building, a couple of blocks away on the other side of a park. We used to go to the park to play, and sit and watch the trains go by.

There was one particular train that I was very fond of, called the Deccan Queen. Unlike the other trains, this train had special colors (beige top and navy blue in the bottom) and was the pride of the railways. It used to run between Bombay and Poona, and covered the distance in less than 3 hours. There were only a couple of stops between the two cities.

One could get all kinds of delicacies in the train to eat which you couldn’t in rest of the trains. There was a kitchen in the train and orders for food would be taken before the train left the city and would be delivered hot and fresh shortly. The train used to pass by exactly at 5.25 pm every evening. It still does :-).

If you remember when you were just around 16 months old on your first trip to Bombay back in 2007, I took you to the over bridge from where we saw the Deccan Queen go by, although not at a very fast speed that day. I know you love trains, and I was so excited by the fact that I could let you also experience a part of my past. Between now and then, the only difference is that now the colors of the cars are red, white and grey.

We also used to make a lot of trips to South India. My mother liked to visit the temples and her relatives, and every summer vacation the whole family would go on such trips. Krish and I used to fight for the window seat in the train.

Apart from the train ride the biggest thrill for us used to be watching the engine pulling the train cars from our seat windows when the train took a turn. And the engines were so grand looking, either electric engines, engines powered by diesel, and steam engines. Nowadays when we travel all we see are electric engines, and the days of the steam engines are long gone by and the diesel engines are almost extinct. Oh Tvisha, I miss those days!

- Appa

For Tvisha – 1st Grade, Age 5

(Appa, and his good friend from that time, Mala)

Dear Tvisha,

The year when I was in 1st grade was a very eventful year. There were quite a number of changes that I had to go through in school.

I had to wake up really early since the school bus that usually came in around 9 am for kindergarten, came in around 7.30 am for first grade. Getting me ready daily to make it to the waiting school bus was a ritual in itself, with the neighbors from the nearby buildings looking forward to it. I had to be up for this challenge since I now was in the big league, I mean, first grade :-).

It was a time of great adjustment with longer school hours which wasn’t that much fun to begin with; there were new uniforms that I loved – white half sleeve shirts, navy blue short trousers, and pure white canvas shoes and socks; then there were the new teachers, more classes, lots of daily homework, and exams too.

One thing I will tell you about schools in India is that they are really competitive and crammed with schoolwork right from the beginning. It must have only gotten worse now.

The school timings were from 9.30 am till 4 pm, with a 5 minute break at 11.25 am and lunch break from 1 pm to 1.45 pm. School ended at 4 pm and the school bus would drop me off by 4.30 pm at home.

Most of the time, I would come home to the aroma of hot dosas (Indian crepes) being prepared by my mom. I used to eat the dosas with sugar and butter, or with coconut chutney. I loved dosas. In South Indian families dosa is a staple item to prepare during snack time, just as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich would be.

Then it was time to go out and play with the few friends that I had at that time, mainly with a girl named Mala who I was fond of. She used to live in the same apartment building as we did, a level above us.

There were a lot of children in our apartment building, which was great, but most of them were elder to me. There were others of similar age but their parents wouldn’t allow them to go out and play much, instead making them focus on their studies I suppose?

After playing for a couple of hours, it was time to come back home at my mom’s beckoning for a shower and homework, dinner and then off to sleep. I would get quite an earful from my mom if I didn’t come back home in time.

The one thing that was different with Don Bosco High School compared to other schools was that we used to get Thursdays off. The other catholic schools would have Saturdays off and the rest with no such weekly days off except Sundays. Due to this, it wasn’t much fun since I had no one to play with and as the years went by the homework would increase since we had a break mid-week.

The biggest event during the year that I can’t ever forget was the war between India and Pakistan. Since I only had few lucid recollections of the same, I asked your uncle Krish to reminisce about it. He wrote this:

December 1971: War breaks out between India and Pakistan

Government imposes black-outs in the evening

Following the rules, we glued black paper on the windows, did not put on lights even late in the evening and through the night. Dinners used to be candle-lit, and at around 7pm.

Appa used to come home pretty early. Once he was home, he would follow radio news intently and update all of us, and our neighbors, who somehow preferred to hang around in the building compound. Many would stand by our verandah and discuss the latest situation; we were in the ground floor, remember?

Thankfully the war soon got over – it lasted around three weeks, if I remember correctly.

Appa and amma were at their protective best, giving us courage and confidence that everything would be okay soon. We somehow needed that.

You were very curious about what could go wrong, puzzled by the darkness all around, about the candle light. Appa and amma used to field your questions without scaring or worrying you.

When the sirens blared…

Families would step out on to the building compound, to escape easily in case an air raid caused a bomb to explode near the building and damage the building.

We could see the bullets fired from Indian ack-ack guns (anti aircraft guns) to discourage Pakistan’s airplanes from coming near the city - the tracer bullets, a moving stream of red dotted lines against the dark night sky.

Our hearts thumped – we used to stay indoors though; Appa still thought that safer, given that we were quite small and could get lost due the commotion outside.

This was a scary time indeed for all of us.

- Appa