My cousin and his family had come to our house last Sunday. “How is she going to school?” asked my wife on learning that their daughter was studying in the same school where my wife had studied.“I drop her at school in the morning and pick her up in the evening in my car,” said my cousin.
“The school is hardly a kilometre away. She can even go by bicycle,” said my wife who had walked to the same school during her younger days.
“I don’t want to send her alone on a busy road,” said the cousin. After my cousin and family left, I told my wife, “Why are you giving advice to them? They can afford to drive their children to school. Otherwise, their car also will get disused and will go to the mechanic’s shop.”
In my boyhood days, I used to go to school in a bullock cart or on a bicycle. However, those modes of conveyance were also considered a luxury by my father who used to say, “Your cousins Patha and Veera have done well in life, because they walked to their schools.”
The other day my school going son came to me and said, “My school is organising a picnic. I too would like to go for the picnic with my class mates.”
“Where are you all going for the picnic?” I asked.
“Singapore,” said my son. I was stunned.
“But it will cost me a fortune,” I protested.
“Only `30,000 with some pocket money for snacks. My teacher wants everyone to join,” said my son. I said that I had to think it over. My son went silent and did not talk to me for three days. I had almost decided to concede to the school’s demand of sending him to Singapore for a picnic at my cost. Then my son changed his mind.
“A few of my friends are dropping out. So, I am not going to Singapore.You can use the money saved for buying me a laptop,” said my son.
When I was in school, there was no concept of picnics. I studied in government-run schools. Only the sports day and the annual day were picnic days at school. Family weddings used to be picnics, because many delicacies were available and we wore new dresses.
When we were children, the breadwinner in the house, our father, used to get the best. At night, we ate curd rice tempered with some pickle. After eating the curd rice, we went to sleep. Mother ensured that we were asleep, and placed a tawa on the stove and made dosas for father. Dosa was a luxury in those days for middle class families, because of the cost of making it and labour involved. But when dosa dough was poured on a hot tawa, it gave out a hissing noise.
The noise invariably woke up my little brother who either was pretending to be asleep or the dosa-on-the-tawa noise was good enough to disturb his sleep.
He invariably got up and presented himself at the kitchen and demanded his share of dosa. Father and mother were embarrassed to encounter the child intruding in “the dosa for bread winner alone’ interlude.
My mother was afraid that he might howl and wake up the other children. One half of a dosa was given to my brother to shut his mouth and force him back to sleep. Children could spoil the best-laid schemes of adults.