Of the bitter incidents peeping out of the nooks of my memory lane, this one is the most bloodcurdling. We were students of The Little Flower High School, Salem in the mid-1940s. To say that the school was outstanding in the fields of education and sports is not an overstatement.The sprawling playground in the school with separate courts each for every outdoor game was a great attraction to students. Our drillmaster was a man of mean stature, dressed snappily in Khaki knickers with a whistle hanging around his scrag. Students tripping even a whit in the drill movements taught by him during the games period could not escape the rap—a quick succession of harsh strokes from his whip. Quite kind, loving and affable he was with us at all other times than during the drill period.
Some students of our class were regular players of football after class hours on school days till about the hour of gloaming and yours truly used to be an unfailing member of the team. One day, as the pace of the game was picking up, all of a sudden we heard someone howl: “Ho! Save me, save me.” We caught sight of the goalkeeper Viji, a short boy, hanging facedown from one of the horns of a cow with his earlier fours stretched down and dangling, his shirt entangled in the horn of the animal that was moving about in a frenzy. From afar, we started shooing and shouting at it, and waving our arms up and down in our endeavours to make it drop our teammate.
After jiggling its head from side to side with Viji still hanging from the horn, the cow stopped moving. Just then a guy, who might have been the owner of the animal, arrived at the scene and approached the animal that had strayed into the playground, caught hold of its horn and got our classmate rid safely of the horn.
The next moment we noticed our friend perching on the ground unscathed, legs stretched fully forward and heaving a deep sigh of relief. The animal we guessed might have drawn close to the goalkeeper from behind unbeknownst to him and in its vain bid to butt him, had one of its horns spiked into his loosely hanging shirt.As our friend recovered after a little while from the terrific trauma and found his feet, we cuddled him with untold joy. The sight of our classmate hanging precariously facedown from the horns of a bovine made my flesh creep with fright warning me never to play in the school after the school hours.