Born In India, Bangalore in 1970, I was the second child in the family. Dad was a very hard working man, technical minded in everything but never around. He worked a day job and was also running a stationery supply and printing business. Mom was a homemaker, an analytical thinker, guess she would have made a great business woman. My sister was older to me by four years, taught me a lot of values but I was always on my own.
My childhood was sweet and sour, spent in the loving care of my family and it gave me a lot of opportunities to explore, create, improvise etc. The technical genes that were transferred from dad were being activated gradually. I used to dream a lot, daydreams conjured visions and visions partly transferred to reality. The school was not too much of fun especially since I didn't do well but the naughtiness and the pranks made me famous in class. Once during lunch break, I remember going to my friend's house which was close by, he had a water tank on the terrace and he told me that there were fish in it, so we went in, caught a few, put them into an ink bottle and ran off to school, half way we heard the school bell ring and we knew that the gate would be closed by the time we reached and it was and so we got in through the barbed wire fence and my luck ran out and my shirt got stuck in the barbed wire and tore so we hid the bottle of fish in the bushes close to the boundary wall and snuck into class, later that evening, I had a lot of explaining to do to mom about the tear and I never saw the fish again.
I never had any toys of my own, dad never bought us any but I used to make my own. Cars, kites, cricket bats, stumps with bails, leg pads from excess pieces of linoleum reinforced with pieces of sponge, hand gloves, wicket keeper's gloves improvised from industrial workers gloves which were made of thin leather. The balls were made (after stripping down the cricket ball) from dried pods of the rain tree (we called it cork) which formed the core and had to be covered with cotton yarn and the whole thing was glued together. The only problem was it didn't last because I couldn't make an outer covering, the first shot was fine but the second shot made the yarn come loose. The following pictures show how the cork ball was made.
A tennis racquet was made out of 4 ply plywood, cut into the shape, had loads of fun playing with it in front of my house. I once found a small white colored ball on the road, which was very hard but didn't know what it was, later I came to know that it was a golf ball and I handcrafted a piece of timber to look like a golf stick and had loads of fun playing golf on the street. The other games we played were
Gulli-danda,
Lagori,
Bacch or Kunte bille or Hopscotch,
Marbles
Kabaddi
Kabaddi was usually played in school after the lunch break, hand tennis was very popular since it only required to have a ball. Football and cricket were occasional. The games that were played in school varied as we grew older but we waited anxiously for it and lunch was gone in less than 5 minutes.
Sunday School:
One day my parents decided to send us both to Sunday School. There were Canadian missionaries who had come to Bangalore and were renting a house close to ours and our parents thought that it would help us to polish our English language and also to learn about the Bible since dad didn't have time to stay back after church service on Sunday. This was an important turning point in my life as it was God's will and purpose for our lives. We loved the Sunday school, the "aunties" as we referred to any women apart from our mother shaped and molded our lives with Christian character. The word of God was constantly infused into us and transformed us into well-mannered children. We loved the activities such as Vacation Bible School (VBS), Christmas caroling, Christmas socials, summer camps etc. Gradually the Sunday school evolved into a church. The aunties were joined by a missionary family from the US, who rented a place in a different locality and started the church there.
It was during one such VBS when I was in Class 6 (11 y.o) that I gave my life to Christ. I was really on fire for God that I even asked my seat mate at school to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as his savior. I taught him some of the choruses that I learned in Sunday school also. But above all this, I was growing into a confused teenager as I had to learn and understand everything myself. I was very polite, well-mannered and nice socially but at home, I was very quiet. I would be with my gadgets or on TV, studies took a back seat. My English speaking improved a lot and the mallu accent was gone and was replaced with an American accent while at Sunday school. I also learned to modulate my accent as the situation required.
Church camps were fun, we used to have short weekend getaway's to full-fledged camps to faraway places. The first family camp I attended was at Doddaballapur, 25 km's away from Bangalore, which was actually a Scouts and Guides campsite. I was allowed to go since my sister was going too. The camp was fun mainly because of the place, acres and acres of land with a lot of vegetation, Mango, Eucalyptus trees, shrubs, hillocks etc., there was a watch tower which was 100 steps high and was scary to climb. The games and classes were fun. There was one particular tree on which were a lot of butterflies and they seemed to stay there forever. There were colorful lizards among the hillocks and peered out of their habitations occasionally. The camp mess hall where we ate our breakfast, lunch, and dinner was a welcome sight since we were forever hungry.
The second family camp I attended was at a place called Quiet Corner which was located close to Mudumalai at the foothills of Ooty, the state of Tamilnadu. We were completely one with nature for 5 days. The days were filled with activities, games, food, campfire at night and at the end of the day we were completely exhausted, it just took me a minute to fall asleep.
Once we had a men's only camp, which was totally out in the wild at Upper Bhavani dam. we pitched our tents on the banks of the catchment area. It was one of the few camps in which I slept in a tent, the nights were extremely cold. Our camp leader and Pastor taught us how to make a sleeping bag out of a blanket such that we could insert oneself into it and hence keep warm. The activities included trekking, fishing, boating on the lake and lessons. One of our brothers' cooked food for all of us. There were only two of us who caught fish during this camp and I was one of them. It was also the first time that I was using a fishing rod.
Another camp was at Elim Retreat center, at Whitefield, Bangalore. The highlight was me and my friend transported ourselves to this camp with our bicycles. It was fun carrying our luggage on a bicycle and landing at the campsite, guess I was 16 or 17 at that time. The boys and men were accommodated in a dorm which had bunk beds, it was my first time to sleep in a bunk bed and I preferred the topmost bunk just as I used to do on the train, the food was good too. the day was packed with activities, started with personal devotion time at 6:00 am, followed by breakfast, morning session, break time, second session, lunch, afternoon session, group activity/games, tea time, evening session, dinner etc. overall the experience was awesome, I found that I was capable of taking care of myself, easily mingled in a crowd and most of all did try to please everyone.
Teenage Life:
I slipped into it without being aware of any of the challenges. my parents never discussed anything at home, dad was only interested in investing sums of money for our future and he worked hard and was good at, by the time he had retired from service he owned two properties and other investments.
