Come, let us have some more sweet. Come with me to take another stroll down the memory lane. There, let us devour the sweetness of our childhood to our heart's content, yet again.
There was a time when the grind of heavy syllabus in schools never haunted us. An unassuming village had a primary school and we spent our time happily there. As we grew up, we were sent to an aided high school that is located in an equally unassuming village. What did our parents expect us to study there? I am not sure if they had any plans for their off springs. Most of my friends never took studies seriously. They never had any hope that they could ever clear the tenth exam. This was the mindset from the beginning. This was a defeatist approach, by any yardstick. As expected, that was the ultimate result to most of the guys, sadly.
The efforts put in by the kids in studies those days were just limited to copy writing. The two lined and the four lined copy books were so dear to us. Complications of mathematics, physics and tongue twisting English and Hindi could never disturb our minds.
But Babuchettan had a different take on this. He is my eldest brother. Above him, we have a sister and below all of us we have another sister too. Babu, as you know is the word used to address a person in a respectable way. In India we have abundance of Babus. So, I don't think I should explain the meaning of babu. My brother got this nick name when we were living in Andhra. Local people used to address my brother Babu, since he was the son of a 'sawkar'. Sawkar , in Telugu, is someone who is an owner of a business establishment. This word, babu became his pet name. We, the younger siblings of his, thus started calling him Babuchettan.
He wanted us to study well. He used to force us to go beyond mere copy writing. Though grudgingly, we had to obey him. He was very good at mathematics, I was not. So, most of the time, when we sit for the study sessions, tension runs high and more often than not, it explodes. I quietly suffer, sometimes wear a few drops of tears. But the elder one had a very short temper. He used to throw away the books and shout. Still Babuchettan never gave up. He sincerely followed up with his efforts and saw to it that my elder brother got almost full marks in maths in his 10th exam. Going by the standards of those days in our village and the school we studied, it was indeed an impressive performance. Interestingly, he went for second group in the Pre-degree and later MBBS. I, as you all know am here. Everything was like in a dream. I was not so good at mathematics and scored not so high in the 10th exam. Still, thanks to all support by all those good people around me, I reached somewhere. And of course most of the credit goes to the God who refused to remove the kid gloves from his hands while dealing with me.Still that gloves are on his hands, believe me. In Babuchettan's words, I was a wooden plank floating on flowing waters -the plank that has no destination. It is willing to go wherever the flowing water takes it.
Like many of the boys from the rustic background, we too had little exposure to the outer world. Entrance examinations, CAT, MAT et al were strange things to us. I do not know how many of my friends, who could make it to pre degree level, even attempted to the entrance tests. My brother travelled all the way to Ernakulam and procured application forms for us and filled it up for himself and sent to the entrance commissioner. When the day came, he took us to the exam hall in Ernakulam, sat outside till the exam got finished and took us back home.
He had a special skill to extract information from us about our performance in examinations. "How was the test?" He asks. We say, yah it was ok. "A little difficult, eh?" He persists. "Yah, a little difficult. All questions could not be answered." We innocently reply. At the end of the interrogation, we end up flat on our back with a bloody nose- virtually. All beans spilled!
He was the first to visit TKMCE when I got admission and also the first one to visit Alappuzha Medical College when the elder one was to join there. He met Hashim at TKM first. I do not know how, but, perhaps, this wonderful personality was hard to miss. Hashim took my brother to Ansar Hostel, but there was no vacancy at that time. Then, Hashim told about the Kuttichira Hostel. He visited that place and arranged admission there. Where is this man now? How does he live? I have no information at present. But I am sure in one thing. Our friend Suja will take care of this man well. Suja, if you happen to read this, take this as my request. Please take care of our friend.
When I first reached Kuttichira hostel, I first met Ansari. He was sitting in the "Denkan's" office and was giving advice to Denkan about allocating rooms. So, Ansari decided to put me in Kappa Kurian's room. The rest is history.
Despite all his sincerity and commitment towards us, Babuchetan had a flip side too. That was his ego. This Himalayan ego did not take him anywhere. Observed anytime the cattle movement? Speed of the movement of the herd will be that of the slowest among them. Our sweet home is moving forward based on this principle. Still, I want to see the positive part of my beloved brother. He did his duty as a responsible brother.
He scored a first class in the SSLC, a rarest of rare event in our village at that time.
He goaded us to the big world of knowledge where I met YOUall. All erudite, matured and affable. He had a big collection of books. He was a member of DC Books and Current books. Books were his passion. He wanted us to read books. We too showed interest in reading story books and epics. We read Mali Ramayanam, Mali Bharatham and Mali Bhagavatham. We devoted a lot of time with these books. There were Panchatantram, Itihyamala, Pakkanar stories and so many story books from reputed authors in his collection. We were exposed to the wonderful world of literacy thus.
He was an ardent reader of Mathrubhumi weekly. He had a big collection of the weekly. He bound them all in many volumes and kept them for long. I am not sure if he still keeps them all. Through the mathrubhumi weekly I read a bueatiful novel written by Srikrishna Alanahalli named Bhujangayyante Dasavatharangal ( Ten incarnations of Bujangayyan). It was the story of a person who dons different roles in the course of his struggle for survival.
Babuchettan fills the heart with delight. He is like an ever blooming flower in the garden of my colourful memories. I only pray to the almighty to give him good health and happiness for ever. I am sure every one of us can relate this story to someone in our family. Here it is a brother's story. There are so many sisters too, who shoulder the responsibility of the entire family. Like a candle they often end up doing a thankless job. But still, Bhagavan Krishnan calls upon us to do our Karma without laying clam the fruits of it….and your karma here is to read this fully!!
No comments:
Post a Comment