IN THE REVERSE GEAR (once upon a time in my student days)

IN THE REVERSE GEAR (once upon a time in my student days)

"MY heart aches, and a
drowsy numbness pains. . ."
That was John Keats.
(1795–1821) in
"Ode to a Nightingale".

My heart aches too when I go back in time as I do, time and again. That 'once upon a time' feeling ! That nostalgia !!

Life has been a long journey.The once familiar things are now missing. I still remember those long forgotten products. There was that pink G nib we put into the pen holder . . the ink well in the class-room desks. . . . the blotting
papers. The first fountain pen . . those iridium tipped nibs that lasted for ever . . .the HMV big black music-records and the old
gramaphone - we had to change the needle so often .. . . the Kolynos, gibbs and Macleans toothpastes which were threatening
to replace the nature's tooth
brush- the neem. . . .the Rexona soap of beautiful people . . . those heavy Duckback raincoats, . . the
Sola hats which kept the head cool in the tropical Sun . . . the "made in India" Afghan Snow face cream. . .that rectangular bottle of
PEPS throat lozenges . . . the Zalim Lotion ads . . . and those famous brands that everyone then used all
over the world - ZAM-BUK
ointment and KRUSCHEN SALT's yellow label bottles.. Household names once upon a time!

Memory comes in snapshots. You do not usually recall what happened before and after a
particular memory shot that you 'see'. It was Dr. Penfield who did groundbreaking research in the field of memory. He found that the
events of our life rest meticulously recorded in our brain for ever. A trigger in a particular cell is all you
need to resurrect the event
recorded in that cell and images come flooding back. The ability to recall depends on the intensity of that experience and the quality of the trigger.

There is no rationality in memory recall. Much as I would try, I cannot recall the name of that tall dark boy with chiselled features
and smiling eyes who always won prizes in my school debates! And yet I can recall that his father's
name was Ashtbhuja Prasad, that they lived in a house near the river, that they had a huge alsatian dog named Ringo!

Amongst the earliest of my
memories is a long tin-box
containing crisp biscuits neatly packed ! To keep it air tight this box came heavily plastered with
wax. They were possibly biscuits imported from Britain - the famous
"Huntley & Palmers" brand! And those big black-and-white-striped prism shaped peppermint drops are
no longer seen.

Bread ('dabal roti' in north India) then came unbranded, unsliced.
Freshly baked by bakers, it was sold in their own shops without any wrapper, any name. With a distinct pleasing aroma and taste
of yeast-fermented dough. A standard loaf of bread used to cost four annas (quarter of a rupee).

In my hostel days in Allahabad, a sauve Raza-Bakery man would come to the hostel early in the
morning, loaded with fresh bread, CDF butter, cakes and pastries. Afternoon treat was brought by a
rustic "bicycle man" carrying a steel trunk full of oven-fresh large soft buns, small plain cakes (scones) and fresh butter from the
nearby Bhatt-ji-ki bakery. He would deftly cut a bun across horizontally with a long bread- knife, toss in a blob of butter in between and hand it over for quarter of a rupee.

In the school days, there was that hawker who sold juicy sugarcane bits, the size and shape of the
carrom-board pieces, liberally sprinkled with real rose-water from a brass sprinkler. And a Cotton
candy man selling pink "Candy floss", his presence heralded by his ringing bell as he moved, a horde of kids yelling and following
in his trail - like the pied-Piper of Hamelin!! And then there was that biscope-man and his big round brass-box with several port-holes.
Kids would pay a nominal sum to peep through the port-hole while the bioscope-man rotated a handle to keep the visuals inside moving and gave a sing-song commentary!

As I dig into the past through the mist of time, I see a young naked man in just a loincloth scaling a
tall 'Taar' (toddy palm) tree inch- by-inch. He keeps shouting 'IDAHO, IDAHO' (whatever that may mean) to warn privacy-minded
folks in the neighbourhood of his presence up there overlooking their courtyards. He carried a large empty matka (earthen pot) on his back and with this he would replace the matka which he had
fixed there a day earlier which he would bring down. There were lots of toddy-drinkers in those days.
They would go to the "Tari-
khana" (toddy shop) in the early hours of the night, have their fill and come out blind-drunk. They staggered home to beat up their
wives if they protested! That was the story doing rounds in those days !

The first jet aeroplane of the
childhood days high up above in the sky, remained a mystery phenomenon for several weeks. That was late one evening in the
rainy season. The sky had cleared, the Sun was in the west, a little above the trees, washing the entire town in a brilliant orange glow. And there it came, high up in the
east, a tiny moving spec of white (that was the jet plane but even our science teacher did not know what it was) emitting clouds of
orange smoke as it travelled to the west. Next morning it was the talk of the town - a U.F.O.! Aliens from the planet Mars! H.G.Wells
resurrected!

But the most endearing memory is that of old one-eyed wily Molahoo, our escort to the children's park in the evening. We were small kids. As I and my sister ambled along to
the kids' park, he would tell us so many stories - of ghosts with their
toes pointing backwards and of that witch that lived in the great Peepal tree in our path to the park. That she sometimes came down at seven O'clock in the evening to terrorise people who came that way. We would hurry back home in
time to avoid running into that witch !! And Molahoo would be able to go home earlier, using the same
path, at times well after seven o'clock !

" Have you ever met the witch when you go home?" , I once enquired.

" Sure. But this amulet protects me !"

And he fished out an amulet he wore in a black twine around his neck !

"I flaunt this and up goes the witch !!"

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