bachpan ki lafootgiri

As I walk around Delhi neighborhood one scenario takes me back to my childhood days: these colony kids, running around here and there, in all sorts of gangs, playing all sorts of games as one likes and shifting among the groups and games. Today while walking backing and seeing these kids loads of memories popped up one after another, here goes some..

My home was far-far-away from school and no one from my class used to live nearby. So I had all new set of friends here who were from all different sections and from all different schools so no scope of worries related to school events, homework, tests or anything. As far as homework was concerned, we used to try to wind them up in school itself. In a free period when teacher is absent and PT/games period cant be negotiated, or if there is none, ask for one from teacher outright, and teachers don’t mind taking some break/breather. Bole to somehow, we used to manage to get evening 4 to 7 free and ..

• Get someones old cycle and learn how to cycle, with various tricks. Once enough mastered, on some days go around on cycle, race, exchange, try stunts and get busted. With age, cycles got replaced with luna(without gears), scooter, bike. Now when I see people taking car driving lessons it feels odd.
• Cricket used to fit in based on availability. Regularly during summer and winter breaks, and if any one-day match had just ended and team India won, people themselves used to step out with high spirits. I remember after watching shohaib fella running like mad and bowling those crazy yorker, I used to try that, run long distance bowl a fulltoss and get whacked for a sixer. Man nothing was more embarrassing, standing on “pitch” breathing like a dog and watching the ball sail above your head and crying out loud “Catch it…….” with one hand held high as if…
• Diwaali season, crackers and activities around them. Take nuts and those iron rings/washers and bolts. Join them(to make a jugaad) put “tickadi” inside and throw on wall/ground, it make crazy sound equivalent to a mehnga wala Pathaka. Get “barood”/powder from crackers and experimenting with them, one friend actually got big time burnt because of one such accident.
• Holi season, try to fix up pranks, put water in empty Colgate pouches, stones in soap wrappers, pebbles in toffee wrappers and more) and keep them on road side waiting for people to pick it up and then shout like mad once you get one fooled.
• For Bikaner the kite flying season was not during makar-sakranti but during “akshy tritiya”. Atleast for a month all the mohalla wallas would be on their roof tops all the evenings. Trying out new “Manjha”, kites, and bets and what not.
• Chor-Sipahi, chumap chupai, pakadam pakdai, maar-dadi(hit each other with ball), football, random prank fights(wwf/action movie style) and if nothing else make up some new game with crazy rules. At one point of time we started playing chupam-chupai after dinner, in night time that too area spanning across the colony.
• On sundays it used to be mostly evening movie on Doordarshan(they used to crunch 3 hrs movie in 2:30 hrs with commercials). Dish used to come from those big big dish antennas not many had access to them so day time movies were “not supposed to be missed”
• If nothing else, sit in the park across the road, around/over the statue of Nehru chacha, goofing, spinning tales, and random BS.

These and so many, so many.. At that time, the worst part used to be, in between the game being called upon and I used to think, “Bade ho jayenge tab dekhta hoon, koi nahin bula sakega”(Once I grow up no one would be bossing me around) but never occurred that, we were never joined by grownups in our games.

I got MY haircut!

Since we took charge, as in started roaming around the locality for getting some minimalistic things done(shopping), we used to go to this one particular barber, Om Ji. Just like any religious ritual, visit him once a month get regular haircut(army wala), nothing special, no added flavors. There was one more barber(babulal) in that same shopping area(it is known as chungi chowki). He was popular among some of my friends. One fine day I decided to be an infidel and out of curiosity went to him.

He was alone in shop, it was hot afternoon and I was approaching reluctantly. He smiled, offered me a chair assuring everything was okay. I must confess, that day my standard of hair cutting were set to something new and out of the world. He took time(almost an hour). He took care of everything, all details, small snip here and there, brushing off any hairs falling on face or ear while the journey commenced. Such delicacy, details, care, wah wah. It was simple pair of scissors and comb, no added gadget, cream, nothing, pure talent. After he was done with everything, he gave me sort of a head massage to do away with hairs left, and that informal head massage has been way better than any other I had till date. I stood up, totally refreshed, energetic and all smiles. Paid him peanuts cause that was the price of his services and headed home, addicted.

From that day on, for years I looked for a rendezvous. Things like some more people started working at his place, he took a break, there would be other people waiting, and also I had a religion to follow. It never happened, year after year, whenever I tried, it just didn’t work out. On my trip to home this time, I had a week old beard. I got usual comment from my mataram, is it too much to ask you to live “decently”. So first thing to get done was to pay homage to our respected Om Ji. While walking towards his shop, I peaked into babulalji ki shop and saw him.

There were other people(both customers and coworkers) but he was free, I approached, he smiled and said, “aao babu” and offered me a seat. I was like, so far so good. And he started off, usual, slow at first, taking time and I was thinking in back of my head, this is it. Other customers came, I got nervous, but one more barber also came, and soon there were more, 2-3 on waiting chair. But today was my day, he paid no attention, he was hard at work, and I was hard at relaxing. I had gone for a shave, but I went on with haircut. While one other barber was done with a haircut and 2/3 shaves, he was still busy with me. I was in meanwhile thinking of writing him a letter of appreciation(thu my hindi writing skills), making a blog post(which I am doing) and blah blah! As he was done, again I was refreshed, smiles, thanked him, paid him peanuts and headed home, high.

Whenever I will make a visit to a barber shop, I will be “hungry for more”, looking for something equivalent or better.