Best of Summer Camps In Childhood - Part 1

Times change and how.

These are the days of enrolling kids in summer camps.
There are subjects like maths and science, taught in some.
Some teach hobbies like painting, crafts, pottery making, etc.
Many kids learn a little about such activities during summer before the school reopens for the next grade.

In the absence of vacationing with grandparents or aunts and uncles, summer camps are a very good option to keep the kids engaged in a very positive way. Learning something and not getting into trouble when parents are not around are worth it but at a cost. Skills are learnt but not the life skills of interacting or bonding with others.

We too had our fair share of summer camps.

Most were at East Marredpally, Secunderabad where my mom’s sisters and brothers and their families lived in a complex of 5 houses inside one common compound wall.
We would hop from one house to another.
My aunt (maami) would cook for us all and lovingly serve us heavenly food.
My uncle (maama) being the eldest son, was the head of the family. He was revered and his advice was sought for on all matters, however small. We lived separately at Hyderabad and came on visits or during vacations.

There was so much bonhomie. My uncle would engage us in quiz. He would come forward to prepare some sweet, helped by all of us. I still remember the white pumpkin halwa he made for all of us. There was a kitchen garden in which the season's vegetables would be grown. White pumpkins were aplenty at home. Pumpkin in all dishes like dals, sambar, kootu, pachadi and still so many pumpkins left. Maamaji decided he was going to pluck some and make halwa out of it. We watched the process with so much interest. Pumpkins were cleaned and the thick skin scrapped away. Then the flesh was freed of all the seeds and grated finely. Then so much grated pumpkin for so much sugar to make the halwa. Such fun we had peeping into the huge hot vessel to check whether the pumpkin had cooked and become glassy. He would keep stirring the halwa and explain about the sugar, water, grated pumpkin, cardomom powder, etc.,

Each day at noon time we would look forward to some project in the kitchen. He would ask my aunt (maami) to prepare snacks like murukku(twisted flat in 3" dia roundels made from raw rice powder, etc), cheedai(marble-like snacks made from raw rice powder, butter, etc) or thattai.
We would help twist the murukku, roll the cheedai or pat the thattais but before that my maami would make a tiny pyramid with a little dough and apply some turmeric on it as a symbol of Ganesha, the remover of obstacles. This was a superstition followed to avoid accidents from the wet dough bursting while dropping them into the hot oil. This pyramid was the last piece to fry.
After these snacks were deep fried, we would watch how the first ones would be dropped from a height to check its crispiness. If it broke into many pieces and made a good hollow sound then the snacks would be crisp. All of us would eagerly wait to taste them. These had low salt and buttery to taste. Of course now it is freely and readily available in any of these numerous sweet shops across Chennai.

We kids would wait for my uncle to play a familiar game each time cheedais were made. My uncle would hold a few cheedais in his closed fist and ask each of us to guess how many cheedais were there in his fist. The one who guessed the numbers right would get to eat that lot.

My mom’s eldest sister who was a teacher, would make us all write 3 pages of handwriting, one page of English, one of Hindi and one of Telugu. Then we were given a few sums to work in maths lest we forget our lessons altogether!
I was very mischievous so I would sit and write pages and pages of handwriting much ahead and submit one set each day with the current date marked and escape into the open to play in the hot sun for a longer time.
She found out one day and made me write an imposition - 'I will not repeat this mistake' a 100 times! I was careful never again to waste my time in writing them ahead.

These memories are from the time I must have been hardly 10 or 11 years old. Living among many elders and learning so many things make us what we are today.

More on learning the art of making pickles, jams, dry preserves, crispy preserves called vadaams or vadiyaalu in our 'summer camps' in my next blog.

Cheers!
Mahalakshmi

Chunnu, the dog

Dear Readers,

These days I seem to remember Chunnu, our landlords' pet dog in Kachiguda, Hyderabad where we used to stay during the 1970s.

I still remember a young boy bringing a pair of pups, both black, wrapped in a handkerchief. Our landlady whom we affectionately called 'behenji' (which means elder sister in Hindi), came out to inspect the pups on offer. she saw whether there was a male pup and selected one and named him Chunnu. Until we vacated the house after 10 or 11 years we grew up with Chunnu.

He had a jet black coat with small patches of gold and white just above his eyes which made him look so beautiful. And the tail which would wag and wag upon seeing us sisters!
If he were sleeping and heard a sound, he would open his eyes and raise just one eyebrow to convey he was not interested in anything except to get his quota of beauty sleep!

As a pup he would sleep in the same room as us whenever our landlords traveled out of town for a few weeks. Invariably he would sneak and cuddle next to us, yelp when he felt hungry, scratched any exposed head and there were feud heads! We had fun chasing him around the house.
I enjoyed observing all the emotions that flitted across his face - fear, joy, lethargy, mischief, curiosity, real anger, ecstasy. Whoever said animals were dumb creatures needed to retract that statement.
I knew I was his dear friend as I would play with him the most, imitate his barks and try to play the fool with him.

All this ended when our landlord's adopted son, a relative working in the military started coming during his vacations.
Chunnu would be so afraid of him that he was sure to be hiding under a huge bed and never dare come out to even eat for fear. In the beginning I would think it strange and would joke that he was acting like a shy bride!
Then one day to my utter shock I found out why Chunnu was petrified of that son. (He was in his twenties then, we sisters would never thought fit to talk to strangers so we would never cross his path at all). He would be lazing around house, smoking and ordering Chunnu to 'sit down'...

The landlords had gone to Uttar Pradesh, while we were also gone out most of the day as all of us were studying at schools and colleges. On one such day, I got home earlier than usual. Our kitchen used to be on the 2nd floor with an open terrace from where we a good view of the backyard of the landlords house on the ground floor. There were huge trees on the fringes of the compound wall from where I would observe the squirrels, crows, other birds go about living their lives. At times I would imitate their calls and we would have fun interacting for hours.

On that fateful day when I went to get something from the kitchen I was shocked to see our dear Chunnu hanging from the tree and struggling meekly. And down below this son was having fun, smoking and joking at the plight of Chunnu. A servant boy to keep this brute company in all this.
This sight made me so sick that I just shouted at the son to let loose Chunnu at once though that was the first and the last time I spoke to this man in my life. Luckily he asked the servant to bring Chunnu down from the tree.
I remember how I just rushed down and rubbed Chunnu's neck gently for a long time.
My feelings were so deep for our Chunnu. Then I knew what has been going on in our short absences while this sadist was at work with an animal which was so afraid of him ever.

The next day, the servant took Chunnu and left him near Charminar which is quite a distance away from Kachiguda, hoping to shake the dog off forever. But a day later Chunnu had walked back home from that long distance to more trouble.
It was a revelation that Chunnu knew only this house even though his life was in danger with such a criminal minded saddist around. He would refuse food for days on end. He ate later, only when Behenji arrived from her native village.

These memories from my childhood linger even now. I was in my teens then. Such incidents have always touched me and made the person I am today. We all go through so many experiences and these invariably shape our lives in some way. Those were the days when my mom used to take us for those religious discourses held in the Keyes Girls' High School, Secunderabad where the good and the bad of life would be conveyed through interesting little stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Subtly we were told to differentiate between the good and bad way of living.

I thank my mamma for taking us along and exposing us all to such things at a young age. Those discourses on the Hindu mythology did help and continues to help to this day. Constantly we absorb, we are emboldened to ask questions when something is wrong like on the day Chunnu almost died hanging by the tree.

God bless his soul. He was alive but very weak when we left that house. I hope he died peacefully when his time came.
On my last trip to Hyderabad I heard that the adopted son also died young many years ago. May his soul rest in peace too and may god forgive him for his misdeeds on earth.

Prayers for all of us.
Mahalakshmi