Bangalore

Something a friend said has got me thinking about Bangalore…

I lived in Bangalore till I was five with my sister and mother.

At first we lived in a flat and I went to kindergarten at the International School with lots of white kids as classmates.

Then we shifted to my mom’s friend M’s place. This was a great time in my life and I have lots of fond memories of my then best friend, Ansari Banu. I didn’t go to school anymore for some reason. My mom taught me to read and count at home. So I’d wake up in the morning, she’d teach me for a couple of hours, and then I’d wait for Ansari to come home from school.

She was a year older than me and went to a regular school. She had a large family – a big mommy who was an absolute sweetheart, a quiet dad who went to work on his cycle in the morning and came back cycling in the evening, and SEVEN brothers and sisters! One sister, about 14, had something physically wrong with her. She was very skinny and would sit on a bench in the sun all day and did not go to school. She had trouble walking, but she was not mentally underdeveloped or anything.

Her eldest sister, I wish I remembered her name, was the kind of didi that little girls looked up to naturally. She was studying to be a teacher, and would practice on us little kids in the evening. She held classes for us and some of the other neigbourhood kids in their garage in the evenings. I remember how I argued with my mom when my mom said forty was spelt ‘F-O-U-R-T-Y’ and I said no, because didi said it was ‘F-O-R-T-Y’! And of course didi was right!

She had a younger brother, the youngest child, about two, another brother who I think was her twin, or maybe a year older, and then the oldest brother who was an auto rickshaw driver! Once on a holiday, he took all of us kids for a ride in his auto! He did not live in the same house however, he was married and lived with his wife in the village. I think there must have been some kind of misunderstanding between his wife and his parents or something cos Ansari once said something nasty about his wife.

Oh and I had all these nice fairytale books – The Firebird and other Russian folk tales, Stories from the Bible etc. and the didi would borrow them from me and read them and encourage the physically weak sister to read them. She was so keen to learn somehow and polish her English. I don’t remember what they spoke at home, probably some South Indian language.

Their house also had a swing which their dad had built! And once in a while on Sundays, because they had a TV, they would take it out in the courtyard, put down durries and invite the neighbourhood to watch the Sunday flick. Great fun!

I remember Id when the parents gave all the kids two rupees as Idi, and I got one rupee too! We would go to the village nearby and spend our money on churan, green mango, imli, sweets, kites, little toys! We played hopscotch and ‘Crocodile Crocodile’. We made up little skits and ballets! Other occasional people in our gang were two 10 or 12 year old Christian girls who were very good and studied at a convent and who taught us to steal handfuls of sugar from their mom’s kitchen! Two richer kids whose mom we were all terrified of. She didn’t like us ruffians and would tell us she would throw chilli powder in our eyes for some imagined wrong that we had done to her house or kids. We NEVER went in her house though.

Thank God my mom allowed me to run amuck with that lot!

When I look back I realize what a cool family they were. So broadminded. They never made me feel like an outsider or looked at me as ‘exotic’, despite the fact that I was not from their social, economic or religious background .

I hope they are all well. And I hope my Ansari Banu, wherever she is, is happy. Mashallah!