Adventures of Little Babu V

The residential campus was divided in to two parts, the division marked by random vegetation, cluster of trees as well as a temple bang in the middle. There was our side and there was the other intimidating officer’s side and temple as the sentinel between them. The armed forces have tight hierarchical order, a kind of caste system where officers looked upon JCOs as nobodies and JCOs looked at NCOs as nobodies. Temple, not of classy construction was mostly visited by residents of his side.  Temple itself was bland a hall and a small “garbh grah” which hosted the deities perhaps Ram, Sita and Lakshman trio. The purohit had two sons one Devi Dutt and the other Gokulanand, they were Prabhakar and Shubhakar’s age. For some strange reason Gokulanand reminded him of Tulsidas with his long bushy aerial (चुटिया)

Near the temple was an abandoned small pond it’s walls had green moss not too deep, filled with clear water, lots of frogs in it and yet bigger boys swam in it while little Babu stayed at the edge. The kids were prohibited to use this pond, it was dangerous and a sepoy was posted there to prevent children using it. But the boys would nevertheless jump in it as and when they felt. Fed up, one day this sepoy came to the pond saw boys in it, picked up all clothes and took them to his superior and complained about boys not listening to him. Now the bigger boys were swimming with their kaccha-chaddhi on, little Babu barely 6-7 years old was stark naked. He was the only one who walked stark naked home some 2-3 hundred meters from the pond, not embarrassed but worried that he will get a scolding for losing his clothes. 

Now and then, this fellow Devi Dutt, Prabhakar Shubhakar and others would organize 24 hours nonstop Ramayan path. They will go round collect milk, chaaypatti and sugar and some cash for the prasad. A diwan in the hall would be decorated with four banana trees to make a mandap where larger version of Tulsidas Ramyana would be placed and relay recital would begin. Little Babu was too young to be included in the list of reciters but Bhaskar was given a few chances. But it was not the reading of Ramayana that was the high point for him, the night out and drinking tea through the night was the adventure of the occasion. There at night, sleeping on dari with lights on and among the insects and feeling miserable/sleepy was the real adventure.

इति कानपुर प्रकरण