When we talk on childhood memories, as far as I can remember, do not have very sweet childhood memories. Tension between the parents, financial crunches, family disputes is all what I can remember of my disturbing childhood. To escape all these tensions I would spend most of the time outside home. After school, most of the days, I would go to Delhi Public library and occupy the last benches to ensure that nobody could watch me. There in the dark corner of Library, on the backbenches I developed the habit of reading fictions. Hours after hours I would pass reading Chekhov, Gorkey, Tolostoy, Munshi Premchand, comics, and fairytales. My parents did not like my reading all these stuffs. Sometime I would take comics to home, and read at night, when everyone went to sleep.
Things were not doing pretty well in my school studies. My parents wanted me to read science and mathematics and I was interested in fiction and social sciences. But when I think now, as of my parent’s point of view, I believe they were not wrong. My father has seen so many failures and hardships in his life. He wanted to visualize his expectations through me. On the same time, in my early years, I become fond of our social science teacher. It was a very different kind of crush I had never understands even yet. I would spend evenings at her home reading many Hindi books and babysitting her daughter. She too had a failed marriage. Once when she was sobbing, I reached her room, she clasped me in her arms. I drowned my face on her breasts. That was the tenderest touch of my life. I wished had she been of my mother. Few months later teacher left Delhi, I have described more of her in my earlier post “A tribute to a teacher.
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