A slap in the face....

Sometimes I wonder what I would have been now , had it not been for some incident which occured in my childhood days. There have been quite a few for which I am very thankful to my family , without whose guidance I might have ended up choosing an alternate path. The following is a very important one and like many other hidden memories , it was stirred by an intercity train journey (with out a book).

I used to be a small boy in my 4th or 5th std, when I suddenly realised that I had immense talent in some things . I could sketch almost exactly any diagram from a text book to the note book ; it was a pity that none of the subjects required it very often. I also had strong faith in my physical strength , which I believed was indicated by the number of veins visible on the back of one's hand(!). Sometimes I could hit a marble from a few metres away with amazing accuracy... I used to know when the marble left my hand that it would reach its intended spot without fail. All these abilities were somewhat stable and I could trust them to be there the next day. There were things I sucked at , these were the ball games which the locality kids loved ... cricket,football,hockey and the desi "lagori"(quite simply put, like dodge ball but with a rubber ball and the entire body as the target and the whole neighbourhood as the arena),"koli-koli" and others. I was the also ran in most of these games with the occasional glimmer . Then one day I came across a really neat game , but am really not able to recall the name.

Heres how we used to play it. Find a short sturdy stick or peice of wood and shape it like a baton with the help of the local carpenter ( for free ) . Then get the projectile ready; this was another peice of wood , about 1/3 rd the size of the baton - and tapering at both ends . Make a groove on the ground/road (usually road) such that the baton's head could slide in it at an acute angle while maintaining contact with the ground . The player with the baton would slide the smaller stick out of this groove with the help of the larger one with as much power as he can summon. The distance travelled by this projectile is noted and after a round robbin , the order of play is decided by the distance covered by the projectile. After this , the player in the decided order places the smaller tapering peice of wood on the ground and strikes one end so that it causes a moment to applied to that object and raises it above the ground to meet the dynamic fulcrum. And then the player strikes it as hard as he can . After this I remember that with a limited number of shots the player needs to cover as large a distance as possible with the same procedure. And thats the game which I now remember is called "gilli dhanda"!

One fine evening I was introduced to "gilli dhanda" and I found it appealing and took to it like fish to water. Breezing through the qualifier I struck the tapered end of the gilli with the baton and it rose through the air in arcs and spirals as though in slow motion . My right hand swung and struck it right at the place where its center of gravity would be and sent it flying through the air... in the background I could hear my companions screaming "beda, beda , hodibeda!" (don't hit ! )..in kannada. Following the trajectory of the gilli , it stopped abruptly at the forehead of a man. And immediately a small red drop appeared in its place and the gilli dropped impotently at his feet. At that instant I was annoyed because he had stopped a brilliant shot , but realised that the bigger fault was mine. I was even prepared to apologize, which is something I normally never do/did. He walked towards me abruptly , and I remember he was dressed formally , very much like how I am dressed when I go to /return from office . I opened my mouth to say "sorry" when his hand slapped my face real hard. It was a stinging sensation which made my entire face real hot and my ears felt like they were on fire , but something in me made me stay put. He glared at me and walked off . Not one word was spoken in that interval of maybe 10 seconds. His slap was simply his way of returning the shot on his forehead with my gilli. It might not have been as painful but it certainly made me stop playing gilli dhanda forever! and slowly any other physical game for many years .

This event's importance : it made me see things through my own eyes , as it made me face the consequence of my own actions , and I didn't crib to my parents about and neither did anyone else. I could reasonably say that this was one of the reasons I eventually became an introvert and started reading books. And that was a real starting point of independant learning for me. This idea of independant learning is the only thing which can help you in any venture... cause nobody can force you to learn and pretending to learn is again no use to anyone , cause you again end up fooling yourself more than the others.

Thats an incident which I thought was worth sharing, I ve got plenty more where it came from ... until next time , tata