Memories of childhood

Raj Bahadur Yadav

 

The noted writer and TV programme producer, Sam Ewing has very beautifully said,”When you finally go to your old hometown, you find it was not the old home you missed but your childhood”. Last week, when I was assigned the duty of supervising the evaluation of answersheets of the Diploma in Education (D.Ed) as head examiner at Hisar by the Board of School Education, Haryana, I felt that it was a god-send opportunity to stay in this historical city for a few weeks built by Feroze Shah Tughlak in 1354 AD. 

 

I have a special love and regard for Hisar city, the people,public parks, libraries, schools, colleges and universities. I can never forget those delightful days when I meandered in the streets of Jain Mohalla located inside the Talaaki Gate in the west and Nagori Gate in the south sucking ice-cream, munching gram, cracking jokes with my classmates and friends. The hazy shadows and images of the giagantic Talaaki Gate made of ‘lakhori’ bricks and huge stone-pieces still lurk into the deepest recesses of my mind. I can still visualise the poor cobblers sitting under its huge porch mending old shoes. 

 

John Milton has very perceptively described the role of childhood in shaping the future of a grown up man, ‘The childhood shows the man-as morning shows the day’. Having lost my mother as a small child, I always craved for love and affection. I got it in abundance from my school teachers of Jain Middle School. Their selfless affection invariably overwhelmed me with a deep sense of gratitude towars them and I remember to have composed a poem in those days, ‘Beech shahr mein khila hua hai ek phool, Jiska naam hai Jain Middle Schhol’(A flower has blossomed in the middle of this city whose name happens to be Jain Middle School). My teachers and classmates were lavish in their praise for my poem. Having been encouraged by this small success, I went on to recollect and write a few short stories based on our folk tales and, to my great surprise, they were published by a Hindi newspaper, ‘Punjab Kesari’. In this way, I started dreaming to become a writer and poet. 

 

John Betjman, in his autobiography, ‘Summoned by Bells’ authored in blank verse says, ‘Childhood is measured out by sounds and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows’. As a small boy in early seventies, I enjoyed walking along the canal which passed through Hisar town from east to west direction. On Sundays, I found girls and women washing clothes on its banks, the cows and buffaloes mirthfully grazing and countless white ducks perching on the acacia trees and sparrows chirping incessantly. The sights of nature seemed to have cast a magic spell on me and I would loiter around there for hours together until my father came from behind to catch my little arm to take me back to our house reprimanding me, “Oh, fool ! Will you waste the whole day gazing at these bushes, birds, trees and cattle?” 

 

Lewis Carrol has sung in praise of childhood in these appealing words, “I had give all wealth that years have piled, the slow result of life’s decay,to be once more a child, for one bright summer day.” It pains me a lot now to find the old canal and the large pond situated outside the Nagori Gate having disappeared ith the passage of time.