Sepia Tales

I have always hated carrying lunch with me. More so in school. I simply hated being bogged down by the lunch box, especially the empty box after the lunch recess. My dear mom would wake up early to pack my round lunch box which would typically have a paratha (Indian bread) and some dry subzi (vegetable dish). One day when I was in the second grade, in my first school, I went out to the school grounds to have my lunch with a friend of mine. I must have been about six then and I was a shy boy and did not like having lunch with the others. Besides, the boys tended to get rather boisterous during lunch and were prone to giving you portions of their lunch even as they whacked portions from yours. This horrified me since I was a vegetarian and most of the boys weren't. My friend and I hunted out a shaded spot on the field and had just opened our lunch boxes when, swoosh, came the shadow of a large wing and the next minute my lunch was in the beak of large kite! Before I could recover, th...

After my running-away-from-school fiasco, my parents moved me to my brothers' school, in the hope that my two elder brothers would be able to keep an eye on me. I was in the fifth standard then and had been shaken very deeply by my ability to cook up a story. My mom told me glumly that at the rate I was going I would be in jail one day. In my little heart I knew this much: I didn't want to be a criminal. I didn't even know why I had lied about my "adventure". I was just an eight-year-old child then and I was as freaked out by what had happened as by my conservative family's reaction to my escapade. That is how I decided I would be a "good" boy from then on. A decision that was to become a weighty albatross round my neck because I got into the habit of being good in order to be perceived as being good. It took me many years to see this and to finally become comfortable with who I was. Meanwhile, an incident happened in my new school that was to influe...