Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Snapshots

A short post here. Thought I would put up some photos of my re-visit to my memories. Below is a picture of my school where I did half of my third standard (never studied the first half!) and my fifth standard (never studied the fourth standard. The school decided I was brilliant and gave me a double promotion from the 3rd to the 5th! He he!)

This was the usual city school, tucked away in the folds of a quiet residential street. It is in Besant Nagar, Chennai and is surrounded by old and large bungalows. i wonder how people living there must have hated us for the noise we made on the streets.

The Vidya Vinaya Vinoda Matriculation Higher Secondary School was founded by R N Jayagopal, a lyricist and film personality from the Kannada film industry and his wife Lalitha Jayagopal. This was the only school back then where they taught Kannada as the optional second language. I did not have to learn Tamil because of this. I and this girl called Bindu were the only two Kannada students in our class. We did not have it as tough as the Tamil and Hindi students and would have great fun in the Kannada hour. I lost touch with Bindu after I left Madras.




And this was the house we rented out, where ma and I lived. Back then it was a lot more better than this. Not dingy and run-down like it looks now. There were only three families in the entire building. One was a doctor couple from Andhra Pradesh who would always defy the very principle of hygiene. Then it was us and the other was a family closely related to the owner of the building.

The family of parents, three children and a grandmother lived in two tiny rooms. Whenever the granny was sick and the kids were not home, she would ask me to go buy 'roti' (her word for bread) from the nearby grocery shop, which, by the way, was still there when I went. I would play with the three children, all much older than me though. I would try to teach them English, play house and the other things that kids play. I think their names were Rajesh, Jyothi and Bharathi. They wrote once after I left. They must all be married or working now.



The house is in Laxmipuram in Thiruvanmiyur, on the way to Kalakshethram. The house looked quite unfriendly and uninviting. We did not go inside, though it would have been nice to see who lives there now.

7 comments:

Ashley said...

When I am in my hometown, I drive by my old house and I do wish I could go inside. However, I don't dare ask as the people in that town (a seaside town in California) are not overly friendly about strangers knocking on their doors!

Thanks for sharing your pictures!

Qaseem Abbasi said...

Deepa,recently I saw your post on the net in which you talked about CHANDRAKANTA's song! Can you please send me that song?My e-mail ID is qaseem.abbasi@gmail.com

Shiv said...

Deepa,
Double promotion from 3rd to 5th !
Waw..dats a great leap..

So anytime u met R.N.Jaygopal??

San Nakji said...

Nice memories. I still live in my home town, so my memories are all around!

It is interesting to hear about your language education. I find it facinating.

Deepa Bhasthi said...

your welcome Ashley. in India, most people would welcome you in and let you see around. but i guess living in a city has made me wary of such things. back home it would not be a problem at all.

Abbasi, i am sorry i dont have the song either. someone i knew played it over the phone for me long ago.

Shiv: thanks, they thought i would be wasting my time in 4th so, a leap there. i hated it then, coz all my friends were left behind, but now i wish i was in chennai a few more years, maybe i would have jumped again! r n jayagopal would come to the school everyday. for the school functions, we would always have film stars and people from the film industry as chief guests. we would be fascinated then. i meet such people every other day now, the entire thing has lost its charm.

San nakji: this is quite normal in India really. almost everyone is fluent in more than two languages. so it fascinates me that you find all this interesting :-)

VENU VINOD said...

ಅಂತೂ ಬಹಳ ಲೋಕಸಂಚಾರ ಮಾಡಿದ್ದೀರಿ!
ಹಳೆಯ ನೆನಪುಗಳನ್ನು ಓದಿ ಖುಷಿ ಆಯ್ತು.

Unknown said...

R u sure that you have mentioned evrything about Vidya Vinaya Vinotha and by any chance did u forgot to mention about anybody????? who got sick after when u left from madras....