Collector Office...

I remember the few visits we (as in me and my sister-with Dad) made to the collector office at Trichy to pretty much show that we exist and we are Canadians and ask will you please extend our visa (we don't actually do that though - the asking part I mean). The day we go is usually a week day, so we take a day off from school - yipeee! Going to the collector office was like a field trip. We dressed in our best, hair brushed up well and we looked like two pretty, cute, darling girls... We sure would have made good mannequins if anyone had such an idea. Of all the years we were there, we did the collector office trips two or three times only.

After we get ready, we go to the agent's office. There is a wait of a couple of hours there. We usually get ice-creams or juice coz the office is in a hotel complex so Dad takes us for a break - a break in waiting. Finally, the agent gets all the papers ready and sent his secretary with us. We have lunch inbetween as well.

We make it to the collector's office by lets say, around 1:30pm. There is a wait for a few hours until 5pm here. The collector's office is housed in a very old building. This building would have probably been built during the British Rule. The paint is peeling, the cemented floor is cracked up in many places and there are huge massive pillars everywhere. The main occupation of me and my sister is to try to hug one of the pillars, but they are so huge that we don't get to hug them fully. Oh, and there are bats as well sleeping on the ceiling. Watching them sleep is also a time pass for us while we wait to be escorted to his honor's presence. There are lots of ants too to watch - big black ones. We try to follow them sometimes and when they lead outside to the dumps, we stop coz its not safe to go inside thorn bushes.

Finally, the time comes for us to meet the Collector. The secretary asks us to speed up. We walk as though we are in a military parade. We step into the collector's office. Its got a nice red carpet, a very big wooden desk, strewn with papers and stationary, an Indian flag, a placard saying "Collector" and the collector's name which I dont remember, and a big cushioned chair behind the desk, on which sits the puny collector himself. The first thing I notice is, he's half-bald. The second thing I notice is, he wears glasses. The third thing I notice is, he's signing a lot of papers, so there is a secretary standing close by him and shifting the papers for him to sign. The fourth thing I notice is, he never raises his head as we walk by. All we do is march past him and go out again, and the guy doesn't even raise his head once. Maybe he may have had a glimpse of us when we left or something, I didn't notice anyway. The minute I realised that he is not going to look at us or talk to us or anything, I lost my interest in him. A whole day of waiting and all we get is to see the collector's half-bald head.

The minute we get out of the office, we start screaming to my Dad, "Daddy, he is sottai!*". The door to the collector's office hasn't closed fully yet so Dad and the secretary start to hush us up and try to get us out of the building. We are still excited and want to tell Dad everything. Once we get into the car, both me and my sister start talking simultaneously about what exactly happened inside and how the collector didn't even look at us - we both give a lot of complaints regarding this. We come back to the baldness of the collector as well. We get home and rush to Mom to tell the same thing we told Dad. The rest of the evening passes on with both of us chattering about our so-called "field trip to the collector's office". So much for a field trip... We got a day off from school so I guess I shouldn't complain now.

*"sottai" - means bald in Tamil.

Grade 3

The best year I ever had in school was my year in Grade 3. I must have been around 7 or 8 years old. I remember a lot of things from that part of my life in school. I even remember the names of my friends, and I had lots of friends too. I think of all my years in school, Grade 3 was the best.

I started off school year with a double attack of jaundice and malaria at a time. I was at school only for two days and then didn't go for a month coz of my illness. My sister was equally sick too so we both were at home for a month. Its probably because of this reason that my teachers were very nice to me and took good care of me. I was the pet of my class teacher, Daisy Miss. She always took me and another student daily to her house for lunch. I was always included and the other student changed.

I remember I had the habit of sitting under the teacher's table and eating my lunch on the rare occasions when she didn't take me or anyone else to her place. I remember that we used to watch for bats in a big huge tree that was in our school compound. Sometimes the bats used to come and sleep on the ceilings of the corridor close to our classrooms. We tried to shoo them away by throwing chocolate wrappers, which ofcourse didnt reach them.

The best part about Grade 3 was our educational tour to Kerala. We went to Cochin for three days. Our school had arranged for us to visit a bread factory (Milka breads, if I remember correctly), a hair-oil manufacturing factory, and a soap-manufacturing factory. I always used to stay first in the line. I have a picture of me and my friends wearing pink caps and waiting outside the bakery at the bread factory. I remember we had to wear those caps before going inside the bakery. When we boarded our bus to leave the place, some people distributed a piece of fruit bread. We got a drop of oil to put in our heads at the hair-oil factory. They didnt give any soap at the soap factory.

We also went for a ferry ride in the lagoon at Cochin. I remember it was drizzling and all of us were making a big fuss and our teachers were having a problem walking us on a narrow ledge to get to the other side. I have a picture of all of us taken at the lagoon after we got down the ferry.

I guess I remember so much of this particular school year in my life because it was so much fun and so full of happy memories and lots of friends. I think during my whole time at school, only during this year I had so many friends - friends as in the kind of people who like you and you like them. We did have our share of petty fights and stuff - no friendship is complete without fights! I would love to see all of them again.

Kindergarten...

The place where my parents settled down is called Tiruchirapalli - in short, Trichy. I did all my schooling there. I did kindergarten to grade 7 in one school, grade 8 in another, and grade 9 to grade 12 in one.

My kindergarten years were probably good. Me and a distant cousin of mine were in class together, and he happened to be staying (with his family) above us on the first floor. He was a constant source of news of what I do in school, to my parents. Mom used to tell me that he had news almost everyday, "Grace bit this boy", "Grace hit that boy", "She fought with a girl"...... I get the impression that I could have been a big bully at school. I was very good in studies it seems. I found a bit of paper that my grandfather had kept safe for some time. We were rumaging through his stuff after he died and Mom showed it to me. It was a P.S. column from one of my mom's letters to my grandfather and it was about me. She had written that I was first in class and that she had not taken any trouble to teach me or sit with me and make me study. She was amazed that I stood first without any help from her (or my Dad, for that matter). So.... me a good girl...

Incredible India - so people think!

I was born in Canada, so obviously I was there for sometime. I lived a majority of my 23 years of life in India. My last stop before I came to my present location was Ethiopia. I already have a blog based on my so-called experiences there (accounts for 10 months of stay - but I do have lots of interesting stories on that episode of my life). So I thought, why not about India? Of all places I have been to, the stop at India was the longest. So I think it is only fair that I write about my experiences in India. This blog is gonna be about that.