Third Environment: My Unfolding Voyahe 012

Testing Waters Beyond School and Home

A major part of basic learning for dealing with life was already over at Home before the Primary School days begun. The parents and the siblings were just careful about monitoring the performance in the school and in the neighbourhood: further training at Home was not at the fast pace as it was in the previous years. But many things had to be picked up from the friends and neighbours. A cousin taught and encouraged me to compose Sonnets- my first poem was more of his creation rather than mine (the cousin, four/ five years older than me, ultimately went to acquire a Ph d and work for the meteorology department of the Government to compose weather forecasting models). Then, I went wild composing my own poems that got lost in waste paper baskets over the years. Today, to console myself, I remind me of the poems composed my 14-year elder brother who cared little about his own note book of childhood compositions got lost in family trunks that I later discovered only to lose again. We find and lose God almighty everyday: h childhood scribbles are as valuable treasurers as these old age electronic postings are. Both do not matter. The same is true of the stories and essays written and wall poster or circulating script magazines edited that began and ended during the high school days. Completely forgotten parts of the traversed voyage.
Meanwhile, the initial thrill of learning to sing a song – Tagore songs, and playing Sargam (do re me and some tunes and songs) from elder sisters were getting over and the insistence on being grammatically correct in music pushed me away to new areas to enjoy the exercise of freedom: first, it was football and then cricket and then many other games and of course, simple gymnastics, athletics (sprinting, long and high jumps, etc). But football was the first love. At less than 5 year of age, I would stand behind the goal posts, to have a feel of the laced leather football that occasionally came off the ground and experience a kick or throw with the ball that I got a chance to collect to get it back to the elder boys who were playing inside the ground. This was a long period of watching others play football. One day, however, I could not resist the urge: I asked an elder guy if they would allow me to play with them. They told me that for playing one had to become a member and pay a quarter of a Rupee as subscription to get admitted to the club. Next day, I got back to him and gave a coin that I collected lying for long in one of the tables at home. He smiled and said that I should meet him later. In the evening, my elder brothers, both active members of the club, came to know of the incident. It was then that I realized that the coin I had given was an obsolete British Govt. coin and no more a legal tender.
The next day, a friend of my elder brothers and a football player of some local repute, called me along with about 20 children of my age and told us that we will have a football of our own to play with for an hour from 4PM to 5 PM everyday on the same ground they used to play. They wanted us to select a captain and a vice captain who would be entrusted with the responsibility to keep order, divide the playmates into two sides each day, maintain discipline, collect the ball from the club’s designated official in charge of the sports goods keeping and maintenance and return the ball to him. To a great surprise, I was elected as the captain – most boys knew of me for only one reason: I was a recognized smart kid in the school. Those days, if you were considered a good student in the school, you had that image available for exploitation in other fields as well. The first time I had been charged with some responsibility and manage a team. It was a negative double whammy: a chance to pick up execution skills as a footballer and also a chance to lead or manage in the most entertaining environment: opportunities that came without effort and without an introduction to group dynamics. Here was the opportunity to know about differences in behaviour, skills, aptitudes, manners of children coming from different family backgrounds and social strata. Here was the opportunity to know what the abusive words were, though hinted at but never used at home or in the school. Here was an opportunity to learn that there were also children who are trained at home to tell lies and fight. Here was a chance to learn a different game and test the strategy of speaking only the truth in an environment where there was at least one who was telling lies.
But that was only a by-product. The main interest was to excel in the art of dribbling past defenders, passing with accuracy, moving in tandem without any formal communication within the team and scoring goals. It was great thrill for 60 minutes with and around a football and the players. And, people recognized the ones who excel in the game.
The particular Satwa-Raja-Tama Guna combination that was named Basu would now on its way to express itself to the World at large.