DISTRUST

The place: The tiled class rooms behind the main building of Mar Ivanios College
Year ; Somewhere in 1971-72
It was noon - lunch break

The bell rings..
As if we eagerly waiting for the bell, we rushed down and ran towards "the place". Some students went home, some rich boys and their "tails" headed to Canteen.
The tiled class rooms were used as lunch rooms during luch break. The classrooms had windows on the eastern side..In between the two buildings was the pathway. The pathway was full of pebble like stones..
The noon time was the busiest time for the dogs and also for the two beggar boys whose attendance register can never show a "A" for absent if one were to keep such a register.

The boys did not have fair complexion and dressed poorly and all that can be related to beggarly.

It was a daily scene at the windows..
The students brought with them food neatly packed in plantain leaves. Plantain leaves were once in plenty in this part of the land. This packet were then wrapped in newspapers. The mothers took so much pains for this.. The boys had to got much to do during the lunch hour than during the classes and hence had little time to eat all the food the mother hopefully wanted the child to eat. Only half the food goes in and the plantain leave is again packed and thrown outside through these windows.. But many a day these remains were snatched from the hands by the beggar boys lest it falls into the wastewater pits (called 'oda' locally) and there is a big noisy scene of the dogs "grrrrr....r" for these left-overs.

My mother packs food in a stainless steel box. The slippery thing had given me lot of trouble while travelling in the KSRTC buses, which takes us more like a boat in water than a bus on the road..sudden brakes, swift sharp turns without applying brakes, and noises coming all through and above all from cries from passengers who fall from this side to that side, some gets a hit on the iron bars fitted on the seats.
One can laugh upto their imagination and visualisation..if you can imagine a four ft boy hanging with all difficulty to the long iron rod fitted at about 5ft on the buses adn with the rod so smooth with thousands of hands rubbing on them since inception. The smooth rods helped in shifting the poor hapless hangers smoothly from the rear end of the bus to the front end where the women stand. Added to these woes is the slippery lunch box i had to carry each day.

One day i felt bad of the poor boys eating left overs.. I opened my box and took a handful of the curd rice and asked them to take. You won't believe, the boy hesitated and when i insisted he ran away.

You are not TRUSTED..