Manchester shopping district on a nice sunny summer day.
June 1983
Annukkan was feeling a bit giddy. He has been in the high school for the last 2 years but he never felt like a big boy. The school had a subtle way of reminding him that he still was a 'little' one through the school uniform policy. Boys in year 5 and 6 wore a half trouser whilst from year 7 you can wear a full trouser. He still remembers with pride the first day to school wearing a full trouser. He felt like a man. At school his class room will now be in the main building and not in the holding pen on top of Bathija Hall for year 5 and 6 students. He loved the new classrooms. They had a unique open plan with big windows and grilled wall on the one side which let in the breeze. More importantly he can look at the play ground through those grills. Annukkan's heart was always on the playground.
The head teacher and class teachers made it clear to everyone that now that they are bog boys in high school they have to be more responsible and look after the little ones wearing half trousers. It is always a delightful time of the year when the little lambs from various primary schools come to join the big school. In the first few months they are herded around in orderly queues wherever they go. They look petrified when they see the big boys in full trousers. Soon there were murmurings about how we need to focus on our studies so that we perform well in our 'public exams'. Annukkan did not understand what all this fuss was about public exams which don't happen until the end of year 10 which seems like an eternity away.
It was around this time that Annukkan fell in love with the sciences. He was never a studious boy and usually managed to scrape through the pass mark. However the science subjects were a complete revelation to him. Suddenly he was actually excited about the new stuff being taught in school. He hated memorising the definition of various things. However when it came to understanding the logic behind why things are the way they do he was thrilled. He loved the practical science the most apart from the chemistry labs. He enjoyed learning about the way lenses work and how light gets reflected and refracted. His first love was physics. He never realised that when he leaves school he will enter a career where he will leave physics behind and go into biology........human biology........medicine.
The most exciting thing he did in year 7 was to discover how to make a slide projector using a card board box, a lens, a mirror and some old photographic films. All you had to do was create a small window where the films can be placed, create another window for the lens to be placed, choose a darkened room and place the mirror in the sunshine to stream the light through the two windows and soon there was a mini movie you can project on to the walls. He remembers even now the multiple failed attempts at creating a slide projector using bulb without realising that the bulbs used in home do not have the same properties as the reflected sunlight and therefore never produced good images. He will learn about different types of light later on and realise what was wrong with the home bulb.
Year 7 was also the year he moved into his new house in Gandhi road. It was a special place. Plenty of friends on the same road who loved to play cricket, badminton, rubber catapult and many other games every evening. The rubber catapult was one of his favourite games. Essentially you string together rubber bands to create a catapult which can be looped between index and thumb, you fold down paper to create the bullets(soaking them in gum and drying them made them durable and firm) and then you run around the house targeting your opponents. There were always controversies and fights and we made up the rules of the game as we went along. We were yet to become slaves of the idiot box.
One day his dad bought him an aquarium and every time he returned back from Chennai he would bring him new varieties of fish from Moore Market. Soon he had an aquarium with different variety of fishes. He could spend hours looking at the fish and their behaviour. He never had a pet animal because his dad hated dogs then and he himself was too scared of dogs having had a painful experience as a child. So his only pet was the fishes in his aquarium. He loved the gracefulness of the angel fish which would around regally like royalty, he enjoyed the rolly polly gold fish and he had to keep a close eye on the tiger fish which had the habit of chewing off the fins of other fish. Even fish had their own bullies.
Annukkan is looking forward to reliving some of his memories when he goes to India later this month. He will be meeting his school classmates, his teachers and visiting his old school. He hopes he is able to re create some of the magic of the past with his old friends.......
Urban street art in the northern quarter of Manchester, art was one thing Annukkan was never good at and you can see from the example below this beautiful graffiti art
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