'Cause Pigs can Fly

We all went to nursery or playgroup or Montessori or whatever it was called. We spent a couple of hours there playing with toys and the other kids and learning a few letters, numbers and nursery rhymes. My brother started when he was two and a half, and my mother agrees he was way too young for nursery. I started when I was three. I have many Montessori memories. My cousin was in a class on the other side of the ‘what seemed big to us’ hall. Garden Montessori was at the top of our road, just a minute’s walk from home. So on most days our grandfather would walk the two of us to our Montessori and pick us up. On the way home he would buy us chocolate, ‘seeni bola’ and other sweets. We seemed to have loved going to Montessori because, according to my mother, we never cried. I don’t think we really cared or realized we had to wake up in the morning, get into our uniform and walk up the road with our school bags. I remember having fun with my friends, playing outside and singing al...

The Past Most of my childhood memories involve cricket. We played cricket while in school, we played cricket once we got home from school, we played cricket on birthdays and other special occasions, we played cricket during the weekend and we played cricket during school holidays. Having played so much cricket, we also watched cricket matches, stayed up till late to see who wins and cursed the winning team if we didn't like them ("May you all rot in hell you bloody Australians and also Indians even though half our families live in those countries!"). So we played cricket, we watched it, we read about it. We basically lived it. We were scolded for the cracked glasses, all the lovely roses the hits seemed to be always directed at and all the tennis balls that went missing. We were scolded for tiring our selves, playing cricket instead of finishing our homework and for being out till late when the mosquitoes kept feasting on our blood. We ignored the rain or the hot sun....