“What a transformation with kids having pocket monies these days!”
“Well before that, when my brother, hardly ten then, gave up the movie for the day for want of a seat in the balcony, I realized how times change even in the family setting,” he said. “But in contrast, in the excitement of it all, we never bothered about how uncomfortable it was to watch from such a close range, though it was not the case for once as I was caught in the act when I took an anna from my mother on the pretext of buying a notebook to make it to the matinee show. Before I could reach home after the movie, my mother smelled a rat as she had come to know that I had bunked the post-lunch session; and so she wanted me to show the notebook that I bought. Well, I had the presence of mind to show her a fresh-looking one for the rest were anyway worn and torn, but she proved to be more than a match for me by catching me on the wrong foot; why she pointed out our teacher’s remarks of the day before, and I owned up my backdated bluff at the very first blow on my back; and wiser for that slip, I coached my classmates to portray my future absences as playground holdups.”
“It makes me recall how a classmate of mine got away for claiming that the Chambers Dictionary cost five times its price as his illiterate parents were taken in by its bulkiness.”
“That’s about the blissful ignorance,” he said, and continued. “Right outside our school gate there used to be two ice lolly vendors, Janakiramaiah the old man and Ratnam the young guy, who somehow liked me; once he took me to a matinee when I was nearly crushed in a stampede at the ticket counter, maybe, fate had preserved me, for the second time that is, to inflict bigger blows later; I’ve told you how I’d escaped from being drowned in our village tank before that. You may know what his gesture might’ve meant for me but you can’t guess what a burden it was for him to spend that extra anna on me; not that every one of us bought ice lolly to improve the duos’ bottom lines. Why, many parents were unable to spare one Rupee for the section-wise group photograph at the end of the academic year, and you can figure out the disappointment of those who lost out and the haplessness of their parents on that count. But thankfully, there is more money in more hands these days, and I can tell you that today’s poor have more to spare than the middleclass of yore. When the high-end express buses were first introduced, I knew how scary were the village folks to travel in those, why even in the ordinary buses, they could pay the fare only by digging deep into their pockets.”