KOKKARAKKO GUMMANGO

To compare I want to take up mainly few stuff into consideration for this post. If I find some thing more interesting we can see that later . I want to do this on TV,Games,School and friendship as the main headings.

TV: Those days we had a old Weston TV followed by Dyanora TV. A TV repair guy infact learnt the trade working on our TV for quite sometime :-) . Ariel on top of everyone's house and crow's meetings on them was a common sight. Coming to the programs that are close to our heart I still remember chitrahaar, OliyumOliyum (ஒளியும் ஒலியும்) , Boring Tuesday night 1 hour drama   (max outdoor was in அம்மா அங்கே கணேசு எங்கே? ) . We used to even watch chitramala since it would show a Tamil song if we were lucky that week . Spider man , Giant Robot , Star trek and He-man (in the chronological order ? ) were the only kids programs available. I still remember going neighbours ( 3-4 houses away) just to see the 15 min spiderman when our TV had fault .
Look at the options our kids have . They can choose among 6-7 cartoons at a time. My good friend who has a grown daughter is afraid of whats shown on TV . நமக்கு இப்போதைக்கு பையன் தான் so no worries.

Games: I was mostly indoors or playing in school but never played on the streets like many of my neighbours did. But it was fun those days even with the little options we had. I was never a great player of anything but spent sometime on cricket like any other Indian kid. Few of my frnds used to come home and we used our huge terrace  a lot.Ice boy,7 stones,kings with frnds were something I enjoyed in school and at home.  Others may not look like games. but I was behind kites for  few months . I never bought the maanja thread (மாஞ்சா நூல் ) or kites. Thanks to our strategic location and ariels I used kallangol (கல்லாங்கோல்) - stone tied to long thread with which u can attack any kite and get it as yours. We had internally olympics for playing Top (பம்பரம்) in which I was given always Japan due to height. (I grew after that to 6 feet now but was very short that time) . Indoors games like ரெட்ட கட்டம் தாயபாஸ் , 5  கல்லு , நெறைய கல்லு (what do we call it where we collect in multiples of 4) , ஒத்தையா, ரெட்டையா, பெரட்டையா were all my favourite.

Our kids dont have either the crowd around them or tools to enjoy any of these. All they might be lucky with is, if they r in a gated community where they have friends , they might reach about 30% of our enjoyment .

School and friends:These 2 went hand in hand for me . Initially I had very studious guys only as my friends (பழம்ஸ்) like petti srinivasan,Mohan sundaram . I still am trying to trace Eswaran but no clue after he left our next street in UKG times. After 1st standard I had no inhibition. Everyone was my friend. Neelagandan, suresh,Rajesh,Ganesh,RP,Dhanasekar,vijay kumar,Jai shankar, 3 other senthils - sorry if I missed any ,  all used to be with me from 1-3 std types. People may not know them by their names but I am trying to be decent here . I am happy I am still in touch with most of them, I cant forget the pleasures we had in eating the unripened-slices of mango from the lady near of school. Its spread on top with salt and chilli powder and my mouth waters even now,thinking about that and few others like Milk khoa,pulippu mittai (புளிப்பு மிட்டாய் ), javvu mittai  (ஜவ்வு மிட்டாய் ) , kamarakat  (கமர்கட்) etc., Usually we never had much money. My son's piggy bank might have more than what we all spent togther that time. Neelagandan / suresh/antony usually used to sponsor for luxuries like baloon , few toys , ball etc., Friendship at that age is unforgettable. They  just used to forgive me and used to get moving so easily even after many of my naughtiness. I used to rub the soodu kottai (  சூடு கொட்டை ) on floor and put on many guys(will be so hot to make a hole in the thigh)  , used to put AF with ink on some clean white shirts meaning APRIL FOOL, or used to throw the sticky leaf that itches for life on some. They helped me collect the max gundu mani (குண்டு மணி ) a source of pride that time and foreign stamps that I traded with them  :-) .

Our kids friendship ., well I'd say these guys also have fun. They have their own circle and my son talks about 2,3 others with whom I am sure he does all these stuff. Will know only when he writes his Blog .


Coming up Next - Few office funs - Who is paramanandam? - his wife was bitten by ant- telephone in office---