I love this pic.

Don't be fooled by Andaponda's deceptively innocent smile (case in point, pic below.) She was a total scheming, conniving brat! I don't understand how even though we did everything together, I was the only one getting lambasted for all crime committed! Ajay (the lone man in the pic below) was the real honcho! He taught me everything I know about climbing walls and trees, escaping mad dogs and monkeys, stealing and boodling! He was my guru! Dad always thought he was a bad influence on me!

In this pic, I am clearly wearing Sudhakka's old tattered cloth belt. I know because by the time I was in 1st or 2nd class, (I can tell from Andaponda's white kindergarten badge), we had advanced to those shiny fake-leather belts (that you can see my other cousins wearing in the pic below), which in my defense broke very easily, or somehow ended up on top of some tree and were also very susceptible to doodles. You could write on them with all kinds of writing instruments, and they would still render perfectly. I even doodled on them with appa's office erasers (those long red erasers used specifically to erase pen marks on paper. They erased pen marks alright, but bled color and left red marks all over the paper. What's the point?..... Come to think of it, they may have been appa's factory erasers, meant to erase marks on construction material maybe? Thanks to that stupid eraser, my ears were once subject to painful twisting by my telugu teacher for "coloring" on my exam paper. I tried so hard to explain to her that it was my dad's fault not mine. But, did she hate my dad or what! She continued to wring my ears with greater enthusiasm. I was short of hearing in that ear for days. Aren't school teachers really cruel?)

I am also wearing the belt upside down, with the logo facing the wrong way. I don't think it matters because our lovely logo says "sicutapis operosa" which means "busy as bees"! I never quite understood "busy doing what!" They never cared to explain either.



As you can tell from the second pic, my shoes have lost color! (how?)! I'm wearing the badge on the wrong side and it's not even my badge. The red Roses badge has to be my best friend Pallu's (there was no one in my family who was in Roses!). I was in Pansies (pink)! I know!

A word about Pansies: On the first day of school, your fate for the rest of your life is decided by one reckless decision that your class teacher makes by assigning you to a house! The minute you are in Pansies, you have relinquished what little self-esteem you may have had prior to that. The only thing it guarantees you is failure. I fought to be Roses all my life! I felt just as Hermione would have, if she were sorted into Hufflepuff! It is objectionable. We need a Sorting Hat for real dammit!

Our house uniform for special occasions was supposed to be the same color as our badge, but Pansies did every shade of pink and violent you can think of. Daffodils too did every shade of yellow - from mango to mustard. Roses and Shamrocks (green) were the only guys who got it right.

What I love about this pic is also how you can see the height-wise regression of personalities. There's the class captain on the left, next to her an ambitious looking kid smiling with pride, and from there on with dipa's eyes closed (symbolic or what!) things went down hill. Isn't Ajay just adorable?

There's that broken see-saw behind us that we always stood and see-sawed on! There were usually at least four of us on it at once.

By the way, the pic doesn't show all the kids in the family. Just one small group of same-school-goers (a few still missing, like Sravanthi and Meena... ).

You can see a tiny bit of our lovely garden on the left. Gosh. What didn't grow there! More about the garden and the "real" monkeys of Marredpally later. I have SO many monkey stories to tell.

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There's another pic where Ajay and I are wearing the St. Anns school badges and matching blue and white shirt and shorts and pretending to be "important school-goers" back when I was still in kindergarten and he was too young to go to school! I need to find that.

There is also one with me and my school friends, where there are all wearing the regular uniform and I am wearing the sports one (dressed for the wrong day. sigh! )

By the time I was in high school, I ended up wearing the Guides uniform by mistake so often that my teachers began to assume that it was meant to be worn everyday! It worked well for me. I thought it was cool you know. The scarf, woggle, all the proficiency badges, rope, whistle and all...

Did i tell you? I am the only one in the family who bought
8 pairs of brand new school uniforms (not including two sports, house and guides uniforms) every year;
new black shoes and sports shoes at least twice or thrice a year;
badges, ties and belts almost every other week,
and still ended up wearing tattered hand-me-downs because I lost or ruined them!

Doesn't it tell you a lot about my prankster cousins? I think they have something to do with it, even though they won't admit it. I have been victimized for so long, I don't know freedom even today!

Life has made me vulnerable and world weary!