My First Lesson of Life

It was a hot summer morning when the sun shined and smiled down through the curtains for my room. I pulled the sheets over my head to evade the advances of the sun. I lay in my bed until my mother came to wake me up. I loved it when she called my name fondly. “Hari, time to get up.”. When I refused to budge from the bed, she fondly placed her hand on my head and say “It’s bad to be in bed for so long, you are missing the best part of the day.” She kissed my forehead and urged me to get up. Mumbling and fumbling I got up stifling a yawn.

I had a quick breakfast and then went out to play. Our house had a beautiful garden, with several kind of flowers, variety of roses, hibiscus, and chrysanthemums. Several trees bore ripe fruits of pomegranate, cherries and mangoes. My favorite game was to run in the green garden spreading out my hands, feeling like a bird, flying into the sky, the clear blue sky. I saw Raghu, the old gardener who walked with a limp, tending the plants. At times, I heard him talk to the plants as if they were his children. Now, he was near the rose bed, nourishing them with red soil and fertilizer. He said to them “You are my beauties, bloom well in full splendor”. I laughed at him but somewhere deep in my heart I took pity for him.

I didn’t have many friends out here as papa had got transferred here very recently and I was to join the local convent here after the summer. Papa got transferred a lot and so I never got the chance to make any friends. By nature, I was a shy and a timid boy. I got nervous when I saw too many people at a time. But, I liked this place the best as the stillness of nature complemented my persona well. My only companion here in this alien land was Ambi. I thought it was a weird name. The first time I met Ambi was near the banyan tree on a hillock. I was swinging on the roots of the tree when he came and joined me. I don’t know why, but I took an instant linking to this boy. There was a sparkle in his eye and a light scar on his forehead, which I think, made him look handsome. I hated his scar, and I craved for a scar which would make me look handsome too. So, that was our first meet, swinging silently on the banyan tree and watching the sun sink into the horizon, looking like a golden ball in an orange sky. That night I asked my mother as she put me to bed “Ma, am I handsome?” She smiled at me and gently told me that I had the prettiest face in the town and that she was proud to have me as her son. Reassured I fell asleep instantly.

My meetings with Ambi didn’t cease. I met him everyday on the mountain and gradually we started talking and playing. We invented games and told stories, laughed out loud and ran alongside the river to see where it ends. Ambi said that his baba said the river flows into the next town and the next country. Ambi always dreamed of going to the next country or the next town to see how it was there. He wanted to see if there were people like us there, he wanted to see if the grass was green and if the flowers blossomed in spring and if it rained there. I just laughed at his ignorance but down in my heart I liked him for this innocence.

Ma never asked me with whom I played. She always assumed that it was with the other boys in town. It was only one day that Ma asked me where I had been. And I casually replied “To the mountain”. And then she asked me “Who was with you?” I said, “With Ambi, a boy of my age”. “And where is he from?” asked Ma, her voice trembling and concerned. “He lives in the houses by the mountain”, was my answer. Ma started wringing her hands and twisting the “pallo” of her sari. She gave me an early dinner and sent me up to my room. Though I lay on my bed, I could hear muffled sounds of my parents in the adjacent room till late in the night. I couldn’t understand why Ambi bothered Ma so much. I didn’t realize when sleep came to me.

The next morning, by the time I was up Ma had packed suitcases and said we were going to Nani’s house. I didn’t understand the sudden plan. I didn’t want to go to Nani’s place. After a 5 hour long drive, we reached Nani’s house, which was a congested flat, where there was no garden, except for the potted plants in the balcony. There were my two other cousins, who always played with guns and bows and arrows shooting each other down every five minutes. I was not interested in playing war games with them. I just longed to go back to the garden and climb the trees and lie on the green grass staring at the starry night. Nani observed my sadness and tried to cheer me up, but to no avail. Nothing in the city she showed me fascinated me. Finally, she gave up.

It was a week before school was to start that we received a phone call, which was from papa. After the call, Ma put her hand on my head and said that we were going back home. When I heard these words life sprung back into me again, my eyes shone with delight and I hugged Ma tightly. The five hour drive seemed longer than usual. A thousand thoughts raced in my head. I thought about the trees, the town, Ambi, the sunset, the river. I was so eager to have my life back just as it was. The car pulled into our drive way and papa stood there to greet us. I ran into his embrace and felt a security in my home. I ran to the mountain to meet Ambi. I didn’t find him near the banyan tree. So, I went calling out for him to the houses by the mountain. I found the houses, but they were bare and devoid of people. Instead, there was a big bulldozer standing there and a couple of men with yellow hats. I ran over to them asked them of the people who lived in the houses. They laughed and said “All of them were removed from here.” “Where did they go?” I asked, my voice trembling. One of them spitefully said “Why would we keep track of the whereabouts of these low caste people.” I was trembling unable to understand what he said. “But, I had a friend Ambi. He stayed here.” I said. When I still stood there rooted to the ground, one of them came up to me and said “Look son, you seem to come from an educated family and from a higher caste. Why don’t you go home and just forget about your friend, he will never return”. The night started to grow now and rain came down. It was the first rain of the season. But, it felt bitter and salty as my tears mixed with it.

That night I couldn’t sleep. I had so many questions in my mind. What was caste? Why were people segregated? Why do people treat each other so badly? Why did Ambi leave his home? Would some one ask us to leave our home too? When school started I had a lot of homework which kept me busy and I rarely thought of Ambi. In school that year, we learnt in Modern and contemporary history about Raja Ram Mohan Roy and the likes of B.R.Ambedkar, the revolutionists who brought about renaissance in India. That year, I learnt a lot of the various demented thoughts and superstitions plaguing our minds and the society. Now, I understood what caste was and what they had done to Ambi and his people. Was he really to blame for? Caste is something which gets tagged to us by birth, which is totally out of our control. I now understood why I was taken to Nani’s place and what papa had done along with Ashok uncle, the builder. That year, I learnt a very important lesson in life. "Segregation of people into caste and creed demonstrates the limitation of the mind to love and to accept. These invisible boundaries are sure to engulf us" But, what I didn’t understand was how come our elders missed out on this simple truth.