My Life(So far...)

Finally inspired after reading a document on what a PhD student should do, "Write a lot of stuff", I decides to start writing blogs. Here comes my first blog. I would say it is not a blog but it is more about myself. I hope you will find it interesting as well as may be sometimes BORING.

My Life(So far) : I am putting my consecutive birthdays , definitely they are not precise days in terms of events but one can considers them as first two years and then next three years and so on....

5th Aug: 1984(Approx 10:30 AM): I was born in a village named Kalari which is in Mehsana district of Gujarat state in India. I am second child of my parents. I have an elder brother who is 2 years older than me. My father is a teacher and mother is housewife.

5th Aug 1984 - probably 5th Aug 1987 : I really don't remember anything about those first 3 years or so, may be no-one remembers as still my brain was not developed enough to store complicated things and push those memories to permanent storage. I do remember a few things like walking to some streets in a village called Madka in Banaskantha district. But, nothing more than that. This photo is probably the first photo of me. I am not sure how old I was when this photo was taken but it seem still i didn't start walking. 

5th Aug 1987 - 5th Aug 1989(The childhood) : Yes, by this time my brain had done tremendous job of growing to something which can remember people and things and events and relate all of them and ask some weird questions to people. Almost, immediately after(may be few months) my birth I was in Madka(a remote village in Banaskantha district) and still I was not old enough to understand that this place is not that well connected to rest of the world and I was not even wise enough to think about it, after all why should I care about rest of the world when still I don't know how to eat and walk alone back home. But, i still remember those days, the house we lived in(the pic on right) , my fights with my brother, my silly demands of wearing new clothes everyday , walking to school with my dad, playing with animal skins used by my neighbor-hood for making shoes and other leather stuff, walking 2 KM with my mom on weekends to a bore-well for taking bath and washing clothes, watching Mahabharat(specially resetting the converter(UHF-VHF) every few minutes-my first technical job), playing some really cool games(thappo, pakda-pakdi, vinchhudo..:D) and most important, my fights with my elder brother.By end of this period(I think May-June 1989), I started going to school on regular basis(finally got enrolled after going to school with my elder brother and my elder cousin sister for few month- just for fun..:D), i don't remember much about how well I did during those early years but I used to top the class. Also, now i was able to understand that every summer vacation and Diwali vacation we will be visiting our native place(Kalari- My birth place) and we used to wait for the summer vacation.and Diwali vacation. In fact, more for Diwali vacations, because that was the only time we would get new clothes and have crazy fun with my family and friends. During those days we used to be gang of more than 15 children in our house, so you can imagine what kind of fun it would be. Below are some of the pics I took when I visited that awesome place again in October 2009.

Our first home(Madka, Banaskanths)

My Primary School

5th Aug 1989 - probably 5th Aug 1992(First 3 years of primary schooling and childhood at Madka) : 

So finally I had started going to the school and I am not sure how good I was doing, but I had a chance to look at my score cards and I was really performing good enough. I don't remember anything about school or studies except the games we used to play and those hot summer days when we used to go to farms and collect gum or some weird fruits. Also, I do remember some of those horrible monsoon nights when my dad was not at home and it used to rain heavily with threatening lightening. 

I remember that for going back to my native we used to take a bus at 5:00 am, i think route for that bus was "Tharad-Palitana". That bus was an express bus but as that was the only bus going via Madka we used to board that bus early in the morning and get down at Chanasma(small town in then Mehsana district and now in Patan district), and again from Chansma we used to take bus to Bechraji(Then a small town near my native and now Taluka center). It used to take around 4-5 hours for us to reach home and then the vacation days with full of fun used to begin. By the time we would reach to my native, my cousins and aunties would already have come there and my house would have started preparing food for almost 25 people(out of which 12 or so were half-tickets like me..:) ). 

Among these 3 years some of the best memories I have are my fights with my elder brother, akhada(battle-field) we prepared for Kusti(lighter version of boxing), playing cricket with Kazi Shaeb(the doctor who lived on same premises but on opposite side home), my time with Sundar-ma(who cared for me and my brother just like

 grand mother), Rshik mama(a person who cried when we left Madka), my continued role as techie for turning on/off the signal booster while watching Mahabharata, my dad's demonstration of some chemical lab experiment, my participation in some painting competition(I still have that certificate..:D), tuning 40 feet tall TV antenna for better reception, falling of that antenna because of heavy wind, kite flying with loooong tailed kite, theft incident in my dad's school, couple months stay in an haunted house(yeah some one did suicide in that house and milk used to get sour in less than a day(because of that house used to get very warm, it did not have good ventilation)), playing iron rings and scooter tires, my first toy Plane(my dad brought from Ahmedabad when he went for some school related work), my first cigarette smoke(i demanded

 for that to my dad and he had no choice then to give it to me to realize that it is not a good thing and since then i have never tried it), those wonderful days when my grand father used to visit us and I used to get Parle-G almost everyday, my mummy's way of not talking to me or my brother when we used to be too   mischievous or did any prank . I think this is all I can remember from those 3 years. I am not 100% sure but I think sometime during July/Aug 1992 we moved to Benap(another village just 25 Km from Madka) where my dad became Principal of the school. 

5th Aug 1989 - probably 5th Aug 1992(First 3 years of primary schooling at Madka) 

More coming soon.....I hope you will revisit this blog to know more about me.

Thanks for visiting my blog

Nirav