The Upbringing - 1

Recently I came to know that a large part of an individual’s personality is developed by the way he spend his childhood. This led me to contemplate and revisit my child hood in a rather introspective and philosophical way. I decided to analyse every event of my childhood, my upbringing, my friends and neighbours and how they all affected me and my personality. This is how it goes...

I landed my foot on a hospital bed on 10^th Feb. 1990 at around 10:06 PM, No points for guessing how cold it is in Gwalior in Feb. and that too at night I wonder how so many people managed to wait for my arrival. My family was and is an average Indian middle class family so childhood was not lavish and flamboyant. But it was rather different in its own way. We used to live in Sarafa bajaar at that time (One of the busiest place of the city) and My dadi (Grandmother, She really is Grand!>:D<) she straight away declared that we will have to shift Mankoo (that’s me!) is not going to grow up in this place with illiterate goons all around. And as you know that getting a new home is not child’s play for a middle class family hence by the time we moved to our new home I was already an year old, walking and talking guy (Mum says I learned both walking and talking way early compared to other children, I am proud of the fact, another testimony of my prodigal abilities)

Our New home (The only home to me best place in this entire world <3), well when we moved in here it was like a pearl in a wide open ocean. What I am trying to say is a home in a beautiful surrounding Gwalior fort on the front side and a flat hill on the back side with trees all around, but ironically very few neighbours (Just 2-3 and few distant neighbours). This new home was really close to my Mothers relatives so they kept coming to our home. And fortunately or unfortunately I was the only kid in the entire area So every one used to play with me as soon as I left someone’s arms other were ready to pick me up. I was made to dance to smile to run (Darn! I was a toy and believe me gals loved me :D).

Now to the other side of my childhood, Both my parent were quite young( in their early 20s ) when i arrived so no one really knew how to brought me up and than comes into the picture my dadi aka Grand mom.  Dad went to office mom was a bit weak and busy with house hold work and dadi was busy with ME. I was a cry baby and she used to give me overdose of care (she still do). I was fed more than my tummy could handle Ahhh! No wonder I used to be a fatty (I guess no one is going to believe this, but yeah once upon a time I was a fatty)

After dadi went to sleep during afternoon forcing me to sleep as well that’s when my real life began i used to stroll in the open area in front of my home thinking (don’t know what I used to think, playing with imaginary friends as i didn’t have any real friends) throwing stones plucking out grass experimenting with my toys breaking them, opening them to see what’s inside) and a long list of weird things. An year or so passed this way and then came our first real neighbour The Bhargavs .

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