Rewind very fast to about a quarter century (ok, I'm dating myself here! but that gets harder to avoid by the day;)) And slow down - play forward - ever so slowly forward.... That's the premise of this post!
Kovilpatti - Anyone ever heard of this place? Well, if not, its time to learn a bit about this puny little town :) You can read all about the town in the Wikipedia link. But, you can (almost)
"see" it end to end these days - Thank you Google.
This town of 90K or so, (it hasnt grown significantly I hear, but it has a bit since '86), played a significant role in my childhood. Surprisingly, vivid mental pictures of my life in this town is only a blink of an eye away, in my memory bank. (Something to be said about my memory or the lack thereof - I couldnt remember what I did last weekend or the week before). Eight years here under some very interesting twists and turns comprising 5 different rental dwellings, 4 schools, 2 failed businesses (not mine, my dad's), and memories of grandma dying, Kovilpatti seemed to have etched a permanent place in my brain. Running away from these memories has never crosses my mind! Past is funny - all the things one remembers are somehow magnified/glorified - one tends to remember the sweet yesteryears; bad moments, luckily just fade away (if you remember these, find a shrink:))
I could plot a rough map of this place out of memory, even today, marking the key locations as I remember it (no, street names not guaranteed:), but you get the idea!). Surely, with so many passing seasons, things should've and must've changed a lot. Afterall, I havent once looked back in all these years, even though the "forced separation" left me with a heavy heart and too many missed connections to count. No way I would be able to decipher a map of this place now, right? Well, a little walk down the google search list, and I find this :
a wiki map link. Now, nostalgia has gotten me all choked;) (and hence this blog), but wow, the landscape and scenery of this place hasnt changed much - surely, the Indian growth juggernaut hasnt flown down this path yet. And somehow I'm fairly pleased with the lack of progress! Yeah, easy for me since I dont live there, but life would've just been as happy down there - I would have missed a few continents, but, oh well!!!
The wiki map is a bit much - loads of people marking off their homes and other self-significant locations - brilliant - in a few years, I sure will be able to wave at you all folks down there! If you recognize me, twitter me!
I recognize streets, the landmarks - my mental map agrees with the internet map - each turn in a street fills me up with a bit of picture in place and a story - if you read this blog, you would get the sense of my picture gallery flipping/fluttering a weebit too quickly. There, down the hill (yes, there is a bit of elevation in this town, not much, a few hundred feet maybe) I was chasing my dog down in my dad's rather large bicycle (monkey pedaling, ofcourse - if you dont know what that means - well, if you cant reach the post/seat, you arch your body through the bars/triangle to reach the other pedal - and when you pedal around, the bicycle will sway about 30 degs, hopefully, affixed at the tires;) - no, I cant demonstrate this anymore since I'm a fully developed homosapien now); oh yeah, the famous 'temple' near school where we could play hide-and-seek all day (yep, really, how many days do we have to go to school on time - boring). I probably would need to add a few of my own landmarks in that map - home/street of my first crush, first school, a hideaway icecream shop that was funded by 'stealth' money, playgrounds - each cricket pitch and football/soccer field, my school(s), all the rival schools, the national hockey stadium that was the one window to the broad outside world beyond the the square mile city, and plenty more!
Life back then, was rather tough and fun. Especially, when I was helping my parents manage the little family owned restaurant. Start the day before sunrise - pedal to the restaurant to be in time for the grand opening @ 5.30am, suited already for school that starts @ 9am - catch a quick breakfast in another cafe @ 7.45am (shhhh! parents didnt know that then and dont believe this story now either:)) - head to the playground @ school by 8am while forgetting to attend the hour of torture (morning tuition meant to keep me up with the rest of the class), get to school at the dot of the hour 9am (wasting no time in there!), look forward to that afternoon recess, and play hour - 100F? bring it on! - school was a happy distraction! Go back to the restaurant after school around 5pm - catch up with homework before the business picks up (right - what homework?;)) - shrink and hide when dad is around in the night - and get home by 10pm. Weekends meant stay out in the cricket/soccer field the entire day - prevailing conditions being leave home after dad and reach home before he does! Wrath of dad is wrath of god... Everyday was an adventure...
In a lot of ways, 20-20 vision says that the best thing that happened to me is that I was forced out of this place - there would have been no happy endings here - I was too carefree and too loose for a 12 year old - too worldly, too streetwise, too conniving, and yet too naive without any eagerness to look beyond the yardage that I had under my feet - a rather well fed big fish in a rather puny pond - I knew every rock and all the weeds. I missed this place - always looked back upon it fondly - but, never have I gone back (, yet!)
What triggered this particular episode of the walk back in memory lane? Ah, I caught up with an old friend of mine from this era - randomly connected via facebook - thank god to google and the social networking world that you get to dig in your past and find those missing pieces scattered through the globe. A long roll call after, with a string of familiar and not-so-familiar names thrown around, yeah, most of my buddies from this time long gone have turned out to quiet alright; each having found his/her own way out of the pond we grew up in (some still caught in it, but happy nevertheless in their wisdom or ignorance) Now onto finding more of them and connecting back...
Some fun facts:
Kovilpatti city has a website :
Kovilpatti Municipality. Compare that to a similarly sized city in the US -
Pleasanton, CA. Hmm... A few CSS/layout/background/picture changes apart, its hard to pick a winner here. Oh, yes, finally I see it - things have changed, things have progressed, its not visible, its not sparkling, but the place has indeed evolved. No Kovilpatti, you cant hide forever - google got u and your city management crew did it to themselves, in the name of e-governance. That is some crazy progress...
I will update this blog when I go here personally again, and add my own flickr feed to compliment! Until then, I will let these photo negatives bake in the dark room...
