The Experiments

Chapter 2:  The Experiments

The days were spent between playing in the neighborhood and at school. The seasons brought differing tasks to every household. During the days of harvest, the rooms in the house was full of grain and courtyard with fresh hay. The dry summer months were busy with tasks of watering the trees. Even though I was the only Son, there were no exceptions.My father was usually strict and overpowering;but  he never created a situation to make things worse than they actually were. 
There were only two instances I can recall about my father actually hitting me.  One was when I stayed longer ,playing at a neighbor’s house without even showing up for lunch. Another was just a thump on my head I got when I was ten years old, during a school trip. We were visiting a place called Kanya Kumari,  where the Indian ocean meets Arabian sea.
 I was with a group separate from my father’s. We visited Gandhi memorial and were proceeding to take the boat  to a temple built on a small rock island in the sea. I was just looking at some exhibits in the curio shops in the sidewalk. Suddenly I received a blow to my head and shocked to see my father red with rage probably frustrated after hours of searching for me in the island and sea side multiple times. I knew how he felt on that day. It was not my mistake, but I pretended that I took the blame for it. He was thinking about the moment when he would have to go back from the trip without me and explaining to my mother that he lost me somewhere.

 In my house,I had two draws full of bits and bobs of rubbish I collected from everywhere at home. I experimented with them and started repairing many house hold appliances like electric iron and table fans. My father was a Diabetic in his 40’s and he used to test his urine for sugar using test tubes, spirit lamp and the blue Benedict’s solution.
 I liked the colors when it was yellowish orange than green, not knowing that his glucose control was awfully bad. 
Me and my sister also played doctor and patient with the tubes of water color supplied by my aunt.

My father used to smoke heavily and we used to go to the shop to get his packs of cigarettes. We used to destroy or hide his cigarettes for my mother who always fought with him to quit the habit.  When years later , he had to quit it when he was admitted to the hospital for a big abscess on his back.

3.Movies