AUTO -BIOGRAPHY XXIV

I still remember ,in the college, I had only a 30-page exercise book which I could not fill up in three months . In that period of Political and communal turmoil , famine-aftermath, and no-direction-phase, it was the real freedom for teen-age boys like us. I needed only a pair of Chappal and a shirt of any size and a pai-jama for the college and outside too. As there were no girl-friend , I did not need any extra effort to look attractive. I hosted lots and lots of malarial parasite with their regular stage-show , had amoebiasis and other diarrhoeas and so, was slim like a bamoo twig but had no dirth of energy.I attended only 3 or 4 classes a day on average and there was more noise in the class than in the market in front of our college, on Scott Lane.
I told already,- it was the post-Independence period of unrest and we would always be eagar for 'Bande-Ma ta-ram' slogan from any source outside and our student leader woud respond smartly and I would join the 'come out' or 'Get to the street" slogan and procession until the end of Scot Lane and then come back home happy. Our rented two-room space with common toilet and single water tap for two famiies was Rs 30 = per month and we were 6 brothers , one sister, my mother,and grand nother (mother's side) to live in those two rooms with no extra covered veranda of our own. There was no dirth of noise around and great competetion amongst tenants for water and toilet timings. My reading space was the common passage of veranda where the water tap was and I was an eagar boy to win in the game of placing the water bucket under the tap in swift movement.
My other escape-hobby was to slip out in the afternoon to the nearest Cinema hall, PURABEE, about one-third of a mile on Harrison Road ( now M.Gandhi Road) and to peep through the gaping doors and see the running picture as long as I was not noticed and chased away. Thus, after repeated attempts, over days, I could get cut- piece nature of the story and construct the whole picture with the power of my imaginative skill. So the lack of pocket-money could never keep me defeated in my adventure and search for joy.