The other day my daughter had her maths exam. In her syllabus,among other things, she had chapters on - How to read time on a watch ? Despite her best efforts, she would somehow mistake half hour to mean 50 minutes or read 3'O Clock as 3 hrs 60 mins and so on. I could somehow relate to her learning woes. Learning about time is perhaps among the first steps towards growing up.
When I was as small as her I had no sense of time. I don't remember if I had any chapters on time. At that stage the summer vacations meant fun, no time to quantify it in weeks,days or hours. We generally spent our vacations at our nanke ( Nanaji's house) at Jalandhar. In those days, TV had not intruded the indian household, going to movies was a once in a while affair and children generally played in various groups either with cousins or with the children from the neighbourhood.
Evening time after dinner was reserved for stories from Nanaji when all the kids will curl themselves on the big manja ( charpoy) for his story. His stories used to be long as they were told in enormous detail. The children were told to give hunkara ( Confirmation) so that he could know that we are awake and are listening to the story. The stories continued over several days; one could catch up the next day if one had missed some part due to sleep. His stories were also thought provoking, always giving out some message in them. I always had questions on the plot of those stories as I always wanted the stories to have pleasant endings as we have in our films.
In all the stories, the characters went through good as well as turbulant time. One such story had a moral which I could recall even today:
आस का बाप,
(a father will always have expectations from his child)
निराश की माँ,
( a mother loves her child irrespective)
चलते की बहन,
( a sister keeps in good stead only if the brother is doing fine)
संग की स्त्री
( a woman will only be a companion if staying together)
Nanaji passed away last year, but his timeless words will always remain with us.
