Seasons in the Sun

The other day I was hurrying along to catch Remadevi in time for college,when I noticed a knot of kids on the pavement.All of them engaged in animated discussion,carefree and gay.I was wondering where they were headed to,when one of them did a pirouette on a lamppost and the entire group burst into joyful laughter.The very embodiment of pure joy.I passed a church,while on the bus,and saw yet another bunch of children gamboling in the front yard.I was wistfully sent back to the summers of yesteryears,of school days which seem so long ago,when I was very much a child drinking the summer joys to the lees.

Summer vacations of early childhood were invariably spent at native places.We'd wait for Neil to arrive from school,(my school usually closed early),bags packed and the rickshaw waiting,and speed off to the railway station to catch the Venad Express.A week at Ernakulam and another at Kothamangalam and then back to Trivandrum.
It was in those days before the Sunday school started having Intensive courses during summer that we spent the holidays at the Jawahar Bal Bhavan.
Set in a sprawling campus,adjacent to the magnificent Kanakakunnu Place, the Bal Bhavan catered to shaping the budding artists,dancers,actors,and singers of the city.For a modest fee of Rs 15,one could enroll for courses of their choice.Neil and I signed up for Clay modeling,Drawing,and Drama.I also took up Dancing lessons.
There was a course called Aero-modeling which caught our fancy but unfortunately it had an age bar and was expensive.

The day started with Dancing lessons.The first step involved an akimbo pose and a rhythmic stamping of the feet which seemed to go on for ever.I hated those lessons because I was no dancing doll.However the stage at Bal Bhavan became the first stage I danced on,at the tender age of 5.I did a couple of dances later(in school) and called it a day.

The Drama classes were more fun.There was a large crowd of drama enthusiasts and an articulate director.Most of the stories were from the Panchatantra and had animal characters.This was a huge disadvantage because you wore fox-shaped or lion shaped masks which did not give scope for facial expressions.Due to the large number of wannabes the dramas to be enacted always had a group of children as characters.This was an effective method to slyly avoid bad actors as well as to appease the budding Big Bs.I belonged to this group and thought it beneath my acting prowess to be just a face in the crowd.One fine day, the director chose me for a different role.I was asked to stand on a stool and move my arms, up and down,in slow and graceful motions.I was immensely pleased at the promotion and plunged into the role with my heart and soul.The director applauded my perfect movements and pointed it out to the other kids.Proud of myself, I went on,till I realized the Butterfly was only a minor character and all it had to do with the story is flap its wings! My talent affronted, I quit the stage;the director heaved a sigh of relief.Good riddance! I am a pathetic actor till date.

In the Drawing class,we were given large sheets of paper and a tray of crayons.We could use the floor for an easel and pour out our imaginations through colours.Neil showed me how to draw a house and I copied it.We drew umpteen number of houses with a triangular roof,square windows and rectangular doors.Neil was not one for perfection and moved on while I added domestic touches like the chimney,the curtains and fountains to my house.The last picture we drew together was a helicopter which looked like a battered dragon fly.How proud we were!

The Clay modeling class was the place where we had the best of times.We were provided a slab of cool,soft clay and left to ourselves to mould different shapes.Our creations were exhibited on a shelf,by the window where we left them to dry.The first few days we rolled out little balls,on a plate of flattened clay.The instructor soon got tired of the pairs of 'a plate of laddus' on the display shelf and taught us to make snake-boats and the oarsmen.We were thrilled at the new lesson but however hard we tried the boatman refused to stay put on the stern.So we spent the rest of the days adding pairs of snake-boats to the display shelf.We were really interested in the art that we got mum to buy a huge slab of clay so we could practice at home.It was only when we started sitting down to meals with dirty nails that mum pulled the plug.Thus went a pair future Picassos down the drain!

We did not realize our artistic dreams at the Bal Bhavan;Neil and I found our skills in totally different fields But those days certainly proved to be a happy playground of the unadulterated joys of childhood.

"In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means, "

- 'Fern Hill ', Dylan Thomas