My earliest encounter with Fear

I am a Bihar boy. Although a large part of my family, particularly from my Baba’s (Dad’s) side, lives in Kolkata, but by birth, by education and by heart, I am a Bihar boy. Actually I am a Bokaro boy to be precise. Although it’s not a part of Bihar any longer, but for me it’s still a small city in Bihar, which is surviving because of the Steel Plant and that’s also the reason why it’s called “Bokaro Steel City”. I found that quite amusing when I was a kid. I deduced that Superman must have landed here on his arrival from Krypton and turned into the Man of Steel. That made me smile. As a kid, there were very few things did not make me smile. This is one of the incidents, in fact, the first incident I can recall, when I cried.

I am a Bengali and as my friends say, most Bengalis are “Phattus” or cowards. I wasn’t coward, but I had a few fears as a child. One of them was that the world would eventually run out of “Frooti” and we would have nothing left to drink. Another was the stage fear. I did not really need a stage to be creeped out actually. I was once asked to say a story in front of the entire class and I had almost shit in my pants. I managed though, by translating a Bengali story to Hindi. This was also the reason why I hated the Recitation exam. Although I was pretty good at spelling and had even earned a Red Star (which was a red paper cut in the shape of a star and stuck on the papers of the good performers by the class teacher) for my handwriting, but the real issue was the Recitation or the Oral Test where we had to recite our nursery rhymes in front of the whole class.

It was the day before my final Recitation test for Nursery class and I had played all day in school that day. We used to have circular tables of different colors in our classroom and it was fun to run around those tables with friends. Also, I had to protect my blue Tiffin box from the evil forces of the class. It was one of the prettiest things I have ever had. But protecting it from my friends that day was really tiring and the result was that I dozed off in the bus. We used to board the Red Bus, which would drop us at the Bus stop (which was actually the verandah of one of the landlords of Cooperative Colony). I would then walk to my home after kicking every stone on the way. That day was different though. I had slept through the journey and missed my stop. But thankfully the conductor knew where I lived and walked me to my house on the return trip.

I was still sleepy when I returned and my sister made my bed so that I can doze off. She hated making my bed. She argued that I was old enough to make it myself. Well, I could do it, but somehow I liked the way she did it. It felt more comfortable. When I woke up, it was 8 p.m.

When I was a little kid, my father had once told me that the deadline for going to bed was 10 o’ clock and probably the first time he had been mad at me was when I had missed that deadline. But I wasn’t sad as I had learnt a new word – “Deadline”. I did not know at that time what this word would mean to me in the future.

Now, I had the recitation exam the next day and I had not learnt a single rhyme. It was already 8:30 and I had to finish dinner and learn the rhyme before the deadline of 10. I was a slow eater. I used to be confused about which hand to use for eating and would always get it confirmed with Mam (my mother). I felt there were two activities in our daily routine which did not require much attention and the time could be better utilized by performing some introspection simultaneously. One of them was the time of the meal. The other was while in the loo. So, I ate rather slowly and by the time I was finished, it was already 9:30.
I opened my Book of rhymes and started memorizing the shortest one that I could find. But it was simply not possible to learn it so fast. I don’t think I would be able to do so even now. Then, I did what any 6 year old wise and mature person would do in that situation. I cried. I did not cry out aloud though. I was beyond that stage. Baba noticed me crying and made funny faces to make me stop crying. He also extended the deadline. I crammed up to the best of my abilities. Then I slept again.
My memory completely fails me about what happened then. What happened in the test and was I able to recite correctly, I don’t know. The next real memory I have was that I was selected to deliver a speech on the topic, “My School”, on my Kindergarten Ceremony. I remember people clapping and I remember Baba standing in the crowd and smiling at me while I delivered the speech.

I learnt a few things from this incident –
• You can’t fight sleep.
• Delivering a speech in an auditorium is easier than doing so in the classroom.
• Deadlines can be extended.
• Fear is not a real thing.