[Assam] Story for Grant/ A Granduncle's story

[Ram Sarangapani]

C'da,

That was very good C'da. Now, whenever you give us a tough time on the net,
we can always remind you of that chopper chasing you:)

--Ram


On 10/3/06, Chan Mahanta <cmahanta at charter.net> wrote:
>
>
> Hi Grant:
>
> Here is a story from my childhood for you. It is kind of long, but I
> hope you would like it:
>
> I was about eight years old at the time. Our school was about half a
> mile from home. It was a small, one roomed hut, with dirt floor,
> mud-plastered bamboo walls and thatched roof framed with bamboo.
> Thatch is a kind of long and sturdy grass, which people used to make
> roofs with, after drying them. We had two teachers and two
> blackboards, where about fifty pupils from Grades A, B, 1st, 2nd and
> 3rd. sat, in different groups, on the dirt floor,on mats that we
> brought with us from home. There were no bathrooms and no drinking
> water ,other than a pond in the front yard, where we drank from on
> hot days, with our hands cupped together.
>
> When we were in second grade ( I think), there was a vaccination
> drive by the  State Public Health Department, funded by the World
> Health Organization, for immunizing children against the dreaded
> disease tuberculosis ( TB). The vaccine was called BCG, short for
> Bacillus Calmett-Guerin. The vaccination was done at another little
> school about two miles away from ours. All of us kids and the
> teachers walked about a mile and a half along the little but historic
> dirt road, that linked a large number of little villages separated by
> rice paddies, which ran from the capital of the Kingdom to the
> mountains in the south, and was called Khorikotia Ali ( Woodcutter's
> Trail). From the road we took a detour of another half a mile or so
> to the vaccination site along a railroad track.
>
> We got our shots. OUCH--it stung too,but I did not cry.Then we were
> heading back home in groups of twos and threes and even more. After
> we got off from the railroad tracks and got back on Woodcutter's
> Trail, I got separated from the other kids who went to their homes in
> a different direction and I was trudging along the road all by
> myself. All of a sudden I heard a strange, beep-beep-beep sound
> coming from the rear, which was getting louder by the moment. It
> appeared
> that the sound was from something over the road. I looked back and
> saw nothing but the sound was getting very loud and scary. Suddenly I
> saw this huge dragonfly looking thing with a large bulb like head
> appear over the groves of bamboo tree-tops that line the
> roadway,flying, it seemed, straight towards me. And that noise, now
> ear-splitting, going braap-braap-braap-braap ---!
>
> Panic struck me!
>
> I ran, as fast as my little legs would let me, towards the only house
> on my right about a hundred yards away, surrounded by waterlogged
> rice paddies. Thinking back, I probably ran that distance faster than
> anyone I would have ever known. I reached the gate, which was made
> of horizontal bamboo poles spaced about a foot or so apart on bamboo
> posts with holes in them, and are called 'nongola' in Assamese, my
> native language. To open the gate you slide the poles through the
> holes. But there was no time for that. I slipped right through the
> gaps and crossed the little front yard and almost flew into the
> house, struggling for breath. In those days and even today, people in
> the villages of Assam leave their front doors open. There is no fear
> of strangers . And there is always someone in the house. Since there
> were no door-bells, and knocking on mud-plastered walls or the woven
> bamboo-mat door panel don't make much of a sound, if a stranger comes
> visiting, he or she would make a coughing sound or clear the throat
> to indicate there is someone at the door. Later I learnt that  city
> folks made fun of that coughing sound as the "Assamese calling-bell".
>
> Anyway, to make a long story short, the man of the house found me,
> this breathless kid barging into the house with panic in his eyes,
> just about when this dragon-fly-from-hell flew past the house. He
> knew what was coming after me.
> He told me it was  kind of a 'ura-jahaaz'( flying ship). He also knew
> who I was, since took his bullock cart along the trail by our house
> every now and then to the railroad station, carrying old ladies to
> the train, or delivering rice  or firewood to the business-people who
> lived near the railroad station, and we would always ask him where he
> is going or what he is delivering in his ox-cart.
> He told me not to worry now and go on home.
>
> That evening, my older cousin,who passed away a couple of years back,
> told me that the scary, giant dragonfly was a helicopter. An oil
> company owned it and it was making seismological surveys looking for
> oil. Later on they found oil near there, and today it is called the
> Geleki Oilfields.
>
> Now I hope you won't make fun of St. Louis Koka calling  me such a
> scardy-cat, OK :-)?
>
> Take care.
>
> Love,
>
> SLK
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> assam mailing list
> assam at assamnet.org
> http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.assamnet.org/pipermail/assam-assamnet.org/attachments/20061003/3dff924e/attachment.htm>