Childhood memories...

Childhood memories are perhaps the best treasures a man carries across his life; and the moment we start thinking about the good old days, we start feeling young at heart and that feeling is just priceless... I believe this is true with anybody except if your childhood happened to be as horrible as Kaadhal kondaen Dhanush or something... :)

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of my childhood is the 'without' travels. People from Tamilnadu should be understanding what 'without' means but if you are not aware of the term, it means traveling without a ticket in a bus or a train or anything that expects you to have one. :) I've done quite a lot of that during my school days especially the high school days. Ever since my VII or VIII stds, I've been traveling around in my bicycle and towards the end of my schooling till date, bike has been my companion; but even before the days of my bicycle, I used to travel a lot in the PRC buses (the TNSTC buses as they are called now). The tickets from my home to the school used to be One rupee and ten paise back then, and my pocket money was 2 rupees per day... :) The first day of the week my dad gave me 5 rupees and I was supposed to roll over the balances to maintain the 20 paise deficit per day and my favorite way of rolling up better sums was a 'without' travel. Frozen milk coloquially termed '1 roovaa pepsi' (Small traders give a damn about copyrights :D) was extremely popular those days and I used to spend one rupee per day (at least) to get my favorite chocolate flavored 'pepsi' and that means my one way trip is already destined to be a 'without' trip. :) Sometimes the pepsi count may become two which means the next morning's travel was also added to the list of classics...

There was a guy called Sundarrajan who used to stay near my place and we used to run a contest on who does the maximum 'without' travels in a month; and the pride of winning and the taste of 'pepsi' had me going for years in the trade... "I have a pass annaa", "I've already taken the ticket" and a lot of other ready made replies combined with an innocent look (seriously I was looking innocent back then) usually got me out of any troubles even if the conductor asks for a ticket.

This was going on for quite a few days (or should I say years :D) until the D-day came... It was another day in the contest between me and Sundarrajan and the day's credit were shared equally or almost equally until we got down... Just when we were about to get down, the conductor asked "Show me your tickets..." to both of us. As luck would have it, he was already two steps down the stairs and I was just about to get down the stairs... So the moment the conductor asked for the ticket, the guy jumped off and ran like crazy... Obviously I didn't have that luxury and I clearly knew that the conductor was not someone who is going to buy my 'pass' or 'already got the ticket' stuff. So I did the most foolish thing I could've done at the moment... I pulled out 1 rupee and 10 paise from my pocket and I said, "I forgot to buy the ticket. Could you please give me a ticket from SS colony to simmakkal" (there were like 12 stops inbetween... Moreover the bus was more or less empty and on top of it the bus was at the simmakkal stop :D)... The look on the conductor's face and the advice he gave for the next 15 mins can never be forgotten and it sure was an embarrassing moment back then. But whenever I think of the incident, I smile at my 'brilliant' idea and I couldn't resist smiling... :D

P.S: Even after that incident, I was travelling 'without' for a while (naangallaam...). As much as I smile at the 'without' travels, I wish I didn't do so. These days, even if I'm not even obligated to get a ticket, I walk up to the conductor and make sure I pay for it!