Children have opinions too!

We lived in the beautiful malnad town- Shimoga, where my father taught in a college. He was transferred to Mysore, an equally beautiful place. I was 6years 6months old, and was in 4th year of school. As I have mentioned in my earlier post, we were considered 'bright' and were given double promotion, which was why I was in 4th , and not 2nd standard where I should have been.
It was first of January when we reached Mysore and my parents had to find a school for me to spend the next 3 months. After consulting the friends and relatives, they learnt that the government school nearby was good and took me there the next morning. One look at the school, and I halted in my path like a stubborn horse, refusing to move. No amount of coaxing and cajoling made me change my mind. I said I didn't want to go there!
It was an old house with absolutely no colour that could beused to describe it, with long narrow windows and rusty iron bars. The whole structure had not seen any paint in its life. Through the window I could see a teacher desperately trying to make the children keep quiet and listen to her by banging a ruler on the table.( The 'ruler doNNe', as it was called used to be a smooth, polished wooden baton, 3-4 cms thick and half a meter long used to draw lines or to beat children!?)One wall of the school was completely covered with dung cakes. obviously it was the work of the 'koppal' women. Koppal, incidentally, was a rural pocket in the city of Mysore which was totally unaffected by the developments or the culture of the city around it. A woman
sat under the tree, selling groundnuts and guavas. Looking at my parents' plight she volunteered and said, "vogavvaaa, madammavru vollevru", meaning, 'go, the teacher is good' But it had no effect on me.
Finally I was taken away and admitted in another neighbourhood school.
Today when I imagine the whole situation, I find it comical. Two distraught parents, a kid with overflowing cheeks and sad eyes, her two plaits as crooked and stubborn as its owner, standing at an angle defying gravity(symbolic of her character?), the dirty looking school and the ground nut vendor under the tree! It could have been a beautiful R.K. Lakshman's cartoon!