Six get up to mischief
This writer recalls the pranks that she and her siblings played during their childhood.
MY FATHER was the managing director of the Mercantile Co FMS Ltd, a hardware shop in Seremban. His family occupied the upper floor. We were his six children – three girls and three boys. My mother was loving but strict, and used the cane freely as she believed that caning was the best medicine for childhood misbehaviour!
Despite the cane, there was no end to the pranks we played, without getting caught. For example, my brother Ratna used to have nightmares. At around midnight, he would shock us out of our sleep, running around the room crying, “Papa, Papa”, eyes glazed over, till Papa caught him in a bear hug, saying soothing words till he could be led back to his pillow.
All six of us slept on mats in the living room – three boys in a row and three girls on the opposite side. My eldest brother Appu’s friends suggested a “treatment” so, each time Ratna sat up with glazed eyes and prepared to get up, Appu would bash him over the head with a pillow and push him back onto his pillow. Peace!
Appu, who later took over the management of the shop, was a plump and tough chap whom Kula, brother number five, and I harassed with our singing, from a safe distance.
In my parents’ absence, he regularly bashed up Ratna, four years younger, a weakling, whom we called “chicken bones” as we could count the ribs on his skeletal body!
In 1943, Ratna started a strange regime. Soaking a cupful of urad dhal overnight, the 12-year-old boy would force himself to eat that tasteless stuff each morning. He also coaxed the shop handyman to set up a strong lead pipe between two walls downstairs in the airwell. Without fail, he practised gymnastics on this bar! He also took double helpings of all meals. We thought he was crazy!
About a year later, the three boys were involved in chopping some firewood in the airwell while we three sisters watched from the windows upstairs. Suddenly, there was an altercation between Appu and Ratna. I held my breath as I knew Appu was going to punch poor Ratna.
Appu raised his arm but, in the blink of an eye, Ratna threw himself at Appu and brought him down with a powerful punch! Stunned, Appu lay there, staring at Ratna hovering over him with arms readied for the next punch.
Not believing what we had seen, my older sisters and I rolled on the floor in soundless laughter, soon joined by Kula, because Appu would definitely not want any witnesses to his humiliation.
The two brothers were pals again, eventually – and Appu abstained from any attacks on Ratna from then on.
We had not noticed that Ratna had built up muscles hidden under the cotton shirts he wore.
In later life, he became an orthopaedic surgeon and also an exponent in Judo, earning a black belt, no less.
Kula, one-and-a-half years my senior, who later became a well-respected Assistant Commissioner of Police, was incorrigibly mischievous. Often he got himself and me into trouble. Once, having 2 cents, we bought a cigarette from the Chinese tuck shop around the corner, then slunk to the back of the shop where there was always a drum of water over a fire for our bath.
Cutting the cigarette into two, we each took a puff and, oh dear, how we coughed and choked and spluttered!
The handyman, who happened to hear our coughing, caught us by the scruff of our necks and dragged us into Papa’s office (in the front of the shop) where we received a proper hiding with a feather duster, from Papa.
Baby, my oldest sister, was rather timid but was not averse to joining the rest of us in some fun. One smooth plank on the sitting-room floor was just begging to be utilised for some thrills. My older siblings drizzled talcum powder along a few feet of it. Then we took turns running from several feet away to slide on the smooth plank! Oh, what fun it was!
Later, everybody helped scrub off the powder so that my parents never saw any sign of our mischief.
On occasion, Appu managed to get a ping pong ball and, when left on our own, we played table tennis using stiff cardboard as bats. When the celluloid ball got dented, Kula would dash to the kitchen where a kettle of water was always left over the cinders, and drop the ball into the hot water, which made it pop up to its original shape in a minute! Rasathi, my second sister, had a fascination for liquid tar. On the way to the bathroom downstairs, there was always a large drum of tar, with a big pump left in a corner. The handyman used this to pump out cans of tar for small contractors.
At age eight, Rasathi tried her hand at the pump ... and the whole front of her frock wash splashed with tar! Her screams brought Amma rushing down. All of us were shooed off while Amma stripped her and, using kerosene oil, removed the tar from parts of Rasathi’s body, accompanied by lots of tongue lashings.
When I was about nine, I was annoying my cousin, 10 years my senior, by pulling out some hair from his forearm. Impatiently, he turned, ready to strike me. Terrified, I ran down the stairs and went to stand behind my Papa in his office. It was my escape, as nobody was permitted into that sanctum without a plausible reason. Of course, there was no more tomfoolery with that hot-tempered cousin!
Wasn’t my childhood full of thrills?