Madrasan Aunty

Well I was never really one of those kids who would try extra hard to come first in the class at the tender age of 7. Still mom felt that we needed tuitions. Well not really. She got friendly with our neighbor who was a nice woman from Madras and so the name Madrasan Aunty. Nobody knew her name. Mom would often sent us to Aunty for studies. Aunty was good in english and coming from a family where the national language was Haryanawi, our English was as good as our Tamil. Aunty was really nice and to teach us English she learned Hindi. She would also make cakes and other goodies at times and we looked forward to that. Thats all I remember from that and another incident which with the benefit of hindsight can be termed as a rather embarrassing one. I think I felt guilty for the first time in life when out of anger I made an allegation that she was doing all this hard work for the money she would earn out of tuitions. But that day Dad didnt thrash me. Rather it was very subtle. But I got the message. Very often from these very incidents we learn our way in the society. We forget these small stories but they remain. In what is known in the Behavior Science discipline as the unconscious mind.