<h3>Childhood Revisited Part Two</h3>

con't....



6. I was 4, I think. The world's greatest hero and most handsome (to me then lah ok) was Amitabh Bachan. Whenever he appeared on screen, I was glued. My fav movie was John, Johnny Johanathan. (anybody remember?) I cut out a love shape from cardboard paper and wrote a letter to Amitabh, the contents of which I think I have erased from my memory out of sheer embarassment. I gave the letter to my mom and asked her to mail it for me. I think my mother still keeps that letter somewhere.


7. I had asthma quite regularly when I was a kid. So I was banned from having cold drinks and ice-creams although these are the two things I lived for during recess. One rainy day, my mother took additional precaution warning me early in the morning not to take any ice-cream. Tempting fate, I ate anyway during recess. When I got home she asked me again if I ate ice cream that day. With innocent eyes and vigorous shakes of the head, I said NO. Then my mother pointed to my white shoe with a drop of lime green on it and I was found out. I never trusted myself to lie to my mom again.


8. I was back in my kampung in Pahang. In those days the toilet was a good 300m away from the house at a perigi. (well) The water was outta-this world cold & shiok but the journey to and fro were lined with small bushes and broken twigs and branches. I never did dare go to the well alone and when I walk I tended to skip a little to prevent anything from crawling up my legs. But there was this one time as we walk back from a bath, I felt pain on both my shins. I thought it must have been a mosquito bite so I endured it all the way home. While I was changing at home, I realised two leeches had stuck themselves to my legs and were sucking me dry. I screamed bloody murder and my grandmother came to my rescue. Pulled those things off my legs and squashed them with the butt-end of a parang. I sobbed so hard not so much from the pain but from pure disgust of having those things on me and the sheer amount of blood I saw.

9. I was an over-confident kid. I was never afraid of strangers and I was a bit of a show-off. (Some people tell me that hasn't changed much, well...) Anyway I took great pride in being able to speak snatches of hindi I caught from my dad and from hindi films. So everywhere I went, whenever I had a willing audience, I'd stand in a pose and start reciting "Kya Khabar hai?" "Acha hai" and start reciting no 1-10 in hindi. Most of the time, they would laugh, pat me on the head and call me a clever girl. One Bhai with thick white beard at Arab Street liked me so much he asked if I wanted to be his daughter. From that day onwards I never showed off my Hindi language skills again.

Lastly...

10. I was a scared kid. I was never really adventurous and I hated climbing/running of any kind. But I hated not being able to do something while all the rest of my peers could. There was this playground near my home that I frequented whenever my cousins came to visit. There was this climbing contraption, (the name of which I have no idea) which requires you to do both vertical and horizontal climbing. The vertical part I passed with no problem but the second I stepped onto the flat part, I'd paralyse with fear, not daring to take a step forward yet too determined to not take a step back. I always make sure I was the last to go up cause I know I'd create a standstill. Once I went with my cousins and their parents and I stayed up there for 45 mins, sweat running through my hands and dripping off my face yet I refuse to budge. In the end, since it was getting dark, my uncle scooped me up and bundled me home. Somehow nobody ever mentioned that incident from that day.