goggly

On SAB TV , I watched glimpes of movie ' Purab aur Paschim ' and song of Koi Jab Tumahra Hridaya reminded me of two guys from school days. One was Bhushan - he was classmate of Vineet , who stayed next to our next our chowk and second was Shekhar Thakre - who studied in my school in class B division. Shekhar was skinny, fair but charming in his looks. He resembled more of Dev Anand in his hey days. At Bhushan's b'day party, Shekhar sang this song. I didn't attend Bhushan's party but was told by Vineet about this incident. Somehow, this incident was stored in my neural network all these years.

A recent flurry of postings by school batchmates , brought some more facets of life at Govt Colony Bandra in mid 70's to my mind: • ' Gola ' - crushed ice on a prickly stick - devoured in great abundance with perennial requests for coloured toppings. Everything about it was truly unhygienic - yet there was no sign of any gastric trouble. • 5 paise Orange Kulfi and 10 paise M alai kulfi . News always went around that if we rub salt on them, worms would appear. But who cared! • The only car that entered school premises was orange Premier P admini , that of Dr Shashikant Naik . Few years ago, when I met him, I reminded him of that and he said he wasn't happy of his kids using the car. Those were the days! • Only 711 supermarket in govt colony was - Amrut Stores - at Bus Depot . The word of ' Customer Courtesy' was never in their dictionary. So was the case in later years with Thorat , Meena Bazaar and Jaihind Book Depot. Kherwadi was the ultimate shopping...

Stunned, Numbed, Perplexed ... all these adjectives don't reflect the true emotions that one can fathom if one were to come across a group photo with buddies from primary school. Courtesy of Milind Ramchandra Gokhale, these photos are of 4th and 5th grade. It's nice of him to have preserved this treasure and have it digitized. I must tag this photo on face book and try hard to place respective names against faces. The faces are still fresh in my aging brain cells. These two photos also triggered a chain of fond remembrances that took me to our school teachers, coaching classes and my role models. Let me see how many I recollect while I scribble this in one go. Harne sir - an upright teacher in black jacket and topi. He was school principle when we were in Primary. I remember seeing his photo in the newspaper after getting accolades from state govt for ideal school teacher. Mulay madam (4th std), Phadnis madam (5th), Lingayat Sir (6th), Kunte madam (7th) Hatvalne madam (8th), D...