A New Beginning

 1949 was a year of change for me. My father was transferred to Cuttack the capital of Orissa at that time. He was wearing many caps then- he was the Additional Civil Surgeon; The Superintendent of central jail; later he held the post of lecturer of Jurisprudence in the medical college. After a year he became the Civil Surgeon. I had just been promoted to class X and it was decided that we would shift to Cuttack as it was a big city with better opportunities. For the first time in our life we two brothers left our ancestral place.

I already had an idea about Cuttack from the experience of my elder sister and not a good one at that but the move was filled with new experiences both good and bad-I stood first in general knowledge and was selected to go to the radio station for an inter school G.K. competition, (my team stood first). As I had just shifted from a small time this focused a lot of attention on me! I tried to enroll in NCC, but failed as you have to be in class IX to get in; I was fortunate to get a wonderful Sanskrit teacher who gave me a few hints, after which I could easily get 80 to 90 % marks. My English also improved by association with other English speaking students; the standard of my Math remained the same! We were staying in the doctor’s colony which had only eight houses and the school was just behind.

 Moving to a big city broadened my vision in many ways. I did miss the mountains and the lovely natural beauty of my home town but there were a lot of attractions of the big city! In Keonjhar I had been a loner having very few friends and also because my interests were different from the football playing boys of my generation. But here I made many friends for the first time. Studies had become a big priority as my group of friends believed in it and the first main exam was coming closer.

 I continued to be very shy of the girls! My class girls were all older than me (as were the boys) so they never took any interest in me! I could have gone and met girls in the lower classes but this never occurred to me. The city was big- but there was neither open land nor forests for me to roam around in. It was enclosed by two rivers – one is the great Mahanadi and the other its tributary the Kathjori. These had many small islands in them which were fascinating. It was good to swim or take a boat to these islands and explore them.  Life was turning serious and we knew that we had to study well and get into the university and thus I was busy studying for the next two years.

This period in life was an absolutely new experience from what I had before! The two years that followed were filled with new knowledge and new ways of life. But the smell of the wild hill flowers did tantalize and distract me from the goal I had set myself.