My Childhood and Bambi

I started this post to write about ideas, and abruptly, the mood changed. I was lost in the illusory display of childhood days. Imagination wove the reality of our lives daily and archived it as memories. I, too, have my share of memories. I had a pencil box with the cover of the Bambi movie imprinted on it. It always comes before my eyes whenever I think about my life. A sense of surrealism has taken over my imagination.

When I was 3, my father lived in the Oak Park area at Mallital. I have faint memories of the school where I did my LKG education. Its name was St. John’s, established in 1844, and it is located near Mallital. I visualize large images of Jesus on the church glass windows, the LKG class on the first floor, and the UKG class on the ground floor. I also remember myself struggling with alphabets.

I have good memories of Buck Preparatory School, Nanital. I have completed my UKG from this school. The school was converted into hotel in 1994. Googled about the founder and got the name of Cynthia Buck. She at the age of 91, passed away peacefully on December 26, 2008, in Houston, Texas. Cynthia was a lifelong teacher. She favorably influenced countless lives through the private, preparatory school that she owned in Nainital, India for more than 40 years. Don't know about her few moments ago, now feel almost connected by an invisible thread. Retrieval of the images gives enjoyment. I recall hand cut & filled with blood by rusty iron of the slide in school. Happy memory involves getting prize of hand painted plaster of Paris made Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck of in the dictation test from the Ms Buck in 1989 or 1990.

My father is working in the forest department. Hence, I grow up at remote places in Nainital for the first 5 years of life. Places were far from the city. I remember wooden houses, fear of going into surrounding jungle, playing with ice and algae and jumping on the terrace landscape; Mother used to remove leeches from my legs whenever I return home in the rainy season. I always watch hawks flying in the sky and myself pissing on the valley side edge of the mountain road. I don't remember faces or name of the people anymore and lot of experiences are lost with the time. Bambi was on cover of pencil box in class UKG. Hence a re-collection of the memories with an image is hinged together.

Life appears distant in reality and close in memories. We mature daily, and one day a few memories return, making us feel old. Twenty years have passed since leaving Nainital, and suddenly these nostalgic childhood experiences come to the surface. People say that memories are deceptive truths; they drag us back into a past that no longer exists. I disagree.

Memories reflect the life of a person. Sometimes an inconsequential event, face, or piece of news sticks in our minds. It keeps appearing and disappearing, however irrelevant or mundane it is or was. A few things capture moments of the past and the future. They all appear dreamy, nostalgic, or as if they never occurred to me. The person in the memory seems completely different and full of innocence...

What existed in the past has been lost somewhere over time. The myth rests on the flimsy framework of reality. Everything feels possible and probable now. I gaze around the room to capture a second forever, and suddenly the moment passes. It just ceases to exist, and I become a new person in the present. The past was or is an experience—or a hallucination... I just don’t know. Is there even a need to know?

Update: Buck School is converted into a small school run by a devout Christian couple. (Photo: 2020)