My parents never had to pester me or my sister about doing our homework or tell us to study. We were both very interested in studying. After our evening play we would sit together and finish off our homework by ourselves. We would maintain our classwork and workbooks too in good order. In fact, my sister would get my hand-me-down text books most of the time. Only when she picked up Sanskrit as her first language, she would get brand new textbooks for that subject. I had opted for Hindi instead. We kept our books in a good manner. After all, we both loved books. So defacing or tearing them was never an option.

When we were in school, both of us had exams at the same time, Holidays too used to match. During college, this routine was broken since both of us were pursuing different subjects. Though our timetables wouldn’t match, there used to be some days when we would get to study together like old times. This mostly would fall during the study holidays, when the college would give a few days of holidays before the start of the university exams.

We both would draw up study timetables and would mostly stick to them. We would sit in different rooms so that we wouldn’t disturb each other during our studies.

Sometimes, I would get bored and I would write a short note for her, make a small envelop and put the note in it. Then I would carry it to her room and shout “POST” and throw the envelope into her lap or on to her book and go away. 😀 She would write out a reply and put it into another envelope. She would too shout “POST” and throw it to me. We would continue this for a few minutes and then go back to studies. Almost everyday we had this postal service going! 😀

We both would write out the formulae and theorems and practice. For this we used up a lot of paper. Most of this written work would be done on waste sheets that had one side printed. Old dot matrix printer paper with reports printed on one side and such. Dad would bring reports that he would not require from his office for this purpose. We would pass on our “posts” in these papers.

In the middle of studying, I would simply doodle and draw stick figure impressions of my sister and send those as my “posts”. I was not a good doodler too. I simply created these for my fun. But my sister has preserved some of these doodles till now. I will share a few of them here.

A lot of times, especially in the summer, and just before exams, there would be prolonged power cuts in the evenings. Invariably we both would end up having to study in candle light. We had a huge candle just for this purpose. It was a thick one and its wick too was long. It would cast a bigger light than the normal ones. We both would sit on either side of it and spread out our books for studying.

Of course this kind of diligence for learning even during power cuts was only if exams were near. Other times power cuts meant extra time to play! 🙂

Power cut time meant Antakshari time. Antakshari is a fun game where one person sings a snatch of a song and the next person must sing another but the song must start with the ending syllable of the previous song. If the power cut would last an hour, our game too would last an hour. One small emergency light or candle in the middle of the room and the mood is set for the game. All of us would congregate in one room and songs would flow one after another. We have had so many fun impromptu antakshari nights courtesy the Karnataka electricity board! 😀

Power cuts and candle lights meant shadow plays on the walls. Fingers would make grotesque images depending on the angle used. Or there would be deer, fish and birds on the walls. We would laugh at those shadows and make up stories too.

Comparison Corner:
With the use of invertor now at home, these unscheduled fun song sessions are lost in my home now. We do play anthakshari, but not in candle light.

This is a part of the month long blog fest A2Z Challenge. I am a part of all the other enthu cutlet bloggers at #BlogchatterA2Z. Find more A2Z at  http://www.theblogchatter.com/blogrolls

Read my previous posts here:

A: And …. we are off!

B: Big Sister

C: Colour Dress

D: Dolls’ birthday

E: Elections are here

F: Festival time

G: Garden

H: Happy hours!

I: Independence day celebration

J: Jasmine

K: KRP

L: Library!

M: Money matters

N: New year celebration!

O: spect-Occular!