Charanya, her grandpa and three pigtails...

On the way to work, I pass two places which kindle my curiosity every single day. One is the doggy day care and the other is the children day care center.

Usually I see really cutesy puppies and dogs outside the doggy day care unhappily waiting to get inside the center and looking at their owners with almost tears in their eyes for deserting them to go to work. I keep ogling at them for awhile when I wait for the company shuttle. But today, something different happened. There was this really cute, porcelain-doll look alike, Chinese kid with three pigtails spurting out of her head crying outside the kids day care center with her mom. This brought back memories.

In Chennai, during late 1980's, we had rented a portion of our house to this couple with a girl. The girl's name was Charanya (probably same age as me - 7-8 years old in late 1980's) and since both her parents used to work, her grandpa came to take care of her everyday after school for a while. One peculiar quality that I hadn't seen anywhere after Charanya until today was her three pigtails, just like the Chinese kid. You know, the two usual on either sides that almost all girls used to do and one of the center of her head (uchhan thalai la). All the kids in the street used to make fun of her hair style but it never bothered her and it was especially cool for Chennai's summer heat. For some unknown reason I used to be fascinated by her hairdo, but never was brave enough to adopt the hairdo!

Charanya's grandpa was another peculiar character. During summer vacations, he used to live with them permanently and in the afternoons when the kids (5-6 of us) were really bored, he used to propose this one game "Scratch Thatha's back". While the rest of the kids dutifully scratched his back, Charanya and I used to devise new plans to avoid it. Then one day, we decided to put an end to the scratching and devised a master plan. The plan and its execution went very smoothly and we ended up freeing ourselves from ever having to scratch his back....... well, lets just say, instead of scratching with nails and fingers, his back had marks of scratches probably made of small hot black stones, which took a week or two to completely heal.

Well, we weren't little monsters.. so, ofcourse we went and apologized and made things right. But he never ever asked us again to scratch his back. I haven't heard of her since 80's and so I am sure she wouldn't be too upset about broadcasting this story!