My Indian Childhood

The Street Performers As a child growing up on Kohinoor Road, I never had a dull moment. Just when I would begin to get bored, I would go running to see the source of a sound I heard from the street outside - the rattle of a twirling handheld noise-making drum would announce that the monkey man had arrived with his primate entourage. Manic and mischievous, they would cavort and dress up and behave like people in funny silly ways until we and others threw coins down to them. Or a different sound, deeper and grave, would let us know that the man with the dancing bear had stopped by. Or the man with the accordion and the traveling picture-show that you could peek at through viewing holes, all innocent, of course. Sometimes, whole troupes of amateur trapeze artistes and high-rope walkers would materialize, announcing their arrivals by calling,  singing aloud, drumming, and using other sound-making instruments. Within minutes, they would have re-diverted the sporadic traffic, set u

Lunch Express! At certain times of day, at daybreak, in the middle of the afternoon and again late in the night, factory shift-workers carrying their tiffin containers on their way to the Kohinoor Mills just beyond the corner of our road where it intersected with Ambedkar Road, would fill the sidewalks spilling onto the road until it looked like a human river. And every time the work shift changed at the cotton mills, a loud siren would sound and other workers whose shifts had just ended would stream down our road in the opposite direction back towards the station. And then all would be quiet again until another train arrived and cars and taxis loaded with luggage would noisily turn the corner next to our house, speeding down Balchandra Road in the direction of Tilak Bridge. Sometime, in between the sirens and millworker deluges, every weekday rain or shine alike, In the middle of the morning, the tiffin-carrier men - the dabbah-wallas - would arrive and park their long s