I am Rejected at Birth Continues.....


Schools were closed and children sent home.
People slept in the open just as they did in 1960 when an Italian astrologer predicted the end of the world.

But nothing untoward happened either to the people or to the astrologers!

Thus ended the first period of my life in the Nurpur School in the year 1902. We were not coddled or pampered by our teachers.
Both parents and teachers believed in the saying, “Spare the rod and
spoil the child,” and the rod was used ‘properly’ and ‘adequately’.
In the Nurpur school, however, it was not a rod that was used, but
a rope of the old style punkhas. But no one thought of complaining.

Accepted - After 12 years

TILL now Babu Brij Lal had not seen the face of his son even though I was in my twelfth year. Now that I had been living with my grandmother for five years without bringing the family any
disaster, my father took courage in both hands and decided to look at my face. The learned brahmans and clever astrologers were
now pressed into the service of filial affection. An auspicious day and
hour was fixed for his first look at his son. The gods had however
to be propitiated first. A Yajna on a grand scale was performed in which a hundred and one pandits participated. They were at
it for a full week. At the proper hour the inauspicious son was
placed in the lap of his father, and 500 brahmans were fed.
I was now put in the Arya School at Dharamsala.

Like all
children, I disliked studies and liked fo play. I was fond of gymnastics and sports. One day when I was in the sixth class, my
mother sent a servant to the school with some milk and eatables.

The servant returned home with the story that the boy was not
to be found in the school! The headmaster sent home a message, that not only had I not shown my face in the school that day, I
was often absent from school.

To be continued...