Dakpathar-2 (memories of my childhood )

180 degree view of mountain range and yamuna river from dakpathar

Dakpathar! hmm what to say? it is such an integral part of my identity.
Most of whatever I remember about my childhood is associated with this place.
OK so get back to my experiences related to this place.
the city is divided into two parts - upper and lower dakpathar. initially our quarter was in lower dakpathar(known as lower lakhwad as well), well we had a triangular playing ground very near to our place. I remember that when i was a kid we used to play cricket there , having the narrow end as the pitch and the wider one as boundary fence, i somehow could never hit a six in that ground and with those eyes it was a bit too far for me, but when i recently visited that place i realised that it is hardly 50 ft in length. truely amazing! the whole picture that i had in my mind of this huge ground changed.. shows that as a child, we see and percieve things in relation to our size.

behind our colony was a sevage stream running out of Yamuna(in fact Shakti canal, that is being carved out of yamuna), this used to overflow a lot during rainy season and was major cause of snakes found in our colony, but in summers it was cool and we enjoyed floating paper boat on its calm water. then upon crossing it there was vast farmland and then there was yamuna and next to it was range of tall ad huge mountains full of wild life and foliage.
when i was a child i was fasinated by those mountains(later on i satiated this feeling by trekking one of them.. facing reptiles/ spiders/ guns and what not.. that story to follow)


then we moved to upper dakpathar and following 2-3 years were a bit uneventful for me as all of my friends were left in my earlier colony. But then things picked up when i moved to high school, somehow i started performing better in exams, created a bit of reputation for myself and some unforgettable bonds of friendship with some wonderful persons.

We used to play(mainly cricket) in evening, and each evening, I would go to the ground thinking that today would be my day, but unfailingly i always failed to play well. hardly once in a month or so i will lead my side to victory but i played, and at that time i used to think that i played for those 1-2 days out of a month, but now i realised that i enjoyed and remember the rest of the days as much as those, when i performed well.

The Stadium in backdrop of mountains

Then we grew a bit more and that ground became small for our shots, so we moved to the stadium, now this is a cool place because there is no problem of ball falling into other people's lawn or get missing after hitting thick bushes. But the problem in stadium was that it is totally open, so all the fielders had to do a lot of running, being lazy to the core I did'nt like this at all, so my friends nicknamed me gadhdha(pit) coz often i was spotted resting when the ball flew past me.
but i was a useful fast bowler(i had the pace but the control over the ball was surely out of my control), and had the ability to block all the balls without worrying about scoring.( now you can think about my utility in a 6 over match while 6-8 players are waiting for their chance to hold the bat) :)

About schools:- dakpathar has two english medium schools and one of them is St Merry's, i somehow never liked this one because they refused to take me when my father tried to enroll me there, what i remember is that i stared the principal a bit and maybe i showed her some signs of becoming a head ache for my teachers one day.(which i eventually became but alas! in some other school), they insisted on my TC from previous school which my father didn't have coz he never thought that having a TC for KG standard will be this much important, as during his time he was directly enrolled in class 5 in our village.
So anyway my father challenged the principal that their behaviour is a bit too atrocatic and I will be educated in a hindi medium school and will become better than many of their student in every regard.( Well! upto what extent i fulfilled this is questionable, but surely i have done enough to make this question somewhat ponderable)
So finally i was educated in Saraswati Shishu/Vidya Mandir amidst proper indian sanskars. and i do believe that they are great schools.
It was SVM where i transformed a bit and emerged as the district topper in HighSchool examination, then moved to GIC(final frontier for all dakpathariets) and cleared my intermediate with a plain honours(no district topping this time). then with some luck with multi choice questions i got a good rank in state level engineering test and got into NIT allahabad, CS branch, though i cleared IIT n Roorkee exams as well but their ranks were among the last 20% among those who cleared them.
I have a lot to say about my school/college life but i will stop here because this blog is dedicated to dakpathar and not me.

The evening walk road and park:- now when i grew a bit more and during times when our cricketing genes were not that much activated, we used to stroll around during
evenings.(aawaragardi is the correct word). This was the beautiful road from upper dakpathar to the park which is situated in lower dakpathar it had yamuna and mountain range on one side and stadium on the other. You can sit on a lonely bench and can see all the beautiful girls passing you one by one, you can discuss among your friends about each of them and their current status regarding their school/ class and boyfriends. with cool breeze coming over from the river and so much beauty all around you(scenic and otherwise), time looked to be in a hurry. We shared jokes(mostly non-veg), gossiped, debated till the street lights were turned on.. giving us a signal to go back to our homes.

The status of this park is also quite unique, it holds its own place in people's psyche over there. During summer evening you may count upto 500 people here, and then there is hardly any place to sit, families sit as close to each other that identifying the bounadaries become difficult, you may clearly overhear a private conversation between a couple(probably thats why they prefer to sit almost in lap of other unknown couples rather than sitting even near to any bunch of boys), but the atmosphere become electrifying, with so many kids playing all around, colourfull attires of people, colorful fountains and ofcourse the mountains in the background all adds to the mood.

The park and the road leading to it

sadly i could capture only these images as i visited it on a dull rainy season afternoon.
I will soon update this post with my encounters with some wildlife/ spine chilling experience with huge spiders/ my attempts to bring archids from mountains and how i narrowly scaped a major mishap in my attempts to learn the art of swimming in the yamuna, i may also inform you about the fairs around the place and some nearby places with some updates of pictures..