I was living in Hyderabad since childhood. A suburban place. This house had a compound wall and with a wooden wicket gate. There were three rooms in a row with Mangalore tiles for the roof.

As per the ‘Vastu Shastra’ - a traditional Hindu system of architecture - east facing houses were considered good. Our house was facing East. Vastu considers aspects such as space and energy. All the houses in this row were east facing. It was convenient to see the neighbours and have a conversation across the compound wall. Especially for women, you may call it the early social networking - sharing space for all the updates, interaction, and the live sharing network it offered.

Next to the gate in the Northeastern corner, there was an open well. In front of the house, there were lots of plants, including a few castor plants and one cotton plant. In those days, toilets were always farthest from the living rooms. So, the toilet was next to the gate and we need to go all the way even in the dead of night. Nowadays they are attached to the living or bedrooms, so people feel more safer and use it many times.

At the third house, from our house there lived a family. We called it the house of ‘Doctoramma.’ A spiritual lady, her husband was a medical doctor. So she has got the prefix Doctor and Amma means mother called as a mark of respect. They had two sons and two daughters and they were very disciplined. Son’s heads were always found shaved. She was strict and does not want her sons to see any girls and also does not want girls get attracted towards them. She was doing yoga regularly and was visiting the Gandhi Gyan Mandir at Koti for attending the sessions.

Doctoramma was very compassionate. She regularly read and preached Bhagavad Gita. My mother was influenced by her teachings and became her follower. In her influence, my mother and elder sister both turned vegetarians. Soon my younger sister and I were influenced and turned to vegetarian by my elder sister. She was telling us again and again that we were committing a sin by eating non-vegetarian food, that is unnecessarily killing an animal for eating. We had a feeling that eating non-vegetarian was like having a Kabristhan (burial place) of animals in the stomach.

There was a tin bathtub in the courtyard of their house, a thing to remember. If someone got a fever, she made them lay in that bathtub, with cold water up to the neck. Once my mother had a very high fever, and she was also treated similarly.

In those days my father’s earning was just enough. Once it occurred to my mother that, she could shave my head with my father’s shaving razor, instead of taking me to a barbers shop for saving money. She always saw my dad shaving and thought it was so simple. When she started shaving, it was uneven at some places and complete hair could not be shaved. When she tried harder, I had cuts and was bleeding. Listening to my cries, Ms Saroja rushed to our house. She was my mothers friend, living in the same street. Was in a shock when she saw my mothers endeavour. For not causing further damage, helped me, by advising my mother to take me to a barber shop for completing the shaving. With the half shaved head, I was taken to the barber shop nearby and got my head shaved completely. Later my mother applied turmeric over the cuts to heal. Sometimes poverty leads to strange experiments and learning.

During Ganesh Chaturthi (Elephant Headed God festival), there was a traditional belief that if one gets scoldings from others, it is good. Someone told me to break the tiles of our neighbour’s house by throwing stones on their roof. This was one of the easiest methods to get scolded, without getting caught and beaten up. I picked up some stones and threw them on our neighbour’s roof; it had Mangalore tiles. I broke a few. They came out and started giving all sorts of Galis (scoldings). Although I was outside, they did not expect me doing that. I slowly went into the house fully satisfied with the scoldings, thinking that I will have very good blessings of Lord Ganesha in that year. Probably, this tradition existed as the Ganesh Chaturthi happens during the rainy season - the traditional potters have less work in this period - so as to create additional work opportunity for the potters in making tiles, this was made a tradition.

Behind our house, there was an open space. Lots of white quartz stones were there. The broken pieces of quartz stones were very sharp, like glass. The pieces of these stones tarnished with red soil - some curious patterns appeared when observed closely. The patterns looked like trees, images of gods and goddess, animals, and other life forms. Myself, my elder sister and with few other friends often used to go and collect these curious white quartz stones. By breaking the bigger rocks, we always explored to discover more and more curious figures. Don’t know if this curiosity in stones, which I got introduced at an early age attracted me towards pursuing the Geology subject, later in my life.

The responsibilities at this age were nil. Life shapes up. One’s interests surface at this age. Early impressions in life last longer.