A: One should first look right, carefully walk to the divider, then look left, then carefully walk across to the other side.
I distinctly remember furiously writing this in my ruled CW (classwork) book in cursive handwriting. We had to write this down quickly before Miss erased it from the blackboard. I even remember my bench; with its distinct gouges probably exacted by elementary school vandals and its position next to a window overlooking a barbed wire fence and unkempt bushes. I think I was in Std II or Std III, aged around 6-7 years.
Those were the days I used to spend the majority of my school year at my maternal grandparents' home, a modest train-dabba-kholi style layout that occupied the ground floor portion of an old-time building. The building was owned by a family that inhabited 3 out of 5 of its portions. It had two common toilets and one common open bath mori in its stone floor courtyard. It was located on a busy street in Rastapet, the then domicile of choice for many South Indians in Pune, and the chosen temporary residence for me because of its proximity to my school. The street was always brimming with life, always filled with various Bajaj scooter models, old style autorikshaws, muscle motorcycles like Rajdoot and Enfield, occasional Ambassador cars, dusty buses and lorries, pedestrians, bicyclists, cycle rikshaws, roadside sabudana wada vendors, and the odd member of the bovine family. On the other side of the street perennially sat a mochi (cobbler), who serviced all our podiatric needs. I was particularly enamored by mochi kaka. During my evening walks with my Thatha (spent trying to catch up with him for the most part), I would freeze in my tracks when we got close to mochi kaka, my eyes riveted to the master craftsman's hands weaving magic.
It was one of these days when after chanting four-wonzaa-four, four-twozaa-eight, four-threezaa-twelve, etc. as part of my Maths HW, I decided to take a break and cross the street unaccompanied to go watch mochi kaka work. I recollected the valuable road-crossing lesson I had learned at school -- "One should first look right, carefully walk to the divider, then look left, then carefully walk across to the other side". I set out to do exactly that. I stepped out of the front door into the hot sun with no chappals. After dodging a couple of cycle rikshaws, I looked right per the instructions and headed straight into traffic. Needless to say, it didn't go well. Problem #1 - the instructions didn't specifically say to wait for vehicles to pass after looking right, so I conveniently skipped that step. This lead to furious honking and screaming by scooterists and motorcyclists, and my grandma rushing to the front of the house from the kitchen in horror. Problem #2 - the instructions said to look left only after reaching the divider. The street had no divider. So I stood frozen in the middle of the scorching road, barefoot and petrified, not knowing which side to look, with lorries passing me in the front and two-wheelers passing me in the back, and rikshawale kakas staring at me disapprovingly as they whizzed past me. I also remember looking straight through the traffic at mochi kaka and seeing him irrelevantly engrossed in his work with the focus of an Arjuna through all this!
My memory of this incident ends exactly at this point. However hard I try, I cannot seem to remember what happened next. I am inclined to say though that no one got injured and that I must have somehow gotten back home safely!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA you can write Malagudi days kind of book.
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