CHENNAI: Perhaps the most endearing thing when talking to people about their childhood memories is these little glimpses into the past. It’s almost like a curtain or a veil is pulled away and you get to see them as children without the masks and trappings of who they are today, the public persona, the seniority, the adulthood. Anita Ratnam, the effervescent dancer and performer, says the same thing.
“I think that for all of us, whatever the social media mythology projects about us, somewhere we want to go back to that unfettered innocence of childhood,” she says. She remembers playing Parama Padam with the family, and shouting and screaming for the right number to fall on the dice, and groaning with despair when she went down a snake. She also recalls her grandmother, who married at the tender age of 12 and used to play many games with her.
Anita recollects that they would step back a little as her grandmother would play with such gusto and competitive spirit, it was almost like memories from a stolen childhood that she was trying to relive. Her cry of naan jeichitten or “I have won” was uttered with such delight that Anita remembers it with fondness even now. Perhaps the advantage of looking at childhood through the eyes of adulthood is that you see things with the wisdom of age, and yet realise that as a child you did understand these things at some level.
It was equally endearing to listen to MV Subbiah, former chairman of the Murugappa Group, talk about how he p.