My Village and childhood memories

        The midwife in my village  known as    Accammah. Her husband’s   name  Ragavel. They had four sons all  married and stayed in the same house. Their family was the only extended family in the Village.
      

        My mother told us that Accammah was  beside my mum for every delivery. Even, my birth was in my village house.  Accammah was the midwife.  Accammah’s daughter in-laws cooked, in big amount in big pots. Every noon around two or three after lunch Acamah’s daughter in-laws pounded  the  grains   and make flour or use a traditional mill to make the flour. It was not an easy job. I even helped them while they grind the rice and grains for the next days   Breakfast. Accamah’s first daughter in-law, every morning collected  the cow dung from the Shed and mixed  it with water and polished her kitchen and the corridor of their house and then draw beautiful Kolams or ranggoli’s .
   
        I wondered why she was doing it. I even asked her why and she told me tha, the cow dung will protect their house by preventing insects from entering the house.      According to my father, Ragavel and Accammah came to Malaysia as teenagers   after they  married in India and all their children  born here .  One of their son went to Saudi Arabia after his wife’s death and worked there for 10  years. 
      My sister used to read the letters he sent  his parents. Another son married to  a Malay woman  and his name is Rayan after conversion he named himself as Ibrahim.
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       He  was a plumber with the water works department. He   had two sons and they looked very much Malay. Rayan seldom visit his parents and now no one knows about his whereabouts.
       

   One of Accammah grandson is my classmate and his name is Mano. We attended the same school and were classmates. Even after school hours he was my friend. My neighbourhood kids most of them all boys around my age. The girls were either too old or too young to be my friends.   I mean they were much younger including my youngest sister. Thats one of the reaso, most of the time I would  be  either playing with my brothers or with the other boys such as Moses, Peter and Mano. That’s the time I learnt to climb trees and make my own kites. 
        
    I observed my brothers making their fishing rods by melting pieces of tins in a can and   by using  banana leaf they pour the melted portion of tin in the leaf which they made in a shape of a cocoon. This cocoon was used in the fishing rods, which they had created them selves. Other than fishing rods, they also good at creating their spikes from alluminium rods. Whenever it rains heavily, the drain at the back yard of my house used to be  full and it looked like a small  stream.

      Once, when I was swimming in the back yard  with my brothers, my father back home and he searched for us. My sister told him that we are not listening to her advice and still playing in the rain.
        
              My dad came with his belt and chased my brothers out, I quickly ran and hide in a corner and he could  not see me.
     Somehow I escaped that day from his beating. But my brothers    were    beaten     because the water level was very high and the current was very strong due to heavy rainfall.
      
      My third and fifth brothers were quite playful and were not serious in studies even though they were very  good students. But my    fourth brother was very hardworking.
        

    He had ashma as far as I could remember. In the dust and the cold and by sneezing and wheezing he mugged with his books day and night.   He is the most hardworking and studious one in the family other than my second sister.