Visit to the Bangalore Airport as a Child

Teacher training programs were a bi-annual affair at the Lowry Memorial School. This meant some times going to the Corporation School near Shivaji Nagar as representative students and listen to some trainee teacher giving his or her lectures. This was an exciting affair as we got to travel to the distant school in the school bus and the experience of meeting students from other schools. One such exercise turned very awry and in an unexpected way. I think it was a Monday morning. We had come dressed for one such trip and all of us were cheerful but were suddenly informed that the exercise was cancelled and possibly postponed. We children were disappointed. Mr. Kelly was the head-master at that time. There was some uncetainity and I dont know how; where ; whence or why some of us were discussing visiting the Airport that too in cycles as a mark of some form of rebellion against the so-called act of the school that created disillusionment and melancholy in the boys. The cycles were veered through some aperture at the rear fence of the school and behold six of us were on three cycles and I was excited about seeing the Airport and an Airplane which I had not done before. The route taken was the NH4 to Aeroengine and then a left turn to the airport must be some 10 kilometers in all and with a sense of guilt of having taken an odd decision in a huff and I dont know myself to this day How I became a party to such an escapade. We were under the misguided impression that the classes were called off and any way a day time visit to the Airport and back would do no harm. I did see an Airplane on that day around 12:30 noon- not the full plane but was lifted above the level of the compound by my more enthusiastic cronies and got for a few seconds view of the nose of an aircraft. That was all. The team split at the airport and me and my class mate Manjunath from Kaggadasapura took a deviant route though the villages to reach back to the school. Majunath bore me so to say upto kaggadasapura and thereafter I got into the pillion of an ITI employee who was going in that direction for the Second shift in his motor-cycle. Thus ended my patially traumatic experience and visit to the airport and I was back home at around three in the evening. Next day the head-master rounded up all of us called the "airport bunch" and after some deliberations were whacked on our rear six times each - the pain of which I carry even to this day.