Bachpan ke din bhi kya din the

Albert Einstein once said "Imagination is more important than knowledge". I don't know about that but it certainly is way more fun. Do you remember the times when your imagination worked over-time giving shape to some kick-ass ideas and concepts? I have a good laugh even now when I look back on the silly ideas of those times.

1. Back in those days when biology and anatomy were still alien words to me, I had formulated a theory on how we grow tall -Here goes: The food we eat travels downwards in our body (of course gravity did not have to do anything with this!). When we have consumed enough and there is no more space, the pressure on our feet enables our body to expand magically as if somebody was pulling us from both ends. Imagine how tall we would have all been!

2. Back in those times when the shape of the world (not earth) was not even a question, my brother and I would "line up" all the countries we knew (thanks to our cricket loving dad). So in our world, Zimbabwe was the "last" country and Australia was the "first" and so on.

3. I discovered this not very long ago. We used to shout "timple" ("ti" as in tie and "mple" as in temple) when we played chase and catch games (joot ata, lock and key etc). This was typically used when somebody needed a break from running. Had no idea what this meant and did not care at that time. Turned out to be an abbreviation for "time please" - time pl.

4. Remember mugging the tables in those kg classes? When the whole class used to chant in one single breath - "one one za one, one two za two....two ten za twenty"...? The "za" like sound there was of no concern to me and in my mind, I associated it with the "=" sign because of the way we write this: 2 x 10 = 20. Learnt later that what we were actually trying to say was "two ones are two... two tens are twenty".

5. ICE PICE - This is another classic. We used to play hide and seek. Folks called it ice-pice and so did I. In reality, it stands for eye-spies :)

I can remember only these many for now, but I am sure there are many more hidden in the crevices of my mind. It was a fun exercise never the less. I like to think that I am not the only one with these many misunderstandings to account for. I tag all the readers of this post to list 5 or more such misconceptions, silliness etc etc you may have had as a kid or even as a grown-up. Unleash your "bachpanapan" and let's have some good laugh!

Cheers!