as naughty as naughty can be!!

After this started a series of things any child would be beaten up by his parents for. But candy got away with everything. Right from chewing up all the dustbins in the house to bursting the new football mumma brought him fondly, within 5 seconds. (i actually had to keep my dustbin ON TOP of my study table to keep it away from candy!!

My mom could not dry clothes in traditional ways because they would be pulled down by candy. He thought it was like a ‘Rope and Jalebi’ game we had set up for him to see how many clothes he could jump and pull down. My mom, a keen gardner had given up on nurturing any new plants and saplings because candy ruined everything in the garden.

He did more dirty and gross things as well like run off and play in the naalis of the cantt, bring dead frogs in his mouth and not let go of them, he even ran off and brought home a dirty diaper once..!

But when it came to cakes or other goodies being made in the kitchen, candy would not budge. He would growl and show his tiny teeth, which actually looked quite scary, that everyone preferred to let him sit there and take in all the kitchen smells..

Also came days of eating sugarcane (which to our surprise he would eat so beautifully spitting out the bagasse(the fibrous core) neatly) , playing lots of ballie (ball) with papa, running around all over the house with me, having one to one sweet conversations with mumma. Candy had a habit of pushing himself through our legs while we were sitting or standing. My mother always called it candy’s ‘Oranges and Lemons’.

Speaking of oranges – candy used to puff up after eating oranges. He was allergic to them. He would look like an old hag with boils on his face. And despite all our attempts to keep him away from oranges, he still managed to eat them a couple of times from somewhere and would straight away come to papa, with his itchy face for help..

Soon enough my father realised that candy was big enough to undergo some training now. Papa requested the unit dog trainer to come home and have a look at candy and see if he could make candy his student. The trainer came home with his dog, Asha, a beautiful female Labrador, she was perfectly well trained. She did not leave her master’s side for even a second as she saw candy going mad at the site of another dog at home and running all over the place. I offered her a biscuit which i had to eventually give to the trainer because she would not eat anything from a stranger’s hand. We were all mighty impressed and saw our candy like that in the future.

So the trainer decided to see candy at 10:30 every morning to train him the next day onwards. He also told us to keep candy empty stomach before sending him for the training since the trainer would offer him small bits of bread as incentive to help him learn faster. That did not go well with candy. Candy had his lunch strictly at 10 and the timing could not be compromised. So despite the trainer’s instructions, candy was still sent at 10:30 right after his lunch.

The trainer took him behind the wall so that candy would not see anyone from home and get distracted. But candy had other ways to distract himself. The trainer told us that candy was least interested in the training and did not show any excitement for the bits of bread. Secretly, we knew the reason why.. ;)

Just like a child who hates going to school, at 10:30 each day, right when he should have been taking his nap after lunch, candy used to detest going for training. He would go to the far end of the house and hide under my parents’ bed. He had to be pulled out of there and dragged till the house main door where he would finally give in to his fate and get up and go for training.

But candy was more stubborn than we all could imagine. Even after almost 2 week’s training, he still refused to learn anything. That is when the trainer gave up on him and we had something in our family we had never seen before and we never thought would happen – A SCHOOL DROP-OUT.