Kodo ko roti: recalled my school event

Our canteen guy appeared with the Kodo ko Roti (millet bread) and Golbhenda ko Aachar (tomato pickles) in his hands. I am surprised with.  ‘Would you like to have?’   He asked. I just smiled, ‘Sure, why not.’

After many years I was served with the millet bread. This led me go back to our childhood life. Many of the times it used to be our staple food in our home: taking warm millet bread with pickles mixture of tomatoes and dried fishes and adding some ghee on it. It was really delicious but the bad thing was the bread used to stick on the roof of the mouth that makes the hard palate (roof of the mouth) burn. Still we used to swallow the whole bread in no time. It was just competition between my immediate brother and me and mother who hardly able to supply the breads for us.

One day, I went to school without taking any food but got one Roti that was left last day. I just kept it in between two books. One of my friends saw it. He started teasing me. I became hopeless. There was great respect to books; even now also. We always used to open the books after Namskar. Friend’s teasing hit me that I was not able to respect books and I was afraid that he might complain to teacher that I had kept the Roti inside the books. Our class teacher entered the room.  My heart started pounding that teacher was going to punish me. Luckily it did not happen. That friend had not done the homework but I had done. He was not able to complain about the Roti instead he got some sticks from teacher and I got Syabasi.

At break time, I happily shared the Roti with that friend because he did not complain about Roti that I kept inside the books. Since then, I never brought any   Khaza to school and that was the first and last one.