I was then doing my school final in R.K.Sreerangammal Kalvi Nilayam, a high school in Coimbatore. The Pre University was not yet started and the eleventh standard had public examination. I had my initiation in the school at the eighth standard. The school was just opposite to the Stanes Anglo Indian School in Avanashi Road and it was about two kilometers away from our house at Mohammedan lane, Nawab Hakim Road Coimbatore.
Most students used to fetch lunch packs to school from home. I was not that fortunate to carry one to school, as the lunch would not be ready by then. Therefore I would make a run during the lunch break to and fro the Gandhi Memorial Library situated in the Chidambaram Pillai Park, about a kilo meter and plus from the school. I was a lover of the books and the library was a God-given heaven for me. The hunger in the heart and mind was more enduring than the hunger I could feel in the stomach. The forty-five minutes of lunch break was so little a time for me to go through the many thousands of books stacked in the racks.
Nevertheless, I took pleasure in my very standing there in front of the huge reference books racks and now sitting on the chair with the huge Encyclopedia Americana on the enormous table. I felt swollen with pride to see me sitting with many academics sitting buried in big bound voluminous books of their own interest. I used to hang around larger volumes of Cambridge and Oxford dictionaries very often than not in my expedition to identify with many a high-sounding word and they trapped my very fancy.
On Sundays, I would skip my breakfast at home and run all the way to the library before the time it would open its portals. I had no vehicle whatsoever as a means of transportation and I depended never on pocket money from my parents, and that was unknown to me then. I never needed money for anything. I instituted a short cut those days to the school and to the library. I would run through the small Maniathottam lane, reach the City Municipal High School ground compound wall, climb up and jump down in the ground then run to the opposite locked school gate opening on Avanashi Road, jump over it and sail through the Kattor road to accomplish the goal.
This would take me scarcely ten minutes to reach the target. That made me brisker than most of my age group in my class. I owe so much to my dad until the end of time, who would regularly train me in patience, endurance and survival strategies in several ways. On Sundays and other school holidays the library was my residence would not move elsewhere skipping morning breakfast and midday meals. I was never hungry
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