The chicks loved me

My 6th grade geography class involved a 50 paisa India map (that had only the state boundaries). I was most excited about geography exams. I would buy the map the previous day of the examination at Murugan Stationary store. On the day of the exam, I would carry not only the map, but a large array of tools, varying from color pencils to small pieces of marble stone (to create a smooth shade). I would finish answering all the answers within the first two hours. The last hour of the three hour exam would be spent in shading each of the 27 states is different colors, naming them and marking their capital city. The day I receive my answer sheets, I would straight jump to the map sheet, attached in the end. The moment of pride would be to see the teacher’s tick mark, a ‘Good’ remark, and the 10 out 10 marks for the map section.

I never had a globe at home, but would spend hours together if I could find one.

The globe was substituted by the Reader’s Digest Great World Atlas. The hard bound atlas was almost one foot long. I would have spend innumerable hours during evenings and weekends learning about every tiny part of the world and the universe (the atlas had a special section on the Solar System and our Galaxy)! My favorite pass time was to locate our little rural university in Southern India called Gandhigram (obviously which I never managed to locate).

Ten minutes ago, Google Earth and Wikimapia showed me high resolution pictures of the little rural university - the basketball court (I was the scorer during the tournament), the hospital where I spent a month with jaundice and typhoid, the tiny Ganesha temple (Odai Pillayar Koil), and finally the Ladies hostel (my mom used to be the hostel warden and I lived there until I was probably 12 or 13. And it goes without saying, ‘the chicks loved me’!)

P.S. Google Earth recently released high resolution images for pretty much the whole world!