Moments by the Sea

It is change of seasons in Boston; all that rain and spring giving way to a green summer. The soaring temperatures, warnings of a heat wave and tropical country like humidity have been a welcome respite and a reminder of the Indian summer that I so miss! And like all Bostonians, we had decided to not let such good weather go past us and have plans to gather enough sunshine to last the winter!

The weekend past we had made a trip to the Ogunquit beach in Maine. Even with the warm sands and crispy winds, the waters were still icy cold and the waves splashed in foamy contentment. The coastal lagoon of Perkins cove was an ever scenic walk with the ocean crashing against the rocks.

I had in childlike spirit, trekked the subtly steep mossy rocks leading to the deep splattering sea. The rock divide, caused waters to gush through them creating a rivulet of waves and gurgling noises. In the silence of the noisy waves, the tinge of a saline humid fog and the sea salt in every breath, we had parked ourselves on the rocks to capture the view that lay ahead of us. And I believe I could arrest that picture perfect sunny misty sea, as beautiful as it was, only because we had forgotten to carry the camera and if anything could hold that moment it was just the memory.

Beaches have always been an unwavering infatuation and considering that one can’t travel to the sea here like I would all year round to Besi beach in Chennai, beaches to me, have become that sought after feel of freedom. There is always an inexplicable romance about watching the unending horizons and feeling the brackish whiff the breeze brings to your face. And having grown up waddling in the shankumukam beach of Trivandrum, I would still associate the beach with a west coast Arabian Sea and the crimson sunset;

My best moments with appa, preserved in remembrance, were begging to stay for the last dab from another wave, until the orange sun had hidden itself and painted the sky pink; I would then return, holding the conical paper pack of sand-fried peanuts, sticky salty legs and sand grabbing to them, much to the annoyance of amma’s sense of hygiene.

But then, as I watched the dusk set in on the Ogunquit beach, a grayish blue sky with streaks of red here and there, the east coast had failed to recreate the magic of a sunset, of that scintillating red fire like waters and burning skies. Yet, to me, the sea is that pinnacle of free will; of leaving your ties behind on the land, of knowing that there is life beyond the little space you have created for yourself in the world, of letting go your inhibitions and running free.

Ah! The beautiful sea!

A Good Hair Day

The sultry dark hair saloon at the corner of east fort, Trivandrum, resonated of a stubborn fan and rhythmic clanks of deftly moving scissors. I, the four year old was seated on the high rotating chair facing the cloudy mirrors. In all curiosity, I peered through my oversized blue plastic robe to catch a glimpse of appa’s reflection. No sooner had the barber chettan delivered a shave for the portly uncle; he had exchanged a few words with appa. He had assumed the scissors and comb, one in each hand and given me his toothy smile through the mirror. In all my hesitation of the surroundings I had reciprocated with incessant wailing. Half and hour and later, I had left the dingy room, smiling through tears, one five star bar heavier and all my black locks intact.

And with that appa’s new venture began, to civilize my hair to the child-like length. He had begun his experiments with the fringe like cut, wherein an umbrella like ringlet hung on the forehead. Like any amateurish effort, my hair got shorter by an inch for each mistake he rendered. Yet, appa had amassed the skill to perfection with years and saved me from the daunting saloon visits, for the better half of my childhood.

Owing to my inhabited tom-boy cuts, I had let the coiffure slip through teenage until I was seventeen. Over the schooling years, my boy-cut had succumbed to many a jibe like “feather-plucked-hen” or “chicken top”. And when I entered the portals of Engineering, I had had my first hair cut in a “salon”, letting my hair stylist retire, marking my age of growing up!

Some wise soul once stated that a good hair style gives you confidence. I am not sure if I concur that, but I am definitely a fad of the new look at the end of a hair cut. And if it is an ad hoc one, the feeling only gets better.

Last Saturday, I had with girl friends, treaded the Boston University streets, fighting the cold lethargy. Ann and I were meeting after ten years and surprisingly for her my hair looked much different from the tom-boy school days. But like stupid school girls, we had jumped to an impromptu whim to get a hair cut each at the Supercuts across the street. Though the rotating chair, plastic robes, huge mirrors felt the same, the ambience was marked by chatter of girls eyeing their hair through their mirror images.

A razor cut, trim, layering and later, we had exited feeling fresh and great. For our feeling and change of look was our own, since N and Size could hardly notice an iota of difference even after giving them a tour of the hairdo from each angle. That night as the girls’ day out was forgotten in yummy desserts, I was left to wonder about women and grooming; and how with a few swirls and curls, we turn prosaic moments to special ones.

ScrabBlues

My life for the past few weeks was a restless wait from one weekend to next; hoping to get some sought after sunshine and enjoy the gelid weather through warm layers of sweaters, walking down the crowded streets with aromatic hot coffee. Ousting the prophecies of global warming and the like, this time around, the characteristic New England winter is here to stay in all its passion and variegation.

It has always amazed me, how nature controls ones life style in this part of the globe; how one acclimatizes to avoid excessive slumber, regulate the diet cycle, keep up gym resolutions, indulge oneself to avoid the pangs of depression the gloomy season can leave on you. It was on one such mission that poker had become customary on cold weekends last winter. This year with the core circle of poker friends strewn around the country, how the winter would unwind is a question mark.

As much as I love the chill and the intermittent snow it brings, finding the lack of daylight at 3 pm can be most difficult part of adapting. To top it is the perfect slowdown of life’s pace that, even the fifty minute drive to the remote theatre playing Om Shanti Om can be accounted as fruitful activity on a winter weekend.

It brings to my mind the science text book of third std., when I had memorized on a sultry warm November of Trivandrum, what people do in winter – wear warm clothes, drink hot soups, sit around a fire after early sunset and play indoor games. As if going by the book, we have been cashing on new adult games of taboo, scrabble and clue for that imperative wintry caffeine fix.

After the reviving of scrabble many years hence, I have also managed to remain hooked to its better alternative; scrabulous on facebook. Here the urge to cheat on cooked up words is carefully denied. And somehow learning a new word seems exciting again and even better when you are winning the game against your worst opponent when you were eight. Though a passing winter amusement, I am sure group games are in, for a while to come.

It is wonderful and intimidating all at the same time, how life is once again coming back in a circle; when games made friends at eight, you move on to teens shunning snakes and ladders as child’s play and as the mellowed tweens (as Div coined it) set in, games keep the friend circle chirpier than three hours of gossip over coffee or a sneaked out night at the club.

Such is the unfinished game of scrabble, when the vowels are too many on your plate, the words are there but not lucrative, you pass the turn, you make the inconspicuous word “on”; but stay yare to find the next best meaning, look up a dictionary; and in the end move on. A move to kick back on the winter blues, a move to keep the group engaged, a move to the next little step of life… all in a cold laid back evening hour.

The family album

God gave us relatives. Thank God! We can choose our friends

It is the most cynical quip to forget family feuds and the most unfortunate during good times. Life sees many a circumstance to take the wisecrack seriously and many a times its existence is forgotten in happy moments and age of innocence.

As I look back almost twenty years, I was the happy four year old who had enjoyed every norm of a joint family; traversed the temple next door with grandpa, watched thathi say her morning prayers, waited for summer vacations to be able to make that cousins union, looked forward to be cosseted by aunts and uncles when amma scolds me – had been everything in the relationships I no longer adhere to and may be don’t belong to.

I sometimes wonder what happens to us as we grow; grow to be independent, grow to be judgmental of our lives and others, grow up beyond ourselves to not understand the happiness when we were four. And slowly, the same aunt and uncle who had every authority to pamper you would no longer interfere in your life. The cousin, who had been your best playmate, is the one you rarely talk to, you would prefer the company of your friends any day. And before you knew, the family tree had grown, strewn over the world map, divergent in thoughts and quests to make a life; had drifted to create hiatuses irreparable.

I am often confronted with requests to make a phone call to that distant cousin living in the same city as me, or the same country, to say a mere unreasoned ‘hello’. My reason to flee these uncomfortable gestures is my sheer ineptness to pursue mundane conversations about nothing with someone, I don’t relate to. I can no longer be the optimistic four year old, who would always think that cousins made best playmates.

At moments like these I often wonder when it had all gone haywire. And would it ever be the four year old bliss again? As I turn pages of the family album, with photographs that preserved the memories, I so wished to understand now; when life was beyond selfishness, beyond “having a social life”, beyond making decisions, beyond being rebellious. And there it was the whole family picture, together a million (read as: twenty) years ago, a several cousins I have not seen in years and a numerous others I have not spoken for ages, not due to lack of time or resource, but intention.

We had all in circumstance and pace of life, forgotten what it had been like to be fed by patti, to have slept in the lined up bedspreads, climbed the guava trees and fought for the most red fruit, swung the atukatil so hard like it was the end of life. We had in course of time, forgotten to share, to love, to care and live together.

They say “we are our relationships”; but then without these relationships, who are we?

Bundle of joy

A week ago I received the three covers, dandily packed and cellophane taped. They carried the redolence of amma's hands and the warmth of Chennai house. It contained the carefully chosen perky Patiala skirts, two jeans from the very own Lee shop at Pondy Bazaar and not to forget the sealed boxes of home made, ghee emanating sweets, rarified 'chakka varati' (jackfruit jam) and my favorite murrukkus from Krishna sweets at Adayar.

This was one among the many bundles I have received from home in the past two years. That moment of turning into a five year old holding those doled out packages is an inexplicable bliss of its own. It may be difficult to comprehend the feeling as one of nostalgia or maudlin or happiness; but all of it in one sheer moment. I gladly undid the parcel, gathering the niceties inside, realizing how unknowingly dormant that part of me was, which ached to be a daughter and pampered.

Being the much hyped "Only Child" of the family of three, I had my share of being coddled and protected; not just by parents but for being youngest in family circles as well. I still recall the night, when eight year old veena akka was scolded for venturing into my space of the bed, spread in the long hall of grandpa's adobe. I, the cocker-ed five years old, pretended to be asleep and willingly rolled over to her side sauntering all over her, giving her a hard time.

When I had weaned off being the wicked spoilt brat, I was still fussed around as a teenager and loved unremittingly. Somehow, I had till date remained the divu all my life. It made me wonder if I had grown up, without appa and amma by my side and if only I could be their bundle of joy forever. I uncannily remember the elaborate arguments, when amma refused to let me cycle to school alone at thirteen, unless accompanied by a friend who would have to come over to my gate n pick me up.

Though the wiles of her shielding nature were pertinent, it was only after living seven seas away did I know that my contestations of “When will you ever let me be independent?” were not easy for her to grant, since she possessed more gray hair to know that living life is not easy. Ironically, I was brought up to believe in myself and urged to attain independence; but not of the foolhardy nature I was asking for.

It brings to my mind the incident of an equally cosseted cousin, who had made the much unanticipated STD call from his hostel room complaining “Amma, there is no mug in the bathroom. What should I do?” And today standing thirty something he is turning a dad himself! These little episodes make me believe that even the most grown-up adult still lives in the womb, wanting to be the child. And contradicting, there is no such thing as a grown-up; you are always a child to somebody all your life.

I copiously grab the home-made ribbon pakodas, munching down the sweetness of amma’s love wrapped in them, smiling to be the daughter which is the priceless gift of all times!

The modest hypocrisy

I half-distractedly turned the pages of the book I have been reading to sleep for the past one month. I lifted my eyes to see the little ganesha idol, amma had sent me, sitting corpulently on the window porch. Belonging to a class of non-religious, yet non-atheist genre, I simply adore the paunchy god, who seemed to smile at me at that moment. Beside him were the pile of ten rupee notes and one rupee coins, I had bribed him to initiate a gambit of selfish requirements a long while ago.

It reminded me of the reverend Ganesha in my drawing room back home, who I would pray and recite prayers to, only on the tonic exam mornings. The kabir das dohe comes to mind –“dukh mein sumiran, aur sukh mein kuch bhi nahin.” It left the inkling of a god-fearing mind and I soon plunged back into the book, shunning the semi-guilty feeling.

It made me wonder if a little hypocrisy is more imperative than acceptable in life. It may range from how far we express our innate religious instincts to habits we possess or clothes we wear or how far we hold our tongue.

One of my oldest experiences of setting double standards was facing orthodox relatives. At the age of ten, I would obediently listen to amma and aspire to know if pottu should be always worn in front of Uma periammai or I must unquestioningly fall at Murli mama’s feet. Having told how to behave, because of the gender I belong to, rather than for my whims as an individual, I didn’t possess the liberty to defy traditions or unexplainable practices like most of my counterparts of the opposite sex in the family could; including appa. He would never be asked why the ‘punol’ always slept on nails behind doors, but adorned his chest only when elders accompanied us to temple.

When the phase of helpless rebel had weaned off, I had mastered the art of harmless two-facedness. If a pretentious humbleness could mean peace later, it must very well be done. One such instance was the jubilant 25/25 in the unit test in mathematics stuck to the fridge, making a proud daughter to amma; little did I know that Ramu mama’s arrival was to burst my bubble “Girls are very bad in doing maths. How come you seem to have scored well?” No sooner had the uncalled for been uttered, amma pinched me to keep more words to myself. I had the plastered indignant smile accompanied with the words much unlike me –“Well the paper was very easy.” Looking back, picking a feud then, might have spelt ruin of family ties for years to come.

I am further confounded by the cloak of needed duplicity as to how far can one go with it? It is often that you are expected to wear this cloak not just with people who hardly matter outside closest family circle, but sometimes with family or to be family as well. A classic example would be that of “meet the parents” when every pretence carries with it the jeopardy of working against you in future. And ironically, necessary pretence is more than welcome to make that first impression.

Another instance of well delivered profess, is the constant anxiety to be a daughter/mother/wife every economically and emotionally independent woman in this world undergoes. The world around her refuses to comprehend her as a woman but as everything aforementioned. I am sure, I will not be believed if I were to state that she clandestinely feels like a woman above everything else, which she carefully envelops with what her nearest world expects of her. It only varies to what extent she can be unassuming to express it.

It bewilders me to put myself in a state to walk this line between ‘hypocrisy’ and ‘modest hypocrisy’. When does one turn into the other, takes a composed yet mature mindset to decipher. As, I still linger in the aura of life as ‘me’ ahead and not as being an expected ‘she’; I say the line is a cake walk. But when the mind is puzzled to transition from ‘me’ to ‘she’ I am but apprehensive of what waits ahead.

A letter for thought

It was one of those scorching, comatose afternoons in the little house in Hyderabad. I, as an eleven year old, anxiously awaited the portly post-man to deliver my letters, constantly eyeing the steel letter box. It was worth a wait and a feet-burning run down the stone pavement to grab the envelopes doled out by different hands and enclosed vividly in their own sweet way. There was one from Shari; the typical pink colors with drawings and stickers screaming “Miss you”. A tiny envelope from Anu, subtly yellow and mellowed “Missing you”, much like herself. A card from Karan, penned with his artistic writing and child-like words –“surprise inside. Open soon”. I hurried to unwrap the letters, smiling with unalleviated joy, to hear from my pals in a far away land (Trivandrum!!); waiting to give up my evening hours of play to write about my past week and reassure them that they would always be my bestest friends, signing off with “Reply soooooooooooooooooooooooon”s… Letters were my tickets to the fairy-land where I dwelled with pals; I had made for a life-time to come.

Looking back at the life that sans e-mails, sans messengers or orkut, sans mobile phones, sans every complex obscurity meant to ‘stay in touch’ and yet never to do so; I am amazed at the gratifying bliss, I shared, receiving a letter and putting all my love into its reply and living up to the promises made, signing autograph books with ‘Keep in touch’ or ‘roses are red and violets are blue, friends like u are very few’!

My tryst with letters had been persistent since the life in Patna, when I would be longingly given quarter sides of the blue inlands to stamp a few words to thatha (grandpa); write about a little poem I learnt or the new mathematics quiz score I secured as his proud grandchild or the latest Enid Blyton novel I enjoyed. Later this had turned into an enduring habit to write comprehensive letters to chums who I would dolorously leave behind, when I moved with appa’s transfers to a new school, a new city, a new circle of friends.

I still have the two brown boxes full of variegated letters, which have every emotion of a life bygone safely preserved in senile paper and soft ink. As I dig the countless envelopes, they travel from the postcard of my best friend’s five year old hand to the letter I received when I was eighteen. Emanating from them all, is the forgotten laughter and slight tears we shared as friends, as schoolmates, as luncheons-ers of others’ Tiffin boxes, as night-out group study partiers, as secret-keepers, as inseparable ‘Best Friends’ who pledged on the farewell day, only to realize in a few years that the very word ‘stay in touch’ had innumerous repercussions, one fails to anticipate.

I, at today, set alarms on the office outlook to remind me amidst work to call a friend on his birthday; make a mental note of all the phone calls I have to make on weekends, only to procrastinate the thought to the next weekend on the washed-out Sunday night; watch a friend come online, sweetly reminded by the yahoo messenger, only to prioritize a pending deadline and chat another time; midst hours of lolling on orkut pages, I decidedly leave a ‘Whats up?’ only to forget after a week that I did so when my friend responds; await a phone call on my birthday and expect to be scolded for being a lazy bum and never mail.

A wedding invitation, a solitary mail, a tri-monthly phone call, a yearly lunch, a new year wish has all that has become of a time when letters updated a weekly life. These rueful facets of life make me wonder if I have grown above everything in this world, may be even myself?!

Vishu- kani

Yet another ‘vishu’ came and went by. This time I had spent it cooking a hearty meal to my capacity and dawdled with pals indoors, rapt in a movie, owing to thunder storms outside. It has been two years since I experienced ‘vishu-kani’ (the first sight on vishu day) and the lovely feast amma would dole out for the genial vishu lunch, on the banana leaf. Warm afternoons of festive filled ambience, family banquet and sumptuous burps intermitting the post-lunch laughter marked ‘vishu’ as the most sought for festival, next to ‘diwali’, in my life.

The eve of vishu was often spent shopping for the little big niceties that went into making the first sight on vishu day graciously positive and meant to make the year ahead a very lucky one. I would look forward to take the seat next to appa, watch him gracefully arrange the ‘urali’ with rice, the coconut filled with ‘parupu’, the cucumbers, melons and fruits, all reflecting on the mirror that was adorned with gold chains placed behind the delicacies decked out on the ‘tambalam’. The ‘kani-konna’ (the yellow flowers that bloomed to aptness, during the vishu season) added the final touch to the festooned ‘kani’, prepared carefully to be harbinger of joy for the year to come.

A contented sleep was soothingly interrupted by amma at the crack of dawn. She would walk me down, closing my eyes, saving them from seeing anything else before I set my eyes on the bedecked ‘vishu-kani’. Slowly, appa would dampen my eyes and gesture me to open them to the sight that even after twenty odd times of redundancy over the years, still swelled my heart with unremitting joy. I would ritually go over the details of the kani I had helped appa ornate last night. It always seemed different from the night before, as if blessed to completeness on a vishu’s first light. Smiling, I would make a stamp of the sight in the memory lane, adoring every intricacy.

As the vishu day unwinds and the cucumbers and melons of the vishu-kani make a delicious meal for the afternoon, followed by the showers of blessings accompanied with 'vishu-kaineetam'(money) from elders, a pleased I would sink with happiness on the perfect day. This year, living a life that sans the presence of appa and amma and the beautiful vishu-kani, I simply reminiscence the vishu days back home and recite a prayer to keep the family hail and healthy for ages to come!

Jigsaw

As a school go-er at six, in the freezing Patna winter, looking atleast five times me in three layers of warm clothes laden over a Vicks smothered chest for that perfect warmth; I was a naïve child, who half-sheepishly yet happily traveled the scooter ride on a standing ticket between appa’s protective arms, looking like little red riding hood with the red scarf wrapping my head and ears from the cold-prone winds and the water bottle garlanding my neck.

Often the pictures of me taken back then, with the mushroom hair cut and innocent smiles make me wonder if living life as little ‘divu’ was the best part of the past twenty-something years. My thoughts coast at the play-room, the storage hub of our flat with three balconies (a Dr.Bhishnudev Prasad owned building on Patna Main road), where I had created an immure world of me and my modest dolls, who would come to life in the puerile dramas I enacted with my kitchen sets. I was a contented child much to my parents’ relief, who could dwell for hours playing mother, teacher, soldier to the torpid, docile playmates.

I had learnt to amuse myself and in the process shared the perfect affiliation with self. As years went by, my playmates were replaced with books, paintings and jigsaw puzzles. As more years went by, the relationship extended to friends, good friends and best friends. Life’s rapport with self had almost dwindled away as a teenager and by the time I was twenty, spending time on my own was next to impracticable.

I, at now, at twenty-something, often spend a good many hours, bundled in books, fending for errands, attempting to cook, traveling to shop, listening to tunes while I run the treadmill. It makes me question if the little ‘divu’ had survived and was that autonomous me governing life all over again? Suddenly living as the stereotype independent working woman seems like the strewn jigsaw puzzle pieces, which I am trying to fit together, trying them on to make that complete picture, little by little each day.

I recall the jigsaw puzzle of puppies I knew by heart and fixed it almost ten times in fifteen minutes. I smile at the sardonic reality, when puzzles that seemed an effortless child’s play at eight are blurred veracities at twenty-something, when the pieces that fit the perfect life are yet so hard to find and when you do find them they are harder to fit!

The Family Dinner

Having brought up without siblings, in a nuclear family, I had grown to accept friends, family-friends and cousins as closest family. As a child I always looked forward to the three month beguiling yet burning summer for the company of cousins for the midnight capers, loads of ice creams, visits to the zoo, never ending picnics, thrilling rides in amusement parks and temple sojourns with grandpa. Later as we let life grow out of this phase of chaste, it was only at an obscure wedding or family-function that I spent quality time over a meal with cousins, uncles and aunts. Later even this dwindled down to once in a few years with family strewn all over the world map and camouflaged in the name of “Busy life”!

Amidst this transition, I have had moments of sheer bliss and loneliness, which has made me realize that home, is where you want it to be. It can be made at the very familiar coffee place you hang out with friends or the dinner table where you dine with parents. For me it is the few minutes I spend on phone yapping with appa everyday and the brief weekends of poker and dilly-dallying with pals. Yesterday was one such Sunday when I not only laughed mercilessly with my friends but found a family to share the joy.

We were visiting Vikram’s family in Mansfield last evening to congratulate his sister for her 15 day old baby. Having spent ample amount of time shopping for the little one's dresses and box of sweets for the older four year old shruti, I was but scared to hold the cherubic and delicate sleeping baby. I had reclined to playing Barbie and pacifying the four year old. As the evening unwound over the hot cup of tea and levity of old jokes lingered over the comfortable couch I recalled the very scene back home. As if breaking into my reminiscence, Vikram’s mother came by to ensure we don’t leave without a heavy dinner she had started to cook for the hungry grown ups!

Having tried my hand in playing dart, laughed incessantly over Vikram’s spontaneity and Vilas’s PJs, and cheered little shruti for her gymnastics skills I was all set to devour the amma-made food. Along came the many shenanigans over the dinner table in the four course meal which extended way over dinner time. It’s my experience of all times that the best conversation and laughter you share with family is post-dinner until the plate goes stubbornly dry. It ranges from healthy arguments to old stories re-told and guffawed over. I fondly remembered my mother’s cooking and her child-like loud chortle that I missed so much.

As it happens to all good times, when time flies by and you have not had enough, it is time to stop and get on with monotonic routine. As we drove away from that place last night, I felt I had left a part of me behind, one that had missed home, enjoyed family-dinners and got excited being with people I love. I gave in to the unparalleled love that came wrapped in the sugar coated 'gulabjmuns' of last night, before I let sleep take over my relaxed weekend.

A child’s diary

I was reading ‘swami and friends’, last week; the book has always been a subtle reminder of my amusing experiences as a child! But unlike and like swami, I spent the better half of my innocence in a small colony in trivandrum, with two dear friends – Nandu and Ninju.

We were inseparable playmates who fought, laughed, cried and shared every puerile emotion together. Life then was a happy-go-lucky routine... School, play, Padmanabha swami temple, homework, dinner and sleep!! Amidst the visits to the temple of the reclining god and instances of sheer laughter, the three of us had created a world where we spent the best days of our lives.

Our wantonness could make a ‘Divya and Friends’ for itself ; If I were to look back at time twenty one years ago it wouldn't be complete without the little-big things that made it happen --
The time we made a castle at the beach and cried when the sea washed it away; when we were 'the famous three' and dug the roots of a coconut tree, hoping to find treasure, which all started from an architect’s view of the house! ; the funniest fashion show we put up for the elders to watch, when the most novel dress was a skirt worn around the neck ; the times we got dressed for the evening 'kolatam' ( south indian dandia ) during navaratri ; the carnatic music lessons we took hoping to turn it into ‘kacheris’ someday ; the evening we painted the entire colony road with our ‘kolam’ practice ; the cultural fest we organized with three participants – Ninju, nandu and Divya ; the days we fought over stamps which would go into the obscure philatelist's bag; the “secret’s secret” group we formed to be clandestine of our supposed missions ; the evenings we indulged in lock and key and the times we fell and let those knees and elbows bleed ; the weekends we spent learning to cycle at ‘traffic park’ ; the crackers we burst during diwali ; the Christmas carols we made up ; the little stories we enacted in our immure play room ; the feast we made with our kitchen sets ; the times we would swing for hours on the ‘atukatil’ and never get tired of it ; the day we enjoyed ‘beauty and the beast’ in theatre for the children’s film festival ; the little picnics we had on the terrace ; the days we cried, laughed and chattered enthralled by the smallest of things that made us who we are…

Life was never better and a mesmerized childhood could never get better … Away from worries, away from sadness… pure fun and true happiness… As I look the picture of the three of us hugging each other on the swing, I can’t help but feel that the child in us still remains…..

The summer of 1996

With the cricket pitch soaring high… I am reminded of the world cup of 1996, when India lost to Srilanka so miserably in the semi-finals at Calcutta. It was the year; I had started to understand cricket and actually blend into the cricket fever that India thrived on!

After the victory at the quarter-final match against Pakistan, the Indian cricket players were no less that demigods for me and my best friend Annie. By then we knew every cricket score and every cricketer’s score, who had taken the highest wickets, Number of 4’s and 6’s tendulakar had smashed and blah! (Quiet remarkable for two girls who didn’t know how cricket was played till then!) . We decided to put all this energy into use. Well! Playing the game was out of question and 12 year old girls had better things to do than burn their skin playing cricket with the boys!! We came up with this most time devouring project of making a cricket book, which kept us on our toes the whole of the summer of 1996.

It began with the piles of ‘sport star’ magazines we had collected over the cricket season and the gambit of cricket shots it contained. We had very religiously used a lab-notebook and stuck carefully picked pictures on the left hand side on the plain paper and written out details on the right hand side. Like we had a page with close up picture of tendulkar and the right hand side we had details like – no of runs, average and all possible nitty gritty details! I wonder what we wanted out of this supposed book of records, which we even bothered to update as months went by. The cricket book had become an obsession that I would want to have my eyes on it all the time. It was like we had fallen in love with the cricket book to distraction. As if this was not balmy enough, we also supplemented the cricket book with Sachin and kumble notebooks, with pictures of the two cricketing divas!? [If the NDTV existed then, they could have featured our efforts in the news titling it “‘Two 12 year girls turn berserk, innovative cricket fans’ ... After the break”

The cricket fervor caught on to us so much so that we retorted to a zillion superstitions and prayers to make India win. India’s loss depressed us immensely. I would also coax my mother to pray and read her prayer book while India was out at the field. We had even bought the music cassette sung by Sanjay Manjeraker which had favorite songs of all the Indian cricket palyers!! By the June of 1996, we had reached the peak of insanity and cricket(ers) was the world to us. It became an obscene reality that we heard, watched and talked cricket. It had turned from fad to patriotism to personal! It was time to stop…

I don’t recall what happened following that summer… except that we had school to go to ,we were turning teenagers and we had much more to look forward to in life and our cricket book and fanatic-sm was buried deep under the dusty book rack! … 11 years down the lane, the ‘making of our cricket book’ still brings a smile on my face and the remnants of my friendship with Annie.