One way to realize that you are getting old is that you tend to look
back, always. I was drinking half a glass of some beverage from the
fridge. I remembered the good old days.
Me and Veena - my cousin just one year younger than me, would take some poppins - sweet lemony toffies in orange color, soak them in water, add some sugar to the mix and drink it with straws, which were newspaper pages rolled as a thin tube. How we loved them!
How I love to go back to that time when the world was filled with games, friends and laughter.
We would wait for the summer holidays for this opportunity when we can come to our ancestral village. One and half months of pure (at least for us) bliss.
We were totally eight girls in the family - 3 of us, 4 daughters of my uncle and 1 daughter of our grand father. Almost all in the same age. During day time, we would roam around in the forest, eating some or the other berries, plucking cashew nuts and eating their fruits. Climbing short trees and sitting on them. Evenings we would play, fight, run around inside the huge house. And night we would keep telling stories - ghost stories mainly, until grandfather sleeping in the next room would roar "Why don't you keep quiet".
We would pluck a large orange family fruit without the knowledge of adults and sit around in a dark room and eat the fruit. Banana was grown along with arecanut and the raw banana bunches would be sold. The trader would reject some of the bunches with tiny fruits. We would bring them, hide them and when they are ripe, eat , again in the same dark room.
First floor - or meththu as it is called had many rooms as well. Jaguli methu was another living room. It had a table and a radio - a huge one, on the table. The table was surround by 4 chairs. And on the other side, there was a mat with some pillows. Grandpa and my father and uncles would lie down there in the evening listening to the news from the radio. We would not dare to sit on the chairs, even if they were empty. But during day time, this hall would be completely ours. We would sit around the radio, which of course would not play anything during daytime. We would play gathering. Gathering was a kind of annual day of the village high school. It was a very big event for us.
I don't remember doing any chores in that house. May be because there were many adults or may be because I had 3 elder girls in the house.
And we would play many games like - chinnu dandu, hopping, run and catch. In one of such games, I was chasing Veena. We were near the stair case and Veena fell from the stairs and was hurt. I used to feel guilty for that for a very long time.
The ancestral home is still there. But two of my uncles have split the house and constructed a wall in between. A third uncle has built his house a kilometer away. But my grandpa is no longer there, nor is my grandma. And I haven't met my cousins for almost 20 years.
Me and Veena - my cousin just one year younger than me, would take some poppins - sweet lemony toffies in orange color, soak them in water, add some sugar to the mix and drink it with straws, which were newspaper pages rolled as a thin tube. How we loved them!
How I love to go back to that time when the world was filled with games, friends and laughter.
We would wait for the summer holidays for this opportunity when we can come to our ancestral village. One and half months of pure (at least for us) bliss.
We were totally eight girls in the family - 3 of us, 4 daughters of my uncle and 1 daughter of our grand father. Almost all in the same age. During day time, we would roam around in the forest, eating some or the other berries, plucking cashew nuts and eating their fruits. Climbing short trees and sitting on them. Evenings we would play, fight, run around inside the huge house. And night we would keep telling stories - ghost stories mainly, until grandfather sleeping in the next room would roar "Why don't you keep quiet".
We would pluck a large orange family fruit without the knowledge of adults and sit around in a dark room and eat the fruit. Banana was grown along with arecanut and the raw banana bunches would be sold. The trader would reject some of the bunches with tiny fruits. We would bring them, hide them and when they are ripe, eat , again in the same dark room.
First floor - or meththu as it is called had many rooms as well. Jaguli methu was another living room. It had a table and a radio - a huge one, on the table. The table was surround by 4 chairs. And on the other side, there was a mat with some pillows. Grandpa and my father and uncles would lie down there in the evening listening to the news from the radio. We would not dare to sit on the chairs, even if they were empty. But during day time, this hall would be completely ours. We would sit around the radio, which of course would not play anything during daytime. We would play gathering. Gathering was a kind of annual day of the village high school. It was a very big event for us.
I don't remember doing any chores in that house. May be because there were many adults or may be because I had 3 elder girls in the house.
And we would play many games like - chinnu dandu, hopping, run and catch. In one of such games, I was chasing Veena. We were near the stair case and Veena fell from the stairs and was hurt. I used to feel guilty for that for a very long time.
The ancestral home is still there. But two of my uncles have split the house and constructed a wall in between. A third uncle has built his house a kilometer away. But my grandpa is no longer there, nor is my grandma. And I haven't met my cousins for almost 20 years.
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