A Walk to Remember! - Part I : The Humble Beginnings

"Memories behave in a strange way. They leave you alone when you are in a crowd and crowd you when you are alone" - Anonymous

As I was climbing the Himalayas, one constant thought was whittling in my mind. If I were to die then and there, will anyone remember me? Will anyone remember my childhood days and feel nostalgic. Then it hit me. Who else other than me knows about my life? No one! All that I have gone through in my life, all my day to day experiences growing up are packed away into one corner of my mind and sealed away for the rest of my life. And it is fading too, my memory that is. What I remember now, I may forget years down the line. Once erased, no amount of "Cntrl + Z" is going to bring back those memories.

Although I have tried a couple of times, I have never been the dairy keeping kinds. So, there is no written proof of anything that I have experienced. For example, if I say today that I used to shoplift when I was in school, there is hardly any proof of that now. It's a secret (not anymore!) that I've kept to myself for a long time. Should all of this trapped memory wither away into thin air as time passes by?

Or more importantly, should all of you be depraved of getting a flashback glimpse of how I've lived my life so far?

Now that isn't fair for you people is it?

In all of this rambling, I do have a point (hoot!). As I was surrounded by all those wonderful snow clad mountains and lush green (or sometimes white!) landscape, I suddenly realized that I've failed myself miserably. I've failed to put my life experiences in writing. And my memory isn't as sharp as it used to be. In midst of planning my future and making ends meet in my present, I don't want to miss out on my past. So, I decided to pen down all of those memories that have still not been wiped off. Hope to see myself reading this and reminiscing, sometime in the distant future.

To start with, this is what jogs my memory and hopefully, this will always keep me rooted to the ground, even when I reach the stars....

We come from a middle class background and until recently I seemed to have forgotten this! In fact one of the earliest memories that I have is of living in a small one bedroom rented house where in cockroaches, rats and lizards outnumbered us even before one started counting them. Not that it was unlivable. It was in fact quite a neat place thanks to my mom. But compared to the house that I live in today, it was in stark contrast to say the least. Living space apart, some of the best memories I have are the ones created in that same place. Here, I present to you, some of those memories. I have tried my best to place them in chronological order..

Circus Show!

I still remember all those childish things we did. Once, I remember that my cousin had come down to stay at our place, and me and her had this crazy idea of having a circus show inside our house. I remember that we had invited all my friends in the neighborhood for that show with the ticket priced at 25 paise :). What I also remember is that in one of the shows my cousin made me wear a saree and lipstick and pretend to be a girl! I guess we also did a play. It was hilarious I tell you. After the show, mom got really upset because my face was smeared with lipstick. But we enjoyed it as we got to buy candies with all the bounty that we had collected ;)

p.s: Even at that time, being a girl was considered circus worthy :P

Match Box Collection!

Another memory that I have of those early days is this crazy hobby that me and my neighbour had. We used to roam around all the places around our homes picking up used match boxes. And we did this for quite some time and should have collected more than a thousand varieties. The most vivid memory I have of this is the day when we set out on foot to Majestic Bus Stand. This was like a trip to Mecca for us! We left just after breakfast and by afternoon we were roaming around the streets of Prakash nagar. It was in this area (I think on Dr.Rajkumar road) that my friend found a bundle of crumpled notes worth 22 rupees (at that time we had 2 rupees note as well!). It was a big amount at that time and obviously he was very happy. But that ditcher didn't share the money with me and I was really pissed. But anyways, we continued our journey and reached majestic by late afternoon. We searched all over the place and managed to amass a huge wealth of empty match boxes. By the time we came back it was almost nightfall and we got the customary tongue-lashing from our parents. Well, they still didn't know that I had the bag with hundreds of matchboxes stuffed under the bed :D

Cigarette Dominoes!

[This beautiful photo is from Flightlessfoofaraw]

Although at that age we (me and that same neighbor friend of mine) had no clue what a domino is, we had our own version of it that we played with. We used to collect empty cigarette packets from the streets, abandoned sites, waste baskets etc...In fact one of our favorite source was the waste basket of one of the shops nearby our houses where there always seemed to be plenty of empty packs. Once we collected a reasonable number of packs, we used to arrange them in wavy lines, one next to each other until we were satisfied that we had a long enough line. This done, we would then watch in amazement as a small push on one side of the line would set in motion the concurrent tumbling of the packets which almost seemed magical. And our moms never used to complain when we brought home a bagful of empty cigarette boxes because we used to give them the golden or silver cigarette wrappers which they used in their handiwork or crafts that now adore the walls at our place!

Case of the missing Son!

One fine morning yours truly had breakfast and left home to play carom at a friend's place. The place was just about 300 meters from my place and it took me all of 5 minutes to reach it. But in my haste, I forgot to inform my parents where I was going. So while I was engrossed in a series of board pounding rounds, folks at my place started getting worried when I didn't show up for lunch. In that era of landlines-only, there was no way of keeping track of one's whereabouts, so the frantic calls were made only to the homes of known friends and neighbors. But unfortunately, the friend whose place I was at, was neither known to them nor was he our neighbor. So after hours of tensed moments, my dad finally decided to lodge a complaint with the police. All the neighbors and all nearby relatives came to our place and started consoling my mother. To my amusement, when I casually strolled into the passageway of our house in the evening, I saw a lot of people gathered inside the compound. And almost all of them seemed surprised to see me and just as I was about to enter the house, my father walked out, his face as tense as I had ever seen it to be, and gave a wonderful speech in full public view. My mother was more understanding and soon explained to me the events that had unfolded since afternoon. I came to know that if I had come home even 5 minutes late that day, my dad would have filed a "Missing Persons" report in the nearby police station! That day, I had to promise mom that I would always inform her before I leave the house.

Cricket Craze

In those times, there was no T-20, but we had our own version of it called "Short Cricket":) The rules for this version of the game were simple:

• Each Team can be comprised of any number of players



• The playing Area will be equivalent to the size of swimming pool :P



• Every team will get to play anywhere between 2 to 10 overs depending on the availability of time :o



• There is no bowling. The bowler will stand at crease and throw the ball at the batsmen (if he is smart enough he will throw it at the wicket!).



• SIX is OUT!! If the ball goes directly over the boundary, then the batsman is OUT :D



• Runs are scored in singles, twos and fours (threes' are non-existent in such short fields :D)

Ah Well... There were so many matches that we played, I can't distinguish one from the other. So many hours of my life spent in the playgrounds, roads, terraces, footpaths and gullies and all of it worthwhile. All that play has left a permanent mark on me in the form of a hard-earned sun burn :)

Housie Housie

You know how even as little kids, everyone wants to be treated like a grown up. It probably has something to do with one's psyche that being a grown up is somewhat better than being a kid. Well, you know better only after growing up into being one don't you?. But until then, that psyche remains. And true to this, I used to play "Housie" with a bunch of my cousins. We pretended to be all grown ups; moms and dads, sons and daughters and sometimes even grandmas and grandpas. We even used to have market places selling fake food grains, with plucked weeds substituting for staple, and small berries for fruits etc. Money was either various sized stones, or leaves or sometimes we just did bartering. I remember one time, on my sister's friends' terrace, we even experimented in cooking by boiling a whole handful of rice in a small pot using nothing more than a matchbox and a few dried leaves!! It was so much fun just acting a grown up. It ain't that much fun being one now...

Leap of Faith

There comes a time in everyone's life where he/she believes that anything is possible. Well, I was no different. I used to think of myself as some kind of an acrobat (and I was good at it too!). I remember one day when I had climbed one of the highwalls on the terrace at my grandmother's place possibly to prove to all my awestruck cousins as to how brave I was! Then, my brave self decided to jump from a height of 10 feet onto the ground instead of climbing it down. As soon as my feet touched ground, a jarring pain ripped through my leg and I shrieked out. I tried getting up but couldn't stand on my feet. Then my mother came up and helped me stand up. It was still paining when my mom helped me walk down the stairs and finally we went to a doctor who informed us that it was just a sprain and thankfully not a fracture. My mom kept a close watch on me and made sure I didn't do any monkey acts again...And speaking of monkey acts......

The Monkey Act

[this beautifully timed pic is by me]

If I think about it now, it feels like I had lots of free time during my childhood. And the one thing I made sure I did whenever I was free was to roam around the streets: sometimes searching for matchboxes, sometimes for cigarette boxes and other times just for the plain fun of it. And I never did it alone. There was always one or the other fellow aficionados who would join me in my search for excitement. On some of these jaunts we used to roam around streets looking for houses with a mango or a guava tree. I can remember one particular house very vividly. It was owned by a Muslim family and they had a big guava tree in their front yard. I used to love climbing up that tree and pluck guavas off the branches. It didn't matter if the fruits were raw or ripe; all that mattered was that feeling of getting up there, on our own, plucking them one by one and throwing them down where friends would be waiting with their outstretched hands, ready to catch and pocket them. It used to give us a lot of excitement not to mention the false sense of bravery, what with braving the irate house owners irk!

To be Contd...