Home

The association of 'home' is restricted to my childhood memories of peeping out of the window, watching the sun glisten on the mango leaves and the increasing racket by the well-hidden crows that assembled at sundown to exchange gossip of the day.

The din wore down slowly and I would be lulled into the little kitchen which wafted with the smoke of sputtering rai seeds and red chilly which always caused a series of sneezes, and amused me as much as my brother. Either of us would deftly climb the kitchen table top to open the sliding window which opened into the passage and wave an excited ‘hello’ to friends playing there. Mom would look up knowingly as I pleaded with my eyes to go out and play. “OK, but not more than 20 minutes. Then I will call you for dinner,” was the standard permission granted.

There was nothing like ‘dressing up’ to play. I would be in my white petticoat which had fat straps on each shoulder and a filigree of a zigzag pink piping and bloomer underpants.

‘Sunday Monday’ was our favourite game as we could jump a lot and I liked it since my nimble and long limbs virtually guaranteed that I hardly got the ‘den’. Another favoured game was Crocodile, where you were addressed based on the lack colour in your clothes. This was restricted to weekends where we wore fancier ‘home clothes’, taking particular care to wear objects of different colours.

The group would start diminishing as each of us got called back to our flats for dinner. Sweating, crusted with dust and grime, I would run breathlessly to the bathroom and emerge few minutes later, spic and span in my nightdress with a huge grin, usually with one tooth missing at someplace in the jaw. The first officially began once mom and dad had placed the first morsels in each others mouths. A parent between the rugrats at all points during the meal ensured no fights on who pushed boring food over to the other’s side, and why either got a smaller portion of the things we liked.

This is an incomplete post, my has welled me with too many memories to continue right now.