Rewind

And then there comes a point in your life when you want to become a child again!!
Childhood memories always take me back to Summer holidays in Secundrapur – the place where my Grandparents stay. The 2 months vacation always flew in the flick of a moment…

It is basically a small village in Bidar district (Karnataka).

Our mornings were always spent in watching Gangappa milk the cows.We all cousins are closely bound…and maybe that’s why we chose to brush our teeth together and wait for kallamma to give us the washed cups and saucers . The historic toilet was in the terrace… we all went there together too …well for two reasons …first to fetch water as and when needed and then to help lock the door from outside (with a big stone) …counting the hens and chickens in the backyard waiting for our turns :D to use it.

We used to have a small Rangoli session thereafter … we draw them at 7 different places daily after Sharnamma sprinkled the cowdung water over the entire front yard…

Our afternoons usually were spent in inventing some or the other new game and spending our entire summer playing it… Like for instance – swim-swam (we used to swim actually on the cemented floor of a room which was very smooth and shiny– just giving a push to ourselves against the walls thus sliding away from it..), Poo-Ri (where we are poor in the first half and survive on leaves of trees and suddenly become this ultra rich in the second half when Amma used to call us for sumptuous lunch J then fouji (yes…ofcourse enacting as if we are soldiers and do a dhishum-dhishum-dham for the rest of the day..) ..We also used to play boating…..again in that special swimming pool room …a very big cooking vessel served as our boat… with 2 of us sitting in it and the rest helping it revolve J over the entire room.

We used to arrange the wedding of our dolls with Amma actually cooking special delicacies on that day….. We had this one day(our Grand parent’s wedding anniversary) of cultural event when we performed either skit or a dance for which we practiced our entire summers secretly…Bhasmasur and Mohini, Rikki-chikki-ghost, kiti sangu me sangu konala (marathi song) were few of them.

We usually spent our early evenings with some outdoor and well some sensible games like Gilli-danda , 4-corners, Dabba-fekam-fek - funny name which meant catching a box (since balls weren’t available) across a rope ..we actually created whole new rules for it and used to play doubles J too. At times we used to take a stroll to the fields accompanying our Grandpa….Now the interesting part was the way we used to walk …we had this imaginary ponies with us and we used to supposedly ride them …Now imagine we hopping like ponies with hands holding imaginary ropes and mumbling “tugudak-tugudak” till we reached our destinations..Now I wonder what passersby would be thinking seeing us like this… we were crazy!!!

Most of the times sunset was spent observing the skies changing colours hogging Amma’s special curd rice on the terrace watching cows coming back home.

Nights were spent in story telling...yours truly was one of the fav story teller.. I remember making up long stories. .Chandralekha, Shaitan Rakshas, Tiger were the favorite characters.. I once cooked up the story of “Vishwamitra” that lasted for three hours…After few days my cousins wanted to hear that story again!!! I had a hard time recollecting it exactly (well they all remembered it quite well) and re-narrating it.

I look back to those days as some story that we listened to …doesn’t feel like we actually lived those moments.. We had a wonderful childhood -touchwood. But I think , for everybody - - it is special !! I remember as a child we all long to grow up –to go to college and then to office and then there comes a point in life when you want to be a child again!!