Memoirs from Childhood ...

PART 1 :

I was born in a huge home...not only in dimension but also in terms of the number of people it housed...forever bustling with the jokes and pleasantries of people that made MY FAMILY...

For obvious reasons I don’t retain all memories of what transpired between the time I was born and the time I was old enough to understand what people spoke and responded to them in my unfathomable language.

What remains etched as a constant memory through my infant and baby days is the colossal, noise, sounds and hysteria, typical of the whole Joint Family concept! Little cousins dropping by, demanding their share over a morsel of chocolate that my father would have brought me and the ritual of sharing half heartedly because that was the rule in the home… “you gotta share evrytin”….fancy pencils, eraser pieces that looked like Strawberry and bananas and sometimes some random superhero, chocolates, ice creams, clothes, hair oils and fragrances…weird!! We grew up with the idea that everything that could be felt or thought of could be shared…cute!!

Our home had everyone…unique characters that you would find in a big happy family in any Bollywood saga : The head of the family (A man with principles and values),comedians , simpleton, devoted housewives, faithful housekeepers, the cook who occasionally became a family member, unpleasant guests from our hometowns (plenty of them) who would stay and feed themselves endlessly in our Mumbai home leaving the main leads; the ladies of our home tired and worn out around dusk time… Astonishingly my home had place for all: The rich and the needy, the old and the young, the well wishers and the envious, blaah…


Apart from being a part of these experiences at home, the kids of the family also went to school. My dad was just making his career with little means. He and my mum were seeing bright dreams with wide eyes for my education, for the way they should dress me, how I would grow up to be a well mannered, sweet looking child who would make their family (our BIG FAMILY) proud…For most part of his life, my father kept drooling over books and fancied being the most educated man that ever existed (or so I think!!!). A very focused man who was out to get the most coveted degree in those times and dreaming unconsciously that he wanted his kids to do that as well some day.

My mum in her maiden days would pass by the enormous school at Juhu Tara Road overlooking the magestic Juhu Beach that most tourists thought was a pilgrimage destination after the home of the legendry Amitabh Bachhan in Mumbai!!!! Point being, my mum was enamored with this grand school and dreamt her kids went there when she had them… So I went to the same school where most celebrity kids went. My cousins chose to go to the other schools their parents had in mind. The first separation!!


PART 2 :

Separate schools brought in different experiences obviously!! So now the curiosity and the exuberance was to return and share stories about weird guls and boys in school, new games that we learnt, new prayers and nursery rhymes, new gifts that one got from a birthday celebration at school and then the traditional sharing a few candies and chocolates with the homies in other school who did not witness any b’day celebrations!! The sharing did not stop with the separation.

Then came an exciting phase of my life…Benny’s Bus!! I was prolly 4 when my mum was keeping busy with a new member in our home; my sister. She was the rockstar from the time she was born…those weird mood swings, the starry tantrums, the beautiful hair, the light brown eyes that could kill, the way she slept and just about everytin…I was obviously over reacting cus I hadn’t played the senior to any of the kids at home …so here was miss Cinderella who walked into our lives and simultaneously I was busy with my pre-primary school days and ofcourse, the Benny Bus phase!!

Benny was a cute catholic school bus driver… n I was the tiny, little, shy, reticent gul…well behaved and always waiting quietly in line to get into the bus and go home n see mommy and the rest of the jing bang!!! I would long to see Benny as much as I detested the idea of seeing school. But going to school was a price I paid to be in Benny’s Bus!! Benny was cute simply coz he sang for me and customized weird songs so that somehow he would sing my name amidst all those made up words, verses and paras!! Benny never missed taking care of me while the naughty boys jus shoved me off in their fighting bouts!! He prolly thought I was “Miss delicate darling” who would cry with the violence around me.

I was shy, quiet and all that but I did have the undeterred resilience and patience of my mum to keep smiling in the face of all this discomfort!!

In class I was the well behaved hard working child some teachers noticed and some did not… simply coz I never made my presence felt and loved to exist in my own world and day dream!! I dint wanna be the star of the class while others secretly wanted to make their presence felt and chased different agendas: figure in top 3, to be best athletes, to impress the cute looking boys/ guls, to be chosen for the annual day dance functions….i dint know any of that!!! I just knew Benny’s Bus, the bus ride and then coming home n telling my cousins and now my infant sister, the happenings of the day!!! My granny (“Maa”) stayed on the ground floor and on most occasions watched out for my bus and fetched me from where Benny dropped me off. The story of “Maa” needs a separate mention and I save it for another occasion….

Not to mention, the academic results were always good coz mom paid special attention to it…. A devoted mother who could go without food to make sure I got some table manners and somehow managed to feed me while I climbed on to the windows, the short cupboards in my room and as if that wasn’t enough, at the end of it threw a fit that mommy was harassing me when one of the aunties entered the room…the generally well behaved child that I was did get nasty at times!!....especially cus of Miss Cinderella who was happily eating away into my share of time with mommy!! But I still luved her existence… So while me n miss Cinderella kept becoming plump and pink, mommy was getting dark circles under her eyes for lack of sleep and the running around and the tiring study sessions with me!!


PART 3:

Then came another phase… an independent home for all the families of the home….they call it nuclear homes these days!!!

Dumb and innocent that we were, we did not fathom the consequences of this. All we saw was a brand new home constructed in the same premise on the top floor. The idea of separate kitchens was sooo new and exciting…we prolly thot that we would have different things cooked in each and then share all of it with each other which meant more variety!! But it was separation second!!!

The needs of the family to expand and the shortcomings of the huge home to now take care of these needs was perhaps the reason!!

Whatever the reasons, that was the age we kept smiling through all the hardships, presumptuous situations and the internal agony of not waking up to the sounds of the cousin in the next room crying after spilling milk.

We wept and then we stopped and life moved on… All discomfort forgotten, all grievances taking a backseat as newer joys filled our lives…no questions raised to god as to why our lives were shaping the way they were…no questions at all… submitting ourselves completely to the uncertainties yet to come….NO QUESTIONS EVA!! It was soo good to play that age…A role I could kill for today!!

No scars of incidents and quick healing from rude shocks!!