Sunday, March 20, 2011

Bits and Pieces

It’s strange how bits and pieces of incidents stick in our memory and remain with us our whole life long. I guess whatever we find peculiar or affects us most at that time always remains. For instance, I still remember the following moments:

• • following my sister Prerna on sweltering afternoons to raid fruit-laden trees and eat our “prized catch of the day” on the terrace
• • learning how to cycle at the age of 8, falling down almost every day for a week, crying for almost an hour, but later on being thankful for the experience
• • the amazement when I first saw the bud on a wild cactus plant at the age of almost 6, and after opening found a very attractive-looking appendage
• • the first time I went with my cousins to the bank of the Yamuna River in Delhi and tried to steal a watermelon from the field on the bank, leaving my slipper behind in the process
• • the first time in Haridwar, when I took my first holy dip in the cold water of the river Ganges and also placed the lit diya on a leaf and left it in water
• • eating aloo-chat and other snacks with my sister while walking back from school in Kolkata
• • seeing a cow gave birth to a calf right behind our school in Delhi
• • the time in college in Mumbai when a roadside astrologer told me my future, and most of the things did come true
• • dissecting frogs, chameleons, and cockroaches in biology practical classes and managing to locate their nervous systems
• • sleeping on the cool terrace in hot weather, under the clear skies in Delhi
• • going to the vegetable market with our mother so we could eat the tasty “chat” near the vegetable market
• • dropping and receiving guests at the railway station so I could buy Hindi novels, which are available only at the railway-station bookstores
• • going to see Aamir Khan’s first movie, Quamat se Quamat Tak, with my entire tenth standard class and speaking about it for months afterwards
• • reading my mother’s women’s magazines and novels at the age of 12, without her knowledge
• • mountain biking in Simla and narrowly escaping being flung in the valley

The list is endless, but the memories are still there and refuse to go away.