THERE ARE PLACES I REMEMBER
"Gemsfort", Hyderguda.
Views.
Do they matter to you? Through your window at work. From your balcony at home. From the window of your car. An airplane. A Train. The sights around are important to me. They help me form a bond with a place. They provide consistency, anchoring moments and even at times, news and entertainment!
Views matter to me. I seem to collect them or samples of them wherever I go. That one tree with pink flowers (Bangalore), The wall of shells at the Taj Exotica (Goa), the old lady knitting sweaters in the sun on her roof in winter (Delhi)– like a box of memorabilia wherever I go. Just that one thing can trigger a portal to that exact time and place I first saw it; quickly conjuring up the rest of the environment so I can bask in it again – even if only for a while.
I am attached to one particular view with a childlike clinginess because it represents a feeling and a memory of a time and place from my childhood.
…
It had now been a few years since we moved from our charming little vintage ground floor family home to a brand-new apartment in a newer part of town. But I missed that old house. I missed its mosaic tiled floors, it’s old smell – like leather and old newspapers. It’s old walls -a very pale yellow, creaky wooden doors, etched glass lampshades that dangled from its high ceilings, it’s wallpapered entrance with steps that led out straight to a garden with a cobblestone path. A path that went all around the house, past the kitchen door in the back, past several bedroom windows and finally ended at the front gate and driveway.
It had its own massive guava tree, and a shady lush garden with many plants that were home to small birds, squirrels, butterflies, lizards and shiny black millipedes that I’d sometimes step on by accident and watch in abject horror while they curled up. So weightless was I at the time, that after a fine show, they’d often uncurl and hurry off into the soil. The garden was my enchanted forest. I loved to sit on the day bed by the large living room window with its lace curtains, that often served as a reading nook and simply observe this garden in between the pages of a book. I spent many afternoons after school on the steps outside. Either pretend cooking with my steel cooking set (with a pretty set menu of succulent jade leaf soup), while birds chirped away in the trees; Or watching the world go by from a low hanging branch of the magnificent guava tree, almost camouflaged like a bipedal chameleon. Or I’d bring a bottle of my bubble solution out and blow fragile mirrored spheres into the sky…tracking the bigger ones with pride till they either disappeared out of sight or popped from the exhaustion of carrying all that air inside them. (How I now liken what it feels like to be an adult at times) ...The walls of the garden were covered in moss pretty much most days of the year. Moss that I’d observe closely with the magnifying glass in my dad’s Victorinox multipurpose pocketknife, marveling at its varying textures; Fascinated at the many millions of different sized microscopic plants!
Like a forest in Whoville I imagined. “Horton hears a who” was one of my favourite books. As was “Alice in wonderland”. Both told stories of far off mystical lands rife with magical goings-on. Much like my lush garden. As a child with an equally lush imagination, the magic was not hard to create.
It wasn't long before my younger sister came along and playtime was harder to commit to. More so because I now had a potential protégé. So naturally I was busy training her. I’d often tell her of my plans, where I one day saw myself, and where she stood in my grand map of life, as she kicked away in her pram. Babies are such great listeners. Sometimes, i'd regale her with stories of my day and about the nasty stylings of the school bully. This as one would imagine, was a very one-sided discourse. One day, we’d have a lot to talk about.
But for now, this was a ‘Vikram and Betal’ situation. If you were an Indian child growing up in the 80’s you’d know the famous Indian folklore-based TV show I am referring to. It was one of the few fun things they showed during afternoon Tv. That, and Johnny Soko’s flying robot. I thought the world of that robot! Someday, I could perhaps have one of my own! Technology was evolving fast after all . At the time though, you were offered a stingy but premium selection of entertainment for a few fixed hours in the day and then you read a book like everyone else, ate your dinner and went to bed by 9pm.
Our house, my father told me, was the only one on our street to have a black and white television and a radio back in the day. Many a time, the neighbors would come over to watch a show or listen to a daily news broadcast in what was now our living room. I was relieved I didn’t have to share my tv time. Such a sacred thing! On very hot days, my mum would pop in a mixtape of the latest pop hits, and we’d dance around the house. In the mornings there was a live broadcast of ‘Radio Ceylon’ ; crackly and wishy washy but you got a basic gist of what you were listening in on.
In this house, there was always music. Magic. Stories. Fun. And a bit of Tv. Between this and my tiny protégé’s fast evolving skill sets , there was plenty to distract me from the inevitable finiteness of this magical time.
Being small was not terrible here. I had my own little world…and it had me. For now.
So, this was the view. Never static. Full bodied. Not two dimensional. It was more than the sights. It was a feeling. Sensations. Tastes. Sounds. Faces.
A memory.
My reverie was interrupted by a tiny voice.
“I’m scared to forget this place mama”
Nea was an articulate three-year-old that spoke mostly Hindi between the ages of one and two and a half. But she was gaining ground with her English with every passing day since she started playschool. Her words though few cut deep. Almost like an echo of words I had spoken myself 3 decades before.
I recovered from her almost see-through delivery very quickly
She had already shuffled off. Humming a tune while she stared passed towers of packed cartons at the lilies in our garden, daydreaming about something as she sang. This was her first home where we had spent 4 happy years. But we needed a bigger place now that she had a baby sister.
I remembered something. I went inside and brought out an Empty gift box. “Here.” I said as I handed it to her. She seemed puzzled as she took it with her tiny hands. “This is a memory box. Your first memory box” I said. She had a bright smile that radiated from her eyes as much as it did her mouth. Much like her grandfather. “You know how it is when you go somewhere, and you love it so much, but you can’t be there forever?” She nodded.
“Well, this like a sort of magic. You keep something from a place. And whenever you miss it, you simply open this memory box, and look at that thing. And you’ll never ever forget it. Ever.”
Her mouth was open in silent amazement.
She walked over to the garden wall and bent over …there was a random smooth shiny glass pebble that had possibly fallen from the landlord’s balcony upstairs. The kind of decorative pebble people use to fill a central vase on a coffee table.
“This Walla” she lisped, lapsing back into her Hindi for a bit. “This is my house” she said in her tiny voice.
I teared up mildly, but restraining myself I said, “Got it. Put it in the box”
11 years. Three homes and 2 cities later. Both my girls have at least 3 such boxes each. Of places and their moments that they never wanted to forget. Each object tells a story.
A story…about a view.
