I Am the Sunlight and Shadows of My Childhood
I am so much the conversations I've had throughout my lives. And none more than during my growing years in Tribeni, a small town 50 kms outside Calcutta.
My dad worked there, and I visited, as I was studying in St Xaviers in Kolkata. But most of my friends studied in schools nearby. A couple of them in La Martiniere School in Kolkata.
Those were my sepia days, imbued as they are now in auburn and nostalgia.
We had games to play - chor sepahi, rounders, name-place-animal-thing, memory game. We had a swimming pool to spend the entire morning in, till the skin on our toes and fingertips were near to bleeding with the slightest of abrasions. There was a swing right in the middle of the pool and my brother had once tumbled down from it, his head getting knocked off by the edge of the swing as he fell. There was blood in the water. And I do tell him he's permanently mad because of that knock! It was also here that I was almost seduced by a 'seductress didi'! I was saved (believe it or not!) by a water snake, which appeared out of nowhere. And we scooted out of the water in Olympian time!
The Britishers had made these compounds with gorgeous bungalows set out in a circular manner with the centre reserved for tennis and badminton courts, the swimming pool and a mini golf course which was unused and became our in-house forest, to climb trees and play hide-&-seek in. Each bungalow had its own garden and paddle pool. The verandahs in the houses were huge, curving along the side of the house, with fifteen feet ceilings and deep balustrades to sit on - and watch the flowers abounding in the garden.
After we'd done with playing our games, we'd sit in whosoever's garden we were in and chat. Schools and parents, secret lovers, drunk uncles, irritating aunties, handsome bachelors and the universally-known horny didis. The young couple we'd caught romancing beside the pool, another who had all their clothes off one late night when two of us decided to play tennis and suddenly put on the court lights - and found them in flagrante delicto beside Court 1! We used to keep chatting till we were in complete darkness, and didn't stop until one of the parents phoned in to say dinner was served.
We had movie nights too. The choice was amongst a slew of rundown movie halls. But we used to book all the tickets in the dress circle, and chatted incessantly, crunching on the locally-made popcorn and greasy chips. We had another outing - to a place we called 'balu', in a nearby town called Mogra. These were sand dunes, possibly left by construction companies for future work. For us it was a Jaisalmer, and we ran and jumped and played on it for hours.
One of the things which I remember with infinite gratitude - and I think that was true for all of us kids - is of being left to our own devices.
Reading, drawing, listening for hours to the radio, or merely sitting around on a swing surrounded by dozens of varieties of flowers, in the middle of a cornucopia of fragrances.
It is gift I have not forgotten and have attempted to give to everyone close to me. Space.
Consequently, I had a half-naked poster of Simi from Siddhartha on my cupboard, a fully naked one of Michelangelo's David on my bedroom door and a slew of Playboys in a basket in the washroom! But conjoined to this were the conversations on the dining table on the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurthy and Osho, and tales from the epics.
I was, thus, always given the possibility of discovering myself, without being force-fed dogma or diatribe. I could freely have my conversations of concerns and questions or be happy with my own silent soliloquy.
Tribeni was the whole world in microcosm.
Whilst the trials and tribulations of adult lives was what our parents handled, we friends had each other's company and our huddles to close the rest of the world out. Was it idyllic? Of course it was, as childhood is meant to be. We were just lucky to be in a place which was full of sun drops and shadows, a place to retreat but also one where we could emerge as ourselves, newly-fangled or as of yore.
Feel like some poems on childhood and growing up? Here goes!
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It was a treat to read today's post. The illustrations and the captions are wonderful. Loved the lines..
Those were my sepia days, imbued as they are now in auburn and nostalgia.
And the concluding line is very profound....full of sun drops and shadows, sure it was a refuge, a safe haven and also allowed reflections and transformation. Tribeni will always have a special place in our hearts..
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