When i started writing this blog, the idea was to start at a certain time in my life and go forward. However, with each successive post, i seem to go backward. The more i try to remember my life, the more i remember stuff which happenned before it, to an extent that it becomes hard to ignore and i feel compelled to write about it. Taking this lesson, i have now decided to start from my earliest memories and work forward. Offcourse there might still be some randomness but that should be minimal.
I was born in 1979. From 1982 onwards, i remember things clearly in whatever memories i have. Whatever i remember between 1979 and 1982 however almost feels like remembering a dream. I am not sure what is real and what isnt. The earliet memory i have is sometime in 1980/81 about running around in the frontyard of our house in Dewa. Dad's white jeep and my sister sitting in it somehow feels like a dream. I am not sure if it was real or a dream. I also remember driving to a far away place and being in a courtyard with rather high stairs. (i always thought that was a dream until about 10 years ago when i happenned to visit the same place, which was my dad's old friend's house, and being extremely shocked).
I also remember the water flood in the house and our bed being above a foot of water. Then dad went to england and we stayed with mom's parents in lucknow. Living with cousins of around same age was good. I got to play all day. Here on, the memories are clearer but not that clear. The few things i remember are a servant named Dal Singh, my cousin's bedroom, playing on the stairs, cleaning the visitors room with cousins etc. This was 1981.
Once dad came back, we moved to barabanki. It must have been 1981 or 1982. By the time we arrived in our new home, it was night and i very clearly remember being in mom's lap when the truck pulled into the street. It was a 3 bedroom house with lot of open space. The visitor's room was on a corner, the kitchen in opposite corner, bedroom and box room together in third corner and everything open in between. If it rained, we pretty much had to run between the rooms. Life was good however. I first started going to school here. I do remember principal taking rounds but not much more. What i do remember is the ride to school. I and my sis used to take this rickshaw to school along with other kids. One of the kids was this girl who always had a running nose and i hated having to sit next to her. Sometimes i would try to push her away.
Part of the open space at home was mud. My parents planted vegetables there. Carrots, radish etc. It was a good area to play once back from school. Sometimes we would also visit a teen-aged girl next doors who would play with me and my sis. I remember that she was scared of a particular rubber lizard that i had (or maybe she faked it given i was so young) so i tried to scare her and chased her all over the house with lizard in my had.
It was around now that my cousin was born. My grandmother and aunt came to live with us. Mom would sometimes go to the hospital and we would stay with aunt. I clearly remember one of these instances where we were all sitting outside around 8pm and aunt was cooking in the open. Somehow this memory has stuck over all these years.
Then came the fire. Mom was cooking in the kitchen one day when the stove tripped, spilled all the kerosene on wet floor and entire place caught fire. Dad tried to save mom and himself slipped on water/kerosene combination on the floor. They all slipped again and again while trying to come out of the kitchen door. I witnessed everything standing a small distance away from the kitchen door. What i do not remember however is, who held me or stopped me from going in and looking. Luckily everyone escaped alive. Mom had significant burns in her hands while dad on his feet. Awadhraj, our servant, who was earlier trapped on the blocked end of the kitchen inhaled a lot of smoke in the process but was otherwise unhurt.
One funny incident, that i vaguely remember, happenned one day when the servant was washing dishes in the open. For some reasons a crow came up, took a little metal bowl in his beak and flew away. Mom was alarmed and she sent the servant running behind the crow to recover the bowl. Everyone who heard this story laughed because there wasnt anything in the bowl that the crow could have eaten so it was pretty much an incident of outright theft!
In the monsoon season, the road (brick road) in front of our house would be flooded with water. All night long we would hear the frogs making sound and all day long i would try to float my paper boats. When the water receded, it would still make a pond on the empty plots on other side of the road and that was enough for me continue my boating activities.