Is this the house? Even
the garden looks so small. We lived here for eleven years and I have walked again
through the rooms and garden many times in my dreams. I was a year old when we
moved in here. Being so
tiny myself, I viewed the world around me as enormous with the house spilling
into the garden. My parents worked hard in the garden to loosen the rocks and
coax the soil to relent and let the profusion of green thrive.
I don’t want to feel
disappointed. The trees and flowering bushes have gone. The dry hard soil looks
unyielding and dirty. It is my fault, returning after thirty three years,
foolishly hoping my childhood home has remained unaltered. Maybe returning
oftener would have gently altered my expectations and I would not have told my
children repeatedly of the lovely garden and ‘spacious’ house.
It is still a tiny two bedroom
house made of stone blocks with a symmetrical twin house attached on the
kitchen side.One of the many in the officer’s colony. The small gate has
remained and I open it to step back in time.
The strong guava tree on
the right side of the gate was also where the rope swing was fixed. Thick rough
hemp ropes were bandaged with strips of old bed sheets to make soft handles.
More old bed sheets and a cushion for the seat. I read most of my story books
perched up in the tree, hidden, biting into oval yellow green guavas with the
pink flesh inside. My legs still climb the tree in my dreams and I am sure they
retain the memory of the strong branches.
The pigeon pea plant
outside the kitchen gave us generous supply of the fresh pods that were shelled
to be added to upma or rasam. We children ate it off the plant
like monkeys. The curry leaf tree stood tall and lush nurtured by the sour
buttermilk we poured regularly.
Chrysanthemums, roses, jasmine,
hibiscus, crossandra, leucas, marjoram, milkwood, garden balsam, butterfly pea,
bougainvillea filled the garden with colour and fragrance.
Some plants my parents
grew to educate my brother and me. We watched the growth of a pineapple from
the discarded crown of a delicious one; sour grapes on a few vines; onions;
beans; and groundnuts. Since we made the compost from kitchen waste we were
often rewarded with a good crop of unexpected tomatoes or bitter gourd clinging
to the fence. Banana plants, a small jackfruit and mango tree provided the
shade when I sat on a mat in the garden. My grandmother loved to clean the
cotton from our cotton tree readying a year’s supply of wicks for the lamps.
The Henna bush prospered with every cut we made to share it with our
neighbours. Monkeys,frogs, snakes, beetles, butterflies and centipedes passed
through our garden peacefully and a tame brown fox accompanied our maid to
work! She asked us permission to let her ‘dog’ sit in the garden while she
worked. We learnt a whole lot about
nature without books, charts or ‘educational CDs’.
My father taught my
brother and me to spin tops, play marbles, fly kites and make our own
catapults. He taught us gilli danda and
football too. He managed all this with a six day working week. My mother drew concentric circles on
the side wall and fashioned bows and arrows from broom sticks for her skinny
archers to practice. She also made us our first paper windmills. She was a busy
housewife who found time to cook, read and knit as well.
I hit old scooter tyres
chasing them down the roads and often ended in a tangle of wheels and legs
trying to cycle my brother’s cycle, crossbar.
Somewhere in those
carefree childhood years we learned the important ability to entertain
ourselves. Without the television, computer and other gadgets ‘teaching’ us, we
filled our time with fun activities getting to know and love the outdoors.
I carried this learning
and love for improvisation into my own parenting days.
When my children were
younger, we converted wooden fruit crates filled with clean sand into sand pits
in the balcony. Chapatti dough was
given to restless kids to fashion watches or anything else while dinner was
underway. Old saris were converted into tents and we drank real tea from the
little tea set. My daughters regularly brought home interesting looking twigs
and pebbles. The living room floor always had a project in progress. I never
minded.
A mother of teenagers now,
I see young mothers ferrying their children to various classes, organising
activities and worrying over the progress their children are making. Childhood
is not about shiny floors and tidy apartments; not about performance and
organised activities; not about certificates and badges; definitely not a time
for stressing a child. Believe me, it’s perfectly okay to have untidy (mind you,
not unclean) homes when children are small.
Children will always bring
indoors, a little of the outdoors and carry it with them for the rest of their
lives.
