The beginning….
An other impromptu trip was planned to my native place since all of my cousins (at least most of them)were going to be there. It was going to be a trip down memory lane. That's where we spent our vacations growing up and this visit would be reminiscent of those good old carefree years.
Every summer vacation, we cousins got together and camped at our grandparents house. My father’s family hails from a small coastal village in South India. The house itself had a thatched roof and there were a few others scattered in the vicinity. There was a small store selling essential groceries about 500m away, a school with big verandah where dad and his siblings studied and where grandad frequented with other village elders to keep abreast of the local gossip, the then version of today’s current affairs.
The man always walked barefoot unless he was on an official visit to a relative’s home. On returning, he washed his feet on the verandah with water drawn out freshly from the well before stepping in. He lived to a ripe old age of 95, walked a few miles everyday, had a sharp eyesight and read the newspaper crouching on the same verandah every morning. He never fell ill and didn’t take very kindly to the idea of visiting doctor’s or hospitals.
Grandma on the other hand spent all her time doing household chores, tending to the goats, poultry and other odd jobs kept her busy. Basically, both of them though not very explicit with their emotions, spoiled us rotten. So, we kids got together, dad being the oldest of the lot, and played all day long. The verandah outside mainly comprised of beach sand and beyond that was a thick plantation of jackfruits, coconut trees, mango trees, cashew and banana trees. The badminton court was the front verandah, the net sprawling midway kept in place by two strings, one tied to the window at one end and the other secured to one of the tree branches. The rackets and the shuttle dad provided and thus the daily matches commenced.
Then, there were the mandatory cricket matches. The bat was fashioned from the dried stem of a coconut tree, the stumps were shaped out of tree stems too and only the ball was a regular one. We could have got proper equipment but these on the go arrangements were what made it truly memorable. Dad taught me how to spin and I did. Just that, every ball would go for a wide and that totaled one over to 12 balls. My cousins squealed with laughter at my dismal cricket skills but I must admit that they had immense patience.
The rest of the time was spent foraging. Cashews would be plucked, the nutty goodness broken into, charred in the fireplace. We weren’t really allowed near the chullah and most often got admonished by grandma and would be sent scampering away. Grandad didn’t allow us near the well either around which we liked spending a considerable amount of time. Throwing pebbles in the water and watching the little ripples or the spiders crawling on it’s surface or making excuses to draw water from it. Mom could be most often found loitering around and aiming at the mangoes dangling atop the tree tops with a little branch yanked out from some place. Her terrible aim always terrified grandpa who as a precautionary measure would get a few sacks of mangoes and sprawl it across the store room to be relished at will. I told you, he hated hospitals ;) Else, he would summon the local official tree scaler(thandan) who picked the harvest.
Every time he arrived in the vicinity, a few tender coconuts would be plucked at an instants notice. The man always stood in great reverence, almost half prostrating before grandpa. A khukri stuck beside his makeshift belt fashioned from a thin towel tied around his waist. He tied both his feet together with a straw or string of some sort and expertly prowled up and down the trees like a jungle cat. The man was sloshed most of the time and we could smell him before we could see him.
The store room also housed stalks of bananas both ripe and unripe ones to be relished as we ran across. Noteworthy was especially the dining hall with a central anganam, more like a rectangular depression on the floor with an open roof top. One could get an exquisite view of the night sky with tall imposing coconut tree branches combing across it along with the silvery streaks of moonlight shining on to the anganam. It was the most sought after room by the elders of the family for a night cap as the serenity could lull anyone to a sleep of bliss. During monsoons, the rain drops pattered across the anganam in an orchestrated rhythm which would then be diligently collected and stored. I asked my parents in passing once if they were worried about intruders through the open roof top and they said since it was a thatched house, it was almost impossible for anyone to get up there and in without creating considerable mayhem.
Being a coastal town, the seashore was only a few km away. It housed a Shiva Temple surrounded by huge sand dunes. The temple once upon a time lay buried beneath these very dunes which my dad and his siblings helped excavate. These occasional outings demanded we kids climb those dunes. Honestly, we would be puffing and panting half way up and would then sprint down in gleeful delight.
Years later, after I cracked my medical entrance exam, my grandad threw a luncheon (more like a prayer offering)for the kids around the temple because he was excited to have the first doctor in the family. The man was very ostentatious that way. He was actually pleasantly surprised that I had managed the feat because unlike my super studious older brother who was the talk of every family gathering, he didn’t assume me to measure up. I, on the other hand would like to think my dear grandad was losing his marbles or to put it politely, going senile since we lost him three years later, a day before my first Himalayan expedition. We had lost grandma way before ( in my 9th grade to cancer). I lost my maternal grandparents somewhere around the same time I lost my paternal grandpa.
Post their demise, our visits to our ancestral home reduced drastically. The house had been rebuilt into a little villa during my grandad’s final years. It didn’t feel the same anymore. We no longer spent entire vacations there. The bond I share with my cousins remain strong till date though and meeting them after years was a homecoming of sorts. Truly, a trip down memory lane.
