I have many vivid memories of my childhood. Here, ranging from terror to discrimination to sublime happiness, are a few of them.
3 years old. A hot summer in central India. Hot night. Too hot to sleep inside. Too hot to wear anything but my 'jetti' (Tamil slang for underwear). Even now, I can recall it in detail. Orange. Made of some kind of stretchable, soft cotton. I'll be sleeping outside on the veranda (porch) that night. So would my older brother. Dinner's over. Sitting in the veranda, I bite eagerly into my after-dinner orange. Unbeknownst to me, my brother's watching me with gimlet eyes. At one point the segment I'm about to bite into almost falls from my hand and in my haste, I swallow it whole, seed and all. That's when I notice my brother's watching me. Having caught my attention, he smiles and says, 'You know what's going to happen to you?'. I say, 'No, what?'. He says, 'You just swallowed that orange seed. In the night an orange tree will grow out of your tummy'.
Lie down, not to sleep but to look down at my belly above the orange 'jetti'. Waiting in terror. When will the orange tree come out? Will it come out full grown? Will it hurt? Should I run inside and tell mom? Maybe there's something she can do to stop the tree from growing out of my belly?
Must have slept off at some point. Get up next morning. No tree growing from my belly. Brother's still sound asleep. Surely it was a joke? Mom's awake and as usual, busy in the kitchen. Run inside. Dialogue that will become standard over the coming years, 'Mom, see what he (that ogre, that monster, my brother) said to me last night'.
Even now, after so many years, I can easily recall the terror I felt that night, waiting and watching for that orange tree to grow out of my belly.
5 to 7 years old. The house we lived in has huge yards in the front and back. Back yard is a vegetable garden. That phrase 'green thumb'? Turns out it was invented to describe my mom. She grew just about every kind of vegetable. Green beans, not just one but many varieties, okra, beets, gourds, chillies, carrots, tomatoes, even tamarind and peanuts. I remember the late afternoon walks when I'd accompany my mom and paternal grand mom. They'd walk up and down the vegetable rows, assessing and deciding what to harvest. Ever harvested peanuts and eaten them fresh out of the ground? So soft, they melt in the mouth like warm butter. Close my eyes and I can still smell those freshly harvested peanuts. No smell quite like moist earth mixed with the unique smell of fresh peanuts. And the fruits! She had about 20 banana trees and about 50 mango trees. Ever stand under mango trees as their fruit ripens under the warm sun? Such an unforgettable divine smell. Every harvest season, a small truck would pull up. A grocer from the local market would stop by to harvest the mangoes.
In the front yard, a guava tree, bougainvillea, about 75 rose bushes and don't remember how many jasmine bushes, one even growing up a trellis along the side of the garage. At night, I remember going to sleep breathing in the heavenly smell of jasmine.
My favorite? The huge Gulmohar (Delonix regia) tree along the front yard perimeter. My special place. Summers, I'd be hidden up that tree with my favorite books and comics, whiling away the lazy afternoon hours in my private haven, idly plucking gulmohar flowers and eating them. Salty and tangy, no taste quite like a gulmohar flower, especially the base of the petals.
Mangoes, bananas, peanuts, roses, jasmine, guava, bougainvillea, gulmohar. Indelibly imprinted in my mind, these are the idyllic smells of an idyllic childhood.
Oh, and I remember going to sleep next to my paternal grand mom. I'd firmly clutch her soft upper arm, close my eyes and I'd be off in deep slumber. I also remember telling her solemnly on more than one occasion, 'Grand ma, you have to leave me your arm when you die. How can I sleep without your soft arm?'.
The next two stories have a common thread, how our choice to dwell on negligible differences is divisive, hurtful and corrosive.
5 years old. Summer vacation at my maternal grandparents. It's morning. For some reason, I'm playing by myself in the living room. Where are the many others, grand dad, aunts, uncles, cousins, mom, brother? Getting ready? Eating? Don't remember. What I do remember is my maternal grand mom walking in with some guests. She points to me and says in Tamil, 'Oh, that's so-and-so's daughter. She's very bright but too bad she's so dark-skinned'. My first recollected memory that I'm perceived to be different.
8 years old. First day at my new primary all-girls school in Delhi. It's a school that prides itself on no school uniform. In her ignorance, my mom has sent me off in my Tamil finest, a pattu paavadai-sattai (silk skirt-shirt). The silk skirt, one of my favorites, is dark red with a broad forest green border, all criss-crossed with gold threads. Siting in class with strangers I look around to find no one is dressed like me. Noon. Lunch time. Class empties out as soon as the bell rings. I take out my lunch box and make my way to the play ground just outside the class room. Shy, unsure of myself, I look around for any familiar faces. I see 4 girls from my class. Giddy at having located some familiar faces, I eagerly make my way towards them. As soon as I near, one of them, the leader perhaps, turns to me and says, 'Inge pinge po' (gibberish to mimic and mock my native Tamil). Then she looks down at my lunch box and says in Hindi, 'Chee, you people eat food with your hands, don't you?'. The girls laugh and turn away from me. Shocked, I have no memory of my own response or what I did after that.
Isn't most of the tragedy in human history that it's so much easier to be primed to see differences, the tip of the iceberg, when what we humans share is the enormous hidden iceberg itself?
8 years old until about 13 or so. Every month, I could hardly bear to wait for that special day. That would be the day mom and I'd walk down the street, cross Ring Road and into the glitzy shopping center in South Extension Part I. We'd head to Tekson's, a bookstore, where I'd browse through to my heart's content, and buy all the new quiz and puzzle books that caught my fancy. Just the two of us. It was our time. Fun time. I don't recall a single month I came away disappointed. Studies took over once I entered Senior Secondary (High School), and unremarked, our monthly Tekson's ritual petered off. Sadly, Tekson's shuttered its doors recently.
The monthly ritual of visiting Tekson's bookstore is one of my happiest childhood memories. Through this ritual my mom inculcated in me that most priceless of habits, the habit of cultivating my mind. Many times my mom would say to me in Tamil, 'I was handed this ladle from the moment I came out of my mother's uterus. Fated to practice this cooking business (roughly translated from the Tamil 'karandi udhyogam'). I don't want that for you. Study hard. Be financially independent. Be your own person'. Isn't that some of the best advice any mom could give her daughter?
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-vivid-memories-of-your-childhood/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala
3 years old. A hot summer in central India. Hot night. Too hot to sleep inside. Too hot to wear anything but my 'jetti' (Tamil slang for underwear). Even now, I can recall it in detail. Orange. Made of some kind of stretchable, soft cotton. I'll be sleeping outside on the veranda (porch) that night. So would my older brother. Dinner's over. Sitting in the veranda, I bite eagerly into my after-dinner orange. Unbeknownst to me, my brother's watching me with gimlet eyes. At one point the segment I'm about to bite into almost falls from my hand and in my haste, I swallow it whole, seed and all. That's when I notice my brother's watching me. Having caught my attention, he smiles and says, 'You know what's going to happen to you?'. I say, 'No, what?'. He says, 'You just swallowed that orange seed. In the night an orange tree will grow out of your tummy'.
Lie down, not to sleep but to look down at my belly above the orange 'jetti'. Waiting in terror. When will the orange tree come out? Will it come out full grown? Will it hurt? Should I run inside and tell mom? Maybe there's something she can do to stop the tree from growing out of my belly?
Must have slept off at some point. Get up next morning. No tree growing from my belly. Brother's still sound asleep. Surely it was a joke? Mom's awake and as usual, busy in the kitchen. Run inside. Dialogue that will become standard over the coming years, 'Mom, see what he (that ogre, that monster, my brother) said to me last night'.
Even now, after so many years, I can easily recall the terror I felt that night, waiting and watching for that orange tree to grow out of my belly.
5 to 7 years old. The house we lived in has huge yards in the front and back. Back yard is a vegetable garden. That phrase 'green thumb'? Turns out it was invented to describe my mom. She grew just about every kind of vegetable. Green beans, not just one but many varieties, okra, beets, gourds, chillies, carrots, tomatoes, even tamarind and peanuts. I remember the late afternoon walks when I'd accompany my mom and paternal grand mom. They'd walk up and down the vegetable rows, assessing and deciding what to harvest. Ever harvested peanuts and eaten them fresh out of the ground? So soft, they melt in the mouth like warm butter. Close my eyes and I can still smell those freshly harvested peanuts. No smell quite like moist earth mixed with the unique smell of fresh peanuts. And the fruits! She had about 20 banana trees and about 50 mango trees. Ever stand under mango trees as their fruit ripens under the warm sun? Such an unforgettable divine smell. Every harvest season, a small truck would pull up. A grocer from the local market would stop by to harvest the mangoes.
In the front yard, a guava tree, bougainvillea, about 75 rose bushes and don't remember how many jasmine bushes, one even growing up a trellis along the side of the garage. At night, I remember going to sleep breathing in the heavenly smell of jasmine.
My favorite? The huge Gulmohar (Delonix regia) tree along the front yard perimeter. My special place. Summers, I'd be hidden up that tree with my favorite books and comics, whiling away the lazy afternoon hours in my private haven, idly plucking gulmohar flowers and eating them. Salty and tangy, no taste quite like a gulmohar flower, especially the base of the petals.
Mangoes, bananas, peanuts, roses, jasmine, guava, bougainvillea, gulmohar. Indelibly imprinted in my mind, these are the idyllic smells of an idyllic childhood.
Oh, and I remember going to sleep next to my paternal grand mom. I'd firmly clutch her soft upper arm, close my eyes and I'd be off in deep slumber. I also remember telling her solemnly on more than one occasion, 'Grand ma, you have to leave me your arm when you die. How can I sleep without your soft arm?'.
The next two stories have a common thread, how our choice to dwell on negligible differences is divisive, hurtful and corrosive.
5 years old. Summer vacation at my maternal grandparents. It's morning. For some reason, I'm playing by myself in the living room. Where are the many others, grand dad, aunts, uncles, cousins, mom, brother? Getting ready? Eating? Don't remember. What I do remember is my maternal grand mom walking in with some guests. She points to me and says in Tamil, 'Oh, that's so-and-so's daughter. She's very bright but too bad she's so dark-skinned'. My first recollected memory that I'm perceived to be different.
8 years old. First day at my new primary all-girls school in Delhi. It's a school that prides itself on no school uniform. In her ignorance, my mom has sent me off in my Tamil finest, a pattu paavadai-sattai (silk skirt-shirt). The silk skirt, one of my favorites, is dark red with a broad forest green border, all criss-crossed with gold threads. Siting in class with strangers I look around to find no one is dressed like me. Noon. Lunch time. Class empties out as soon as the bell rings. I take out my lunch box and make my way to the play ground just outside the class room. Shy, unsure of myself, I look around for any familiar faces. I see 4 girls from my class. Giddy at having located some familiar faces, I eagerly make my way towards them. As soon as I near, one of them, the leader perhaps, turns to me and says, 'Inge pinge po' (gibberish to mimic and mock my native Tamil). Then she looks down at my lunch box and says in Hindi, 'Chee, you people eat food with your hands, don't you?'. The girls laugh and turn away from me. Shocked, I have no memory of my own response or what I did after that.
Isn't most of the tragedy in human history that it's so much easier to be primed to see differences, the tip of the iceberg, when what we humans share is the enormous hidden iceberg itself?
8 years old until about 13 or so. Every month, I could hardly bear to wait for that special day. That would be the day mom and I'd walk down the street, cross Ring Road and into the glitzy shopping center in South Extension Part I. We'd head to Tekson's, a bookstore, where I'd browse through to my heart's content, and buy all the new quiz and puzzle books that caught my fancy. Just the two of us. It was our time. Fun time. I don't recall a single month I came away disappointed. Studies took over once I entered Senior Secondary (High School), and unremarked, our monthly Tekson's ritual petered off. Sadly, Tekson's shuttered its doors recently.
The monthly ritual of visiting Tekson's bookstore is one of my happiest childhood memories. Through this ritual my mom inculcated in me that most priceless of habits, the habit of cultivating my mind. Many times my mom would say to me in Tamil, 'I was handed this ladle from the moment I came out of my mother's uterus. Fated to practice this cooking business (roughly translated from the Tamil 'karandi udhyogam'). I don't want that for you. Study hard. Be financially independent. Be your own person'. Isn't that some of the best advice any mom could give her daughter?
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-vivid-memories-of-your-childhood/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala
No comments:
Post a Comment