Bachpan - 2 "meheki si yaadein"

I am a very "nosy " person. I remember fragrances of different things, people, places, times. Many a times, while taking a walk down the memory lane, I am filled with haunting aromas of different things.

A little about how smells are etched in our memories -

"Dr Yaara Yeshurun, who led the study at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel said early smells had a 'privileged' status in our memories.

Scientists have long known that smells are one of the best ways to evoke the past.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1225564/Can-really-smell-memories-How-childhood-scents-etched-brain.html#ixzz0XiIvy8R3"

I am told, as a child of 3 or 4 yrs, I loved to hang around with my Granddad, even when he sat with his clients for long boring meetings( he was a very well known lawyer), puffing one 'biri' after another ( he was a chain smoker at that time). I seemed to prefer to simply park myself on his lap, head on his chest, and spend hours and hours with him, than to play around like other children did of my age. My Grandma feared I was addicted to his 'biri' smoke. I think I liked the way he smelled...of unlimited biri and coffee. Later, he gave up smoking for good. Then he mostly smelled of coffee and medicines. I still liked to hang around him... inhaling his presence.

Then, I remember how the cemented railings of our balcony smelled after a quick and sudden shower of rain. I remember the strong cravings to lick it....

Summer evenings and nights in Ranchi, are particularly vivid in my olfactory memory......... every evening, we used to sprinkle water on the balcony to cool it down. I loved the heady smells of the dry earth lapping up water. Frangrances of the freshly watered plants, mangoes, the water cooler, drinking water stored in clay pots, fragrances of 'raat ki rani', glasses of rooh-afzah, hail storms, first rain showers.....

School....a packed school bus, the classrooms, the playgrounds, the trees after a shower of rain, the stage, chalk, esp during summers, the wooden tables and chairs, new books, ink, report cards, tiffin box, the open hall after our lunch break, the freshly cleaned toilets early in the morning,....I remember how these and many more such things smelled.

The first cake I baked, the peppermint toffee that I loved, Dairy milk chocolates, the cabinet where we stored all the homeopathic meds, the pooja almira that smelled of incense sticks, dad's office that smelled of files, the winter blankets, old trunks, ...and I can go on and on.....

The bamboo trees behind our house, the huge tamarind tree, mom's roses, the money plants, tulsi, grass, hmmmmm how I loved the smells of leaves, of wilderness...of sunsets, of nights, of stars....

I may not be able to describe these smells, but I remember them, and mostly pretty distinctly.

Am sure I am not the only one who cherishes memories of the smells of fire crackers, sweets, pooja items, diyas, marigold flowers, freshly painted house, etc etc during diwali....

I remember how some of my dresses smelled, and freshly polished school shoes, my Chacha Choudhary comics, my board games, my dolls.....

I even remember the aromas of one of my friends house back in Ranchi !

I remember how some people smelled..thankfully I remember only the good ones ( i mean good smells :-) ). My mom has a very distinct homely fragrance..which has not changed over all these years. If I close my eyes, and think hard enough, of people with whom I have spent a substantial amount of time, times that I cherish, I can smell them, I can smell those times spent with them, and in this way, I can almost experience them again.

My childhood is so rich of such fragrant memories. Strangely, my adulthood is not. There are much fewer memories in the folder 1998-2009. Rainy months in Bangalore, a hot plate of sizzler at 'the elements', baby smells of my neices, certain perfumes that I have used and liked, coffee day outlets in Bangalore, Akash - how he smelled during the time we were dating (which was always very intriguing to me. I even told him then, that he smelled particularly good. That would have made him happy I guess cos he quickly finished his Harley Davidson perfume bottle within a few months :-) ) Maybe I became too busy in life to take notice of the fragrances around me as I grew older. Maybe it is because our senses are constantly bombarded with so many different things around us screaming for our attention, that nothing really registers anymore.

I make it a point now to sometimes stop, breath in, try to capture the moment in small bottles and store them somewhere in my brain, so that when I am old and rocking in a large chair, and when the world mostly smells of machines, medicines, and buildings, and people, and God only knows what.....then, I can relive some of these times, in some of these places, with some of these people again....and again.

Bachpan - 1 "Ghar"

My family shifted into a newly constructed building in Lalpur, in maybe 1985. I was 5 yrs old then. We stayed in that flat for the next 18 yrs. It was in this flat that I spent my entire childhood, teenage, and even college yrs. This has been home to all my childhood memories, my games, the long homework hours, exam times, chicken pox!, fun times with friends and cousins, childhood mistakes, my sister's wedding, my brother's wedding, etc etc.....
There was something about the house. It had a lot of ventilation, light, space..... It looked bigger than it was. It some how had more space than the actual feet it measured. During holidays, it could easily house my entire extended family of 18-20members. It had 3 bedrooms, well 2 actually, cos one was permanently converted into my Dad's office. My sister and I shared one of the bedrooms, for most of our growing up years. My brother slept in the drawing room, and had a study table in dad's office ( which no one was allowed to even touch).There was a huge living room area. This was were we spent most of our family time. All the important talks, the important decisions, dinners, lunches, the dance/song  practice ( for competitions), the diwali poojas, guesting, everything...has happened in this room.

 

There was Ganesha, painted by my sister on one of the walls. I remember the days when she was painting it. I was so jealous of her talent, and at the same time, so proud of her. There was our colored sony tv. The living room  was separated by the dining area by delicate curtains.
I had my own nooks and corners around the house. I loved our huge Balcony. Mom had some potted plants....and I loved each one of them. I tended to the plants, cleaned the Balcony, I spent most of my time at home in the balcony. We called it "chatt". This is where our family gathered every evening for evening tea and snacks. All through the summers, we slept under the sky and yet in the privacy of our home, on this chatt. We spent our winter days sitting here,basking in the sun, munching on plate fulls of salads...

This is where I have memories of fun times with my elder brother and sister, when we were kids, we would fight, cry, laugh, tease each other, trouble each other, and then there were no egos. I once fell from a table top. The sight of me, on the floor, holding my forehead, crying, blood gushing though my fingers....was enough to make my sister ill for several days.
We went to school together. During winters we came back and sat on the chatt to soak in the departing evening sun and munch on sweet sugarcane. We experimented with waxing our legs on our own. My sister even tried her hand at giving me a hair cut! Thank God she gave that up after a few trials. We gave each other facial massages, oil massages....fought over who would sleep on which side of the bed, who would make the bed, we fought over clothes...on every opportunity, when she was away, I would go through her stuff as discreetly a possible, but she always found out.
She would hatch plans of troubling my brother, when ever he was home. I was always party to her mischief. Sometimes, I switched loyalties and went into my brother's team, together we would drive my sister mad. We made such a ruckus around the house sometimes, that my mom had to go to the neighbor's house to sit in some quiet, gather herself again, and come back after the war was over, only to find me crying in one corner, the older ones not on talking terms anymore, slippers, brooms, remote etc etc thrown all over the place...
This is where I spent time with my Grand dad. He would wait for me to come back from school at 3:45. He would open the door, and greet my with a huge smile and would say "aa gayi mera Nehu beta school se"...I would quickly change and prepare his evening cup of coffee and sit down beside him, while he sipped his coffee and the rest of the household slowly woke up from their afternoon siesta.
This is the home. Where I celebrated most of my birthdays, where we organized a surprise party for our parent's 25th wedding anniversary.( it wasn't much of a surprise cos mom saw through our preparations)...
This is home...there are so many memories...so many cherished moments....I hope to capture some of them here...