Good Nostalgia

I can’t remember the first time I came here. My earliest memories are of cutting the cake for my third birthday, and running to the front gate to see baby Dravu for the first time. Everything about this charmingly simple (yet elegant) house reminds me of something –every window, every door, the orange and green carpet, the oddly shaped pots outside, the furniture, the front garden and the paintings. Everywhere I walk and everywhere I look in this place, there is some memory. Over the years, as I grew older and bigger, every time I came here, I’d find that the place grew a little smaller.
This house was built around 1960, and except for a few years earlier on, Ammu and Tataya have lived here ever since. Momlady grew up here, and lived here until she went to IIM. I notice that recently, the switches have been changed –I don’t think very much else has changed since I first came here, about 23 years ago. Over the years, pretty much everything from my worldview to the people around me to the places I’ve lived at has changed. There are only a handful of things that have been a constant all through my life –this place is one of them.
The most remarkable thing about this house is that it has over the years seen so many people growing up. Even Ammu and Tataya were only in their early 30s when this house was being built. From the outside and the inside, it has stayed quintessentially the same. The neighbours (tenants) have come and gone. I remember playing cricket with an expensive five rupee rubber ball (it came in red, blue and green) with Laloo (Nikhil) and Harsha –they were older and significantly better, I remember. We played ‘hop-skotch’ on the orange-green carpet with Sony and Sapna. I just found out that all of these people are either in Australia or America now.
Apta and Apurva were here for a while too. Apurva was barely a year old at the time and was about a foot tall. I would read her the stories I wrote. I thought ‘John Smith’ was the best name for any protagonist. I think I got that random name from this book that Abhimaama had got here from America, ‘Pocahontas’.
In Abhimaama’s room, there’s this side-room which had all these exotic board games from Michigan and New Jersey. Also, in this house, there was cable TV, which we didn’t have at home in Bangalore yet. So back then, coming here almost felt like entering a different country. Apta and Apurva, with their way-out exotic accents, added to that effect. The tables and chairs that we’d used as props (in the living room) to create castles and forts and all are still there. It’s insane that we could fit under those things. But we’d spent so many afternoons playing there.
Once, the kitchen ceiling fell down but nobody was hurt. I was nearby when it happened, and it was ridiculously loud –like a gas cylinder had just exploded! This was at least 15 years ago, and there hasn’t been any such incident since. Tataya came and made everything safe and all, and told people what to do.
There’s this small water tank outside that has memories that are too far back for me to remember exactly. Just next to it, there’s this small fire-area. One time, Abhimaama had got marshmallows from America, and by putting them on a stick, we’d see how they’d crackle, melt and burn in the fire. Danger-prone Dravu cut himself with a big glass piece over there one day. This other time, he attacked the bathroom light with his newly acquired water pistol. The light exploded and the poor little guy was left in the dark, sitting there for about an hour before the outside world realised what was wrong.
Although I haven’t been to the very back of the plot (behind Sony’s house) since I was about five or six years old, I used to play chhor-police there with a whole bunch of kids. Their dad had me believe that his name was Tiger and that he was among the strongest men in the world. The secret to his strength was that he would eat rice with rotis (instead of vegetables with rotis). I’ve also been up to the attic once, with Tataya, but the wooden stairs to the attic have been totally eaten away by termites since.
Writing letters was a passion I’m not sure where I picked up –but I still write letters and post them in the red post box even today, when it’s more convenient to just send an email. But Tataya would read the stuff I sent him, and from the minute I put the sealed envelope into the letter box, I’d start calling Tataya to see if he received it. Hmm. Tataya. He brought so much magic to this house and the people who’ve been here. Heck, today, when I went to the barber shop, he remembered Tataya! The vegetable vendors on the street came and enquired about him when he stopped walking down the roads every morning. Nobody believed that somebody that healthy could pass away that suddenly. And he had this house and its systems running like clockwork. Ammu didn’t need to take care of anything –right from collecting the rents to ensuring discipline of the tenants to having a driver and a dedicated system of domestic help, good ol Tataya had taken care of it all. Even today, over two and a half years since January 4th 2008, the same servants, driver and all are there. The India Todays and the Outlooks kept coming for almost a whole year after January 4th. I didn’t stop writing letters to 1-2-365/6 until late 2007. That feeling I would get after I put Tataya’s letters into the red post box was indescribable. When I came for his funeral, Shayada told me how thrilled he’d been when I got into IIT, and that he’d been running around telling everyone about what his grandson had done. It’s 12:25AM and I’m sitting on the dining table looking at his room right now. When I was little, I would snuggle up in bed with him and Ammu to hear all these stories of how he’d save various villages from man-eating tigers and leopards.
It was pretty cool having him as a grandpa. He was so fit, he’d play cricket with me. He was university captain in his day. One day, on a holiday to some hill-station, I challenged him to face my bowling (which I thought was very fast for my age –I was probably about ten at the time). So, I bowled to him and he (about 70 years old) hit me for an enormous six. I bowled again, and this time it went for four like a bullet. Of course, we never spoke about that incident again, and he played it down.  After that, I would talk to him about cricket a lot and he bought me a bat which said Mohd. Azharuddin. Azhar was his favourite player back then. I would spend hours perched in the drawing room reading and analyzing the statistics in Sportstar magazine –he never liked statistics or the new generation of cricketers who weren’t as wristy or classy as the Vengsarkars and Viswanaths.
What’s incredible about all those photos from this house over the years is that I was always smiling. Big ear-to-ear smiles. I had an incredible childhood here. Even when nobody else was here (except Ammu and Tataya), I’d come just because it felt relaxing and it had Tataya and Ammu. If Ammu and Tataya were sleeping, I’d sit by the windows and read for hours and hours. I remember this train ride that I came with the two of them, alone. And there was a time when Dravu and I came to Hyderabad alone, unaccompanied by plane (we weren’t even ten yet, I think). Half the people I’m related to grew up at 1-2-365/6, Gaganmahal. For me, it’s always been a little paradise of sorts, where time and worries became irrelevant.