I went to
Kerala in March 2009 to attend my uncle’s marriage. The climate was very hot.
But the interesting part was the Summer Rain. It was my first chance to play in
the rain and I used it fully. My cousin Karishma was looking at me with jealousy
as she already had her bath. I was lucky that I didn’t bathe so early and thus
the unexpected rain gave me a thrilling chance.
As my cousins
had exam, we felt bored some days. On such a day my mother introduced a new game
to us- ‘kanjiyum kariyum’ (Making rice & curry).It was the main game she
used to ply in her childhood. We collected some bricks, coconut shells, sand,
water, leaves & flowers. The bricks were arranged to form three stoves and
the coconut shells were placed on them as vessels for cooking. We made rice
with sand, a hibiscus salad and colorful curries with leaves& flowers- yes,
the meal was ready! I cut a banana leaf and the food served on it. We invited
Dad also for the feast. It was really fun.
The next
interesting experience was the family bookshelf cleaning. We have a big
bookshelf in my Papa’s home. It is full of old books. One day Papa asked me to
take some books and read. When I tried to open it, I couldn’t. Dad opened it for
me.
We hadn’t used it for years. When opened I found that the shelf was
really the lizard’s property! We don’t use it (the bookshelf) but they use it
daily. There was lizard eggs and lizard poo allover the bookshelf! We
took all the books out. There was a wide variety of books-English novels,
Malayalam poetries, Dictionaries, Grammar books and the old text books of my Dad
and his brothers related to Engineering and Printing. I even found a very old
notebook of my grandfather and some albums containing very old precious
photos.
With the
help of my Mom I cleaned the books one by one, wiped the shelf with kerosene,
cleaned the glass and arranged all the books neatly- I think there were around
300 of them- according to their category. It took us a whole day.
We have
a rose apple ‘champakka’ tree in our house. The tree produced more in this
season than any other time. We plucked the red ripe champakkas, ate lavishly and
my grandma made a pickle with the rest of it. She worked for almost an hour to
make it. We children gathered around her to see the juicy rosy champakka getting
shrunk into a dark brown
Even though we
went to Kerala to attend a marriage function, these trivial things mentioned
above have thrilled me more. I will cherish these memories till my next
vacation.
