Window to the Past

Aah! I am feeling terrible, I can’t have the one thing I love the most...Pani puri. Yes! I can’t begin to tell you how much I love it and especially the ones on the thelas, sold by the road side. Dad strongly disapproves, but I just can’t get myself to stop. Every time I see the Bhaiya's cart on Park Lane, I am drawn towards it by some unseen divine force. But like always, I have been terribly disappointed with this affair too.
I have a terrible stomach upset and have been on khichdi and curd rice for the past two days. Aargh. I have been advised to be abstinent and avoid eating unless I am terribly hungry, and if and when I do eat, it better be in small dozes. Now this is something I don’t like, I am a die hard foodie and restricting myself to limited quantities of khichdi is terrible, and whats more I can’t even think about having Maggi! I don’t know how many of you have ever experienced this, but there are times when you are so damn hungry that even water hurts the bottom of your stomach.

It was my usual Sunday, I generally spend the entire morning cleaning and scrubbing the place. It's insane; I forget all about food and everything else until I am done. It’s this crazy obsession about having the place speckless. Ya, it’s exactly like Monica in FRIENDS. Anyway, while I was on my usual binge, I sat down for a while quenching my thirst when, it happened again and I was transported back in time, a long time back.
When we were kids, the only two places that would feature on our itinerary for the summer break were my Nani's and Dadi's place. We went no where else. While Nani lived in Calcutta, Dada and Dadi lived and still do in a village in Bihar, Kharenda. Now it's not like the villages in South India where you have proper roads, electricity, schools et al. In fact it’s exactly like the one portrayed in Swades. Kharenda definitely merits another post and it will feature on the blog soon. Anyway, I love that place and have had some wonderful moments there with cousins and family.

What I love most about country life is its serenity and purity, be it the food or the wind or the water, there is something that is beyond words, and so, I indulge, every time I go there I go crazy, all the rabri and mithai and what not. It was a time like this, I guess I must have been 8 and I can’t seem to remember what it was that time but I had my stomach all upset again, and had been on a diet control for some time. The memory has still not faded and I still can recapture it as vividly as ever.

It was pouring and we were all huddled up on the khatiya (cot) in the aangan(Veranda) and Dadi had just asked someone to get me a glass of lemon juice when I said, ‘No, pani se pet dukhta hai’, she looked at me as if I had lost it completely. And then suddenly the boy sitting next to us on the bench, the cook’s son, says “Humko pata hai, aisa hota hai, jab bahut der tak khana nai mile to aisa hota hai ki pani bhi pet me lagta hai” (I know, it happens when one has’nt had anything to eat for a long time, even water hurts).

I was taken aback, I remember looking at the boy for a long time, he was lean, must have been 11 or 12 and had curious big eyes.

I remember thinking about him for a long time, thinking about what must have made him say that, how many times must he have felt like that. At 8, I looked healthier than him, although he was stronger because of the physical exercises, or so I believed then. I felt sad and suddenly the difference between us was too obvious.

As I look back now, I realize the difference. The difference didn’t lie in our life styles but in the way we lived them. As I recollect, he had said it with a smile, his innocence reflected in it and the smile remains etched in my memory, the naivety in it stays with me as a symbol of an innocent and pure childhood.

There is a lot of unpleasantness that life inflicts upon us and we continuously try to look for ways to escape it. What if we just took a lesson from ourselves, a leaf out of our own childhood and learn to deal with it as it is, simply and naturally. Why curse and blame, why try to run and escape, when all you need to do is, face it, and accept the reality not as a deviation from normalcy but as natural as life can get.

The curious big eyes and guileless smile still remain, deep in the crevices of my memory and do seem to find their way to the top whenever I get bogged down by the ‘life sucks’ syndrome and need a reminding of how beautiful the experience of life can get.