It began life as a piece of land sold to my grandparents. It was the 1940s, that turbulent decade when India was pulling free from the British yoke. Bengal had already been ripped into two. Many Hindu families, originally from East Bengal (later East Pakistan; now Bangladesh), were fleeing to the West (West Bengal, which remained part of Indian territory). [The opposite – Muslim families moving to East Bengal – was also happening.]
Dadu and Dida (my father’s father and mother) were part of the thousands of families that came, looking to build a new life. They came to Barrackpore, a small town near Kolkata, because my Dida’s father lived here (he was a District Magistrate). They bought middling plot of land by selling off some of Dida’s gold ornaments. [The ornaments would stand our family in good stead through hard times – right down to paying for my father’s engineering college fees.].
Some more sold-off-gold helped to build a small two-bedroom house with a red cement balcony. There was a haphazard garden with a well at one end. My grandparents moved in with their four children – my Jethun (uncle), Pishis (aunts) and Baba (my father, the youngest).
Over the decades, the house changed shape many a time, swelling to suit the needs of its inhabitants. When my father got married a room was added on top, and the house officially became a do-tala baari (two-storey house), enhancing its status in the para (neighbourhood). One of Baba’s promotions resulted in the creation of a proper drawing room and an attic.
Dadabhai’s marriage meant another bedroom. The red-tiled kitchen at the back got a change of roof; new bathrooms were added, as were balconies. Gradually, brick by brick, the house metamorphosed into a sprawling seven-roomed house. What it continued to be, for over six decades, was a HOME to all of us living there. My home.
But, the residents also changed. Some grew old and died – my grandparents – some died before their time – my aunt, father, uncle. Some grew up and left – my cousins. Finally, my mother, brother and I, too, shifted to a new apartment, near the railway station, for convenience and easy conveyance to the city. The lure of the city won over our loyalty to the home.
The house, lonely and left behind, brooded into decrepitude. A family of distant relations stayed for some years while we followed our destinies elsewhere. The termites had an uninterrupted banquet. The memory- heavy rooms, once witness to our evolving histories, remained dark and shut. Cracks grew in the walls and weeds grew in the cracks. Creepers, intertwined with echoes of our laughter and quarrels, grew over the vacant balconies. The trees in the garden cast longer and longer shadows and began to hide the house like Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
My grandfather had left behind a lot of memories, but no legal will. So, the amicable and consensual transfer of the rights of the house to Dadabhai, my cousin, took a long time – more than a decade – and endless visits to the court.
Now the knots of legalese have been unraveled. Dadabhai, who stays in Bangalore, told us last week that the house has been handed over to some promoters, who will break down the old structure and build a multi-storeyed apartment (what else?) in its place. My daughters will never be able to visit it and see for themselves the rooms and garden that shaded and shaped me.
Ironically, each flat in the new building will have two bedrooms - which are what the house originally had, to begin with.
Maybe the happiness I felt there will be transferred to the new owners, multiplying as the rooms have multiplied in the flats, making the residents cherish their homes, just as I did, so long ago.
ANY MEMORIES OF LOSING A HOME?
Friday, April 24, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
MEMORIES OF FORGETTING
The first time I forgot something was a long time ago. When I was five years old, to be specific. When I was sitting in a classroom, writing a Mathematics class test, to be even more specific. Mathematics, in those uncomplicated childish times, meant a simple progression from number 1 to number 100. No arduous additions, stupefying subtractions, maddening multiplications, devious divisions or other complicated calculations that continue to haunt us in later life.
But even then, as now, I was numerically challenged. The very shapes of the numbers challenged me, especially that of number 3. I was confused: were the pointy bits on the left and the rounded bits on the right, or vice versa? Frowning and chewing my pencil (most of my pencils looked like they had been attacked by woodpeckers), I tried to visualize the shape of 3. But like a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle, the shape of the mystic number eluded me.
Not willing to give up without a fight (Maths was, and continues to be, Academic Enemy No. 1), I came up with a solution. I had to write from 1 to 50, so I had to write the number 3 a total of 15 times ( I just checked it out twice, counting on my fingers). Each time, I meticulously alternated the sides of the pointy and the rounded parts, so that 33 ended up looking like an 8 broken down the middle.
Needless to say, my score in the test was unmemorable, and I have duly forgotten it.
Though I remember my first instance of forgetting in photographic detail, the subsequent instances and too many and too frequent to remember.
DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU FIRST FORGOT SOMETHING?
But even then, as now, I was numerically challenged. The very shapes of the numbers challenged me, especially that of number 3. I was confused: were the pointy bits on the left and the rounded bits on the right, or vice versa? Frowning and chewing my pencil (most of my pencils looked like they had been attacked by woodpeckers), I tried to visualize the shape of 3. But like a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle, the shape of the mystic number eluded me.
Not willing to give up without a fight (Maths was, and continues to be, Academic Enemy No. 1), I came up with a solution. I had to write from 1 to 50, so I had to write the number 3 a total of 15 times ( I just checked it out twice, counting on my fingers). Each time, I meticulously alternated the sides of the pointy and the rounded parts, so that 33 ended up looking like an 8 broken down the middle.
Needless to say, my score in the test was unmemorable, and I have duly forgotten it.
Though I remember my first instance of forgetting in photographic detail, the subsequent instances and too many and too frequent to remember.
DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU FIRST FORGOT SOMETHING?
Saturday, April 11, 2009
COLLEGE-COLLAGE OF MEMORIES
College is such an important part of growing up that it is sure to leave behind deep imprints in the road to self-discovery.
Some lucky ones, like Chetan Bhagat, write books on their college days (Five-Point Someone) and become rich and famous.
Not being Chetan Bhagat, however, I hope to write about my college memories in this blog. In bits and pieces, fragments and filaments, as is my wont.
Pritam, the very resourceful editor of the e-magazine Pentasect, very kindly allowed me to indulge in an all-expenses-paid nostalgia trip back to my college days in Presidency College of what-was-then-Calcutta. If you want to come along for the ride, do click here.
DO SHARE SOME OF YOUR COLLEGE MEMORIES WITH US.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
SUMMER RAIN
In Mumbai, the sun and the rain are like a quarelling Page 3 couple, they never appear together. It is always an either-or situation, either it is swelteringly hot (as it is now), with summer stretching for endless weeks; or it is raining, in drip-drops or deluges, for months without any sun in sight. I know that I am exaggerating, but that is what it feels like.
When I was child in Bengal, the sun and the rain had a different relationship, especially in summer, more especially in April. They were like an amorous couple, chasing each other throughout the month. The daytime would see the sun, all melting-concrete-hot and blinding-eyes-yellow. Coming back from school would mean a long walk in the sapping afternoon heat, when the sweat would seem to drip from our eyelids into our eyes and the schoolbag would leave a wet patch where it stuck to our backs.
But in the late afternoon, the white wispy effeminate clouds floating in the sky would be replaced by black billowing clouds which meant serious business. Even as the sun would hurry to the western horizon, the clouds would hustle the winds to sway the trees and rustle the leaves. In relief and gladness, we would come out into the balconies and courtyards, feeling the wind lift our hair and dry the sweat on our brows.
And then, riding on the back of the wind, would come the rain. Blessed, beautiful rain would pour down in huge drops on the parched soil and the hot rooftops, cooling us all. This was the Kalboishakhi, the summerstorm which was Nature’s own relief-measure and heat-control mechanism.
Sometimes, we would be allowed to get wet in the rain, especially if we had prickly heat rashes (as the first rain was supposed to be a miracle-cure for itchy heat-rash). Sometimes there would be hailstorms, and the roofs and gardens would be white with hailstones. Some would be tiny, melting in our hands as we tried to gather them. Some would be as big as golf-balls, which we would reverentially gather in bowls. Their cold crunchiness was a delight to taste.
Another epicurean delight of the Kalboishakhi were the green unripe mangoes which would fall off the madly swinging branches of our neighbour’s mango tree (which overhung our garden wall). We would rush out with laal gamchhas (thin red towels), unmindful of the fruits pelting down on our heads, eager only to collect as many fallen mangoes as possible before the rain became too heavy.
After discarding the tiny inedible ones, we would then peel the rest of our booty, and sit with outstretched legs in the balcony, eating our stolen goods with salt and red-chilli powder, watching the rain pour down. The next morning the sun would be back, in all his fierce glory.
The word Kal in Kalboishakhi probably refers to the 'black clouds which bring the rain', but as a child I always thought that Kal referred to 'tomorrow', and that Kalboishakhi meant that there would be another summerstorm tomorrow, to take away the heat in the evening and give us some more green mangoes.
ANY MEMORIES OF STORMS IN SUMMER?
When I was child in Bengal, the sun and the rain had a different relationship, especially in summer, more especially in April. They were like an amorous couple, chasing each other throughout the month. The daytime would see the sun, all melting-concrete-hot and blinding-eyes-yellow. Coming back from school would mean a long walk in the sapping afternoon heat, when the sweat would seem to drip from our eyelids into our eyes and the schoolbag would leave a wet patch where it stuck to our backs.
But in the late afternoon, the white wispy effeminate clouds floating in the sky would be replaced by black billowing clouds which meant serious business. Even as the sun would hurry to the western horizon, the clouds would hustle the winds to sway the trees and rustle the leaves. In relief and gladness, we would come out into the balconies and courtyards, feeling the wind lift our hair and dry the sweat on our brows.
And then, riding on the back of the wind, would come the rain. Blessed, beautiful rain would pour down in huge drops on the parched soil and the hot rooftops, cooling us all. This was the Kalboishakhi, the summerstorm which was Nature’s own relief-measure and heat-control mechanism.
Sometimes, we would be allowed to get wet in the rain, especially if we had prickly heat rashes (as the first rain was supposed to be a miracle-cure for itchy heat-rash). Sometimes there would be hailstorms, and the roofs and gardens would be white with hailstones. Some would be tiny, melting in our hands as we tried to gather them. Some would be as big as golf-balls, which we would reverentially gather in bowls. Their cold crunchiness was a delight to taste.
Another epicurean delight of the Kalboishakhi were the green unripe mangoes which would fall off the madly swinging branches of our neighbour’s mango tree (which overhung our garden wall). We would rush out with laal gamchhas (thin red towels), unmindful of the fruits pelting down on our heads, eager only to collect as many fallen mangoes as possible before the rain became too heavy.
After discarding the tiny inedible ones, we would then peel the rest of our booty, and sit with outstretched legs in the balcony, eating our stolen goods with salt and red-chilli powder, watching the rain pour down. The next morning the sun would be back, in all his fierce glory.
The word Kal in Kalboishakhi probably refers to the 'black clouds which bring the rain', but as a child I always thought that Kal referred to 'tomorrow', and that Kalboishakhi meant that there would be another summerstorm tomorrow, to take away the heat in the evening and give us some more green mangoes.
ANY MEMORIES OF STORMS IN SUMMER?
Friday, March 27, 2009
THAT MYSTERIOUS SPACE UNDER THE BED…
…has all but disappreared in this age of box-beds, where all the beds in my space-cramped flat have inbuilt boxes under them to store blankets and bed-sheets and other prosaic stuff.
Not so when we were young. Under the bed was a magical space accessible only to us children, out of bounds to most adults at most times. It would provide a cosy hiding place, especially if the bedcover was pulled down over the side. We would hide expectantly during lukochuri (hide-and-seek), emerging at the right moment all flushed and with the tops of our heads covered with cobwebs, to cry, “Dhappa” (Caught you!). My parents’ bed, with its low cramped space where you had to bend double or lie flat on your tummy to wriggle in or out, was a good hidey-hole.
My grandparents’ old-fashioned bed, which was raised high by placing a couple of bricks under each foot, offered another kind of sanctum. It was high enough for us to crouch comfortably, and many a secret meeting of us cousins was held on long summer-vacation afternoons with dadu (granddad) snoring blissfully above us. These meetings, chaired (rather, crouched over) by me and including my Bhai (brother) and Antu (my aunt’s son), would usually centre around some idea for tricks to be played on the aforesaid unsuspecting granddad. But, to keep him unsuspecting, we had to conduct the entire meeting in phish-phish (whispers), which added immensely to the mysterious attraction of the place.
Sometimes, we had to share the space under the bed with dozens of coconuts or betelnuts or mangoes plucked from the trees in the garden and laid out on the cool green cemented floor under the bed before they were either eaten or distributed among relations and neighours.
And in moments of deep distress, the best place to cry my heart out (an activity which I did frequently and fervently) was under the bed. I would lie on my tummy, put my head on my arms and bawl and sniffle away to glory, emerging red-eyed but refreshed (and completely de-stressed).
WHAT DID YOU DO UNDER THE BED WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD?
Not so when we were young. Under the bed was a magical space accessible only to us children, out of bounds to most adults at most times. It would provide a cosy hiding place, especially if the bedcover was pulled down over the side. We would hide expectantly during lukochuri (hide-and-seek), emerging at the right moment all flushed and with the tops of our heads covered with cobwebs, to cry, “Dhappa” (Caught you!). My parents’ bed, with its low cramped space where you had to bend double or lie flat on your tummy to wriggle in or out, was a good hidey-hole.
My grandparents’ old-fashioned bed, which was raised high by placing a couple of bricks under each foot, offered another kind of sanctum. It was high enough for us to crouch comfortably, and many a secret meeting of us cousins was held on long summer-vacation afternoons with dadu (granddad) snoring blissfully above us. These meetings, chaired (rather, crouched over) by me and including my Bhai (brother) and Antu (my aunt’s son), would usually centre around some idea for tricks to be played on the aforesaid unsuspecting granddad. But, to keep him unsuspecting, we had to conduct the entire meeting in phish-phish (whispers), which added immensely to the mysterious attraction of the place.
Sometimes, we had to share the space under the bed with dozens of coconuts or betelnuts or mangoes plucked from the trees in the garden and laid out on the cool green cemented floor under the bed before they were either eaten or distributed among relations and neighours.
And in moments of deep distress, the best place to cry my heart out (an activity which I did frequently and fervently) was under the bed. I would lie on my tummy, put my head on my arms and bawl and sniffle away to glory, emerging red-eyed but refreshed (and completely de-stressed).
WHAT DID YOU DO UNDER THE BED WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD?
Saturday, March 21, 2009
HAPPY BIRTHDAYS OF LONG AGO: PART II (AT HOME)
Sorry for the diversion into dark and sweet (and forbidden) chocolate territory.
When I was young, birthdays were celebrated at home in the evenings. The pampered ones had balloons and streamers put up on the walls (with a glittery golden cutout HAPPY BIRTHDAY in the background) and specially baked cakes with frosted icing (shaped like Mickey Mouse or a house in the woods or a cricket pitch - this was before the invasion of Cartoon Network), which would arrive in a white box from some shop (strictly untouchable with an invisble handle-with-care sign).
Being a more frugal sort, we neglected the wall decoration bit and concentrated on the food - not 'ordered from out' but home-made. Maa and Didia (my intrepid cousin) would bake two round cakes with holes at the centre in the trusty Murphy oven. They (the cakes, not the oven) would be full of bits of cherries, petha (a white candied bottlegourd), and kismis (raisins). One cake would remain plain and plump brown (this was held in reserve for second servings) but the other one, meant to be displayed and cut, would be decorated with white icing sugar, mixed and poured through a paper cone. My Didia's painstaking effort in writing my name on the cake would usually result in illegible semi-transparent squiggles on top of the cake. She moped, but we were happy because we got to break off the stiff pieces of icing sugar and suck them even before the cake was cut.
A few of my close friends in the neighbourhood (Mampi and Soma, Sujata and Sonali, with their plaits and pigtails neatly combed and oiled for the occasion) would come, as would my cousin J and her family. I would go ooh and aah over the gifts [faking my surprise, because they had all told and 'consulted' me before buying the gifts - pens and pencil boxes, a jhola/shoulder-slung-bag, crayons and water-colour sets, Amar Chitra Katha-s (comics about Indian history and mythology), inexpensive Bengali storybooks]. One grand present (costing the princely amount of Rs. 40) was a Tintin comic-book given by my Dida (mother's mother) on my tenth birthday - it occupied the pride of place in my bookcase for a long, long time.
The cake-cutting would be a swift and perfunctory affair, with some half-hearted attempts at singing the birthday song (I suspect many of my friends and family were uncomfortable with all that singing in English). The gusto would be reserved for the food.
There would be hot just-fried luchis (puris/ fried hand-made flour pancakes), alurdom (potato-curry) and chicken-curry, followed by the cake ( a nod to our colonial heritage) and payesh (rice cooked in sweetened condensed milk - a traditional Bengali birthday treat).
I remember a certain birthday when the payesh was replaced by a complicated caramel custard (from a recipe in Chic - a popular 'women's' magazine which was diligently devoured by Ma and Didia). My grandparents were slightly dismayed at this deviation from tradition, but everyone else enjoyed the novelty. Later on, in the nineteen-eighties, when Chinese cooking was making incursions into Bengali cuisine and long blue packets of egg-noodles were showing up on grocers' shelves, the luchis were replaced by chicken-chowmein-Bengali-style. But it was all still cooked at home. And after eating (surely the focal point of all Bengali celebrations), the grown-ups would settle down to a round of adda (conversation, often extremely animated) while we kids would be left to play (and sometimes fight) on our own. Unsupervised by any DJs or event-managers or hired men in grotesque Mickey-Mouse-looking-like-Gorilla costumes.
In these hard times, maybe it would make a lot of sense to revert to those simpler celebrations of yore.
WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS? SELF-SUFFICIENT OR DJ-DEPENDENT?
When I was young, birthdays were celebrated at home in the evenings. The pampered ones had balloons and streamers put up on the walls (with a glittery golden cutout HAPPY BIRTHDAY in the background) and specially baked cakes with frosted icing (shaped like Mickey Mouse or a house in the woods or a cricket pitch - this was before the invasion of Cartoon Network), which would arrive in a white box from some shop (strictly untouchable with an invisble handle-with-care sign).
Being a more frugal sort, we neglected the wall decoration bit and concentrated on the food - not 'ordered from out' but home-made. Maa and Didia (my intrepid cousin) would bake two round cakes with holes at the centre in the trusty Murphy oven. They (the cakes, not the oven) would be full of bits of cherries, petha (a white candied bottlegourd), and kismis (raisins). One cake would remain plain and plump brown (this was held in reserve for second servings) but the other one, meant to be displayed and cut, would be decorated with white icing sugar, mixed and poured through a paper cone. My Didia's painstaking effort in writing my name on the cake would usually result in illegible semi-transparent squiggles on top of the cake. She moped, but we were happy because we got to break off the stiff pieces of icing sugar and suck them even before the cake was cut.
A few of my close friends in the neighbourhood (Mampi and Soma, Sujata and Sonali, with their plaits and pigtails neatly combed and oiled for the occasion) would come, as would my cousin J and her family. I would go ooh and aah over the gifts [faking my surprise, because they had all told and 'consulted' me before buying the gifts - pens and pencil boxes, a jhola/shoulder-slung-bag, crayons and water-colour sets, Amar Chitra Katha-s (comics about Indian history and mythology), inexpensive Bengali storybooks]. One grand present (costing the princely amount of Rs. 40) was a Tintin comic-book given by my Dida (mother's mother) on my tenth birthday - it occupied the pride of place in my bookcase for a long, long time.
The cake-cutting would be a swift and perfunctory affair, with some half-hearted attempts at singing the birthday song (I suspect many of my friends and family were uncomfortable with all that singing in English). The gusto would be reserved for the food.
There would be hot just-fried luchis (puris/ fried hand-made flour pancakes), alurdom (potato-curry) and chicken-curry, followed by the cake ( a nod to our colonial heritage) and payesh (rice cooked in sweetened condensed milk - a traditional Bengali birthday treat).
I remember a certain birthday when the payesh was replaced by a complicated caramel custard (from a recipe in Chic - a popular 'women's' magazine which was diligently devoured by Ma and Didia). My grandparents were slightly dismayed at this deviation from tradition, but everyone else enjoyed the novelty. Later on, in the nineteen-eighties, when Chinese cooking was making incursions into Bengali cuisine and long blue packets of egg-noodles were showing up on grocers' shelves, the luchis were replaced by chicken-chowmein-Bengali-style. But it was all still cooked at home. And after eating (surely the focal point of all Bengali celebrations), the grown-ups would settle down to a round of adda (conversation, often extremely animated) while we kids would be left to play (and sometimes fight) on our own. Unsupervised by any DJs or event-managers or hired men in grotesque Mickey-Mouse-looking-like-Gorilla costumes.
In these hard times, maybe it would make a lot of sense to revert to those simpler celebrations of yore.
WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS? SELF-SUFFICIENT OR DJ-DEPENDENT?
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
THE GREAT CHOCOLATE DIVIDE
When we were young, many many moons ago, chocolates were not as plenty on the ground as they seem to be now. Now, every passing guest will bring a gift of chocolates to my two daughters; the fridge is full of yet-to-be-unwrapped Dairy Milk Chocolate bars and other goodies.
The overabundance of chocolates have made them mundane and deprived them of the luscious magic of the past. For us, chocolates were magical stuff to covet and lust for. When they came into our possession, we relished the joy of ownership and the pleasure of anticipation for a long while (almost till the chocolate itself was in danger of melting because of being clutched in our grubby hands for a considerable time). And then the unwrapping of the shiny silvery foil and gazing into the sweet delights of the best brown colour in the whole wide world. And the love affair continued at the first bite …and the next…down to the last licking of the gooey mess in the folds of the foil or the tips of the fingers.
It was understandable when we learnt in college that the word chocolate had its roots in the Mexican ‘xococatl’ – a fittingly exotic origin for an out-of-the-world flavour.
The appeal of chocolates was all the more because we got to eat them on rare occasions, and then usually it was a small Cadbury’s éclairs or a 5-Star bar that had to be divided with great care and eaten with great relish.
So, you can understand our (my brother and mine) round-eyed, open-mouthed delight when my maasi (aunt) once gifted us a whole set of chocolate bars. The Amul company had then recently launched chocolate bars in different flavours, and maasi had generously given us the entire range!
We felt like monarchs who had been given the entire earth to rule over. There were orange-flavoured and coffee-flavoured chocolate, bars with nuts-and-raisins, rice-crispies, butter-scotch, peanuts, a dark chocolate one and a regular milk chocolate one.
Just the weight of the carry-bag and the feel of the rectangular bars (worth more to us than gold bars, at that moment) transported us to a kind of ecstasy.
And then came the difficult part. Like most monarchs who have to divide and rule, we too had to divide the booty to eat our share. Easy-peasy – eight bars, each neatly sectioned into sixteen cuboids. So what was the problem?
The problem was me. I was the glutton, gobbling my share in a matter of an hour or so, OD-ing on this unexpected bonanza, blissed out, but not satisfied. My prudent brother had a bite here and a bite there, and had kept the rest of his stash in the fridge, planning to enjoy his bonus a little at a time.
If only I would let him (Boy proposes, greedy sister disposes - this was the rule in our house). I remember coaxing him and cajoling him, then threatening him so loudly that my mother had to settle the sweet-dispute. Finally I used the pacifist-but-extremely-discomfiting ploy of sitting right in front of him when he would take out a bit of his hoarded treasure, and staring at him with starving-eyes, till he would be forced to shell out a cube or two (being a soft-hearted little fellow).
Ah, bliss all over again. Chocolate enjoyed through ill-gotten means tasted even better than the legally-devoured stuff.
DO SHARE A CHOCOLATE MEMORY.
P.S: THANK YOU, SCRIBBIT, FOR THIS MEMORY CALORIE-TRIP. (This post was written for Michelle’s Write Away contest).
The overabundance of chocolates have made them mundane and deprived them of the luscious magic of the past. For us, chocolates were magical stuff to covet and lust for. When they came into our possession, we relished the joy of ownership and the pleasure of anticipation for a long while (almost till the chocolate itself was in danger of melting because of being clutched in our grubby hands for a considerable time). And then the unwrapping of the shiny silvery foil and gazing into the sweet delights of the best brown colour in the whole wide world. And the love affair continued at the first bite …and the next…down to the last licking of the gooey mess in the folds of the foil or the tips of the fingers.
It was understandable when we learnt in college that the word chocolate had its roots in the Mexican ‘xococatl’ – a fittingly exotic origin for an out-of-the-world flavour.
The appeal of chocolates was all the more because we got to eat them on rare occasions, and then usually it was a small Cadbury’s éclairs or a 5-Star bar that had to be divided with great care and eaten with great relish.
So, you can understand our (my brother and mine) round-eyed, open-mouthed delight when my maasi (aunt) once gifted us a whole set of chocolate bars. The Amul company had then recently launched chocolate bars in different flavours, and maasi had generously given us the entire range!
We felt like monarchs who had been given the entire earth to rule over. There were orange-flavoured and coffee-flavoured chocolate, bars with nuts-and-raisins, rice-crispies, butter-scotch, peanuts, a dark chocolate one and a regular milk chocolate one.
Just the weight of the carry-bag and the feel of the rectangular bars (worth more to us than gold bars, at that moment) transported us to a kind of ecstasy.
And then came the difficult part. Like most monarchs who have to divide and rule, we too had to divide the booty to eat our share. Easy-peasy – eight bars, each neatly sectioned into sixteen cuboids. So what was the problem?
The problem was me. I was the glutton, gobbling my share in a matter of an hour or so, OD-ing on this unexpected bonanza, blissed out, but not satisfied. My prudent brother had a bite here and a bite there, and had kept the rest of his stash in the fridge, planning to enjoy his bonus a little at a time.
If only I would let him (Boy proposes, greedy sister disposes - this was the rule in our house). I remember coaxing him and cajoling him, then threatening him so loudly that my mother had to settle the sweet-dispute. Finally I used the pacifist-but-extremely-discomfiting ploy of sitting right in front of him when he would take out a bit of his hoarded treasure, and staring at him with starving-eyes, till he would be forced to shell out a cube or two (being a soft-hearted little fellow).
Ah, bliss all over again. Chocolate enjoyed through ill-gotten means tasted even better than the legally-devoured stuff.
DO SHARE A CHOCOLATE MEMORY.
P.S: THANK YOU, SCRIBBIT, FOR THIS MEMORY CALORIE-TRIP. (This post was written for Michelle’s Write Away contest).
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