Up memory-lane

There was this time when I was a kid when I had asked my brother when does it become morning. He had told me that it was 2:30 am. That night in bed I kept asking my mother every few minutes if it was 2:30 already or not. My motive was to brag in the morning that I had woken up at dawn! It was only when my mother got angry at being woken up so often after what must have been a tiring day and threatened to send me out of bed did I give up and fall asleep.

Until a few years ago my brother and I had regular fights everyday. It mainly comprised one sitting over the other and punching the other mercilessly, until the role was reversed and the punched became the puncher. When we were kids and we got into one of these fights our mother used to lock my brother in the bathroom (and switched off the lights) and lock me out of the house. I remember standing outside and crying loudly when the neighbours came and enquired what was wrong.

The Bangla newspaper that we took in our house had 2 white spaces on the left and right of the masthead (as do most other newspaper mastheads). My brother and I used to put our signatures on these two spaces. But each morning we competed on who would sign on the space to the left of the masthead. Initially whoever woke up first would sign on the left and whoever woke up later would throw a tantrum. That's when our father arbitrated that we should take turns on alternate days to sign on the left. But I used to sign on the left out of turn on mischief and we used to have huge rows. Similar was the case with who would sleep on the only pillow with a Mickey Mouse pillow cover when it was decided that we would take turns.

We also had these games of counting the number of images of Ma Durga in the newspaper during the Puja season. We also counted the number of Mother Teresa images in the papers everyday in September 1997.

Then there were these psycho neighbours downstairs who thought any noise in the building was due to us jumping upstairs. They would come and complain to our parents of us disturbing them even if we were not there in the house. Our father therefore forbade us to make any noise on the floor. That is when we took some spare wool from our mother, wound it up into a spherical shape and used it as a noise-proof cricket ball. And did it bounce if you hit the deck hard! Necessity is the mother of invention after all.

I had on numerous occasions broken glasses in the house. On one occasion I had boxed the glass of our new showcase to bits because my father had not taken me to the market with him. My mother had kept me tied to the bedstead with my pair of track-suits after a sound trashing.

Today that I am away from home, away from family, these memories come gushing up memory-lane.

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