Memories — part one
(sorry for the spelling and grammatical errors if any. I’m not good in those. But i hope you understand my views)
When I saw the old photos of me and my sister in my aunt’s photo album, I was really excited and happy. Watching my own photos of childhood is like getting your lost memories after a long time. And in my case, it was literally true.
According to myself, my life have two phases so far. The first one was the 11 years of my childhood, spent at mother’s hometown with her and grandparents. And the second, is my rest of life. I consider the first part of my life as the best I ever had. It’s those days which made the fountain of what I’m today. But unfortunately I forgot almost all part of those. But still I always try to recreate those shredded memories.
The oldest memory I have is losing myself in a bus station. I might be two or three when it happened. The memory I had is not original, it’s recreated from the description I got from my parents and relatives. Then I remember me running with my little sister who is max one or two. She feels from my hand his her head in the wooden chair and blood comes out. I was so scared and I hides myself in the other room. She got few stitches in her head.
When I was a kid, if you ask me “who do you want to be when you grow up?” I might have said a bus conductor or a driver. May be the reason for that is because I lived in a village where bus was a main transportation. Sitting in front seat of the bus watching how skillfully the driver drive through the narrow road with a lot of ups and downs was perhaps the most courageous thing I seen as a kid. I loved the bag which the conductor uses. It was a black leather bag with two or three pockets and not zipper. He put coins in one and notes in the second. I had one once. I had a lot of coins too, just like the conductor. I used to play and one day, as I remember, I got angry for something and throwed almost all the coins in the toilet.
The geography of my village was so special. It had lot of greenery everywhere. A river with lots of stories. Every once in a while when dad comes to the house, he always prefer to take bath in the river. So I do go with him. From the time I remember, our river had a bridge. So I goes with dad and take dip in the water. I always enjoyed the sound of vibration in the bridge and the sound it carry to the water every time a vehicle pass through that. To make things interesting, the part of river where I used to go when I’m with my mom is completely different. That place had lot of little stones with different colors and shapes. The cold water washing through your feet and little small fishes biting me, making me tickle are the best part of those. The river bank had a yellow bamboo tree. The place where the river and the shore met used to covered with yellow and dark grey bamboo leafs. I still miss that place.
Some memories are completely fragmented. I get confused if they are the part of a day dream I had or is it a creative imagination I borrowed from the novels and stories I read about Malabar and places? I used to read a lot — both the kids magazines and novels and book. At my home, there were 5 thick books with a textured black thick cover with triangular covers in the corners. Those where the collection of “Mathrubhoomi weekly”. The sapia color toned pages had the black and white illustration and advt. some pages had color advt. I started reading the cartoon which was in the last paged called “cheriya manushyarum valiya lokavum” ( the big world and small humans) then I started to read the novel — Unnikkuttante oru divasam by nandanar. The novel was about the world through the eyes of a kid or 5 year old. He had a lot of similarities with me. So a lot of memories I had, are confused with the novel.
