The Monsoon Showers of a Memorable Childhood

My earliest memory of my childhood was my fourth birthday. When life was confined in a rose-tinted herbarium, and smiles were less forced. I remember going around and calling everyone around my house for my cake-cutting. I just started school and was all hyped up to take sweets to my classroom and share them with the rikshaw uncle who used to take me to school. I remember being particular about my navy blue romper dress and white vest. However, I forgot one small thing, i.e., to let my mother and father know there would be guests for my birthday. When the evening rolled in, and my perfectly iced plum cake was lit with four colorful candles, my mom almost lost it when she saw another twenty people with wide smiles standing in front of the house. Age was never a matter. I introduced all of them as my friends in my 4-year-old innocence. Even if she wanted to pull her hair out, she embraced me with all the love in the world and sang happy birthday to me while my father beamed behind his camera, clicking pictures. My mother treasures all those pictures even now.

My father survived a mini library and a reading room for me and my sister in our house. He stored books from all genres there. There was a bookseller who visited our house often. His name was Gopalakrishnan, a man in his early 50s with kind eyes and bright tinkling laughter. I used to eagerly wait for those Thursdays when he used to visit us on his Kawasaki bike. Although children’s classics and Aesop fables found their way to the shelves, my father’s prime possession was the encyclopedias he bought us. I used to spend hours immersing myself in the colorful prints of the hard-bound books. My father, an artist and photographer then, always encouraged us to sketch our favorite pictures into our books. Mine was a cheetah chasing a gazel. I found the picture majestic and mesmerizing. However, my rendition on paper in the early days often came out as stick figures or cuboidal cheetahs with broken teeth. I spent more time reading the book than sketching it. My focus was more on writing my own stories about the cheetah and gazel with, of course, me in the picture riding either of them. That was when my father gifted me the Malayalam translation of a children’s book called Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. The world of Toto was my version of Utopia. When I read the book, I was Toto. I was a student in Kobayashi master’s class, learning about the food from hills and water. When the homework of primary school crushed my five-year-old brain, I found solace in the dream world of Toto. I used to create such ruckus in my house to have the tiffin box curated like Toto’s with a little something from the land and water. I made a regional version of Toto in myself. Whenever people called me mischievous, I was beaming with pride with whatever was left of my milk teeth. After Toto-Chan, I collected children’s books like a hungry bunny. I found abridged versions of Malgudi Days, Tenali Raman, and even Bible stories. My mother taught me compassion and love, and books taught me where these emotions fell into place. Books have been my first and best friend since then, which connected me more to nature and its lush greenery.

There was a mango tree in our garden, heavy with a thousand mini fruits. My sister and I used to play all kinds of games under the tree. It was our safe space. I used to hide little trinkets inside a small opening in the tree and hope for the garden fairies to find them. There was a distinct smell in the air those days. In the early days of April, the pre-monsoon showers in the Western Ghats used to bless my garden with little white pearly raindrops. Much to my mother’s chagrin, my sister and I used to soak ourselves to the bone. When the rain picked up its speed, it brought all the mangoes down to our hands. Sometimes, it was a handful, sometimes a bucketful. When the storeroom overflowed with the sweet aroma of monsoon mangoes, it was mango time in my household. Mango for breakfast, mango curry for lunch, mango papad for snacks, and mango dessert for dinner. We had our fill till our fingers turned into prunes, and our faces were all sticky with the sweet residue of mango pulp.

Then came my little brother. The apple of our eyes. I was a little jealous to give away my position as the youngest in my house, but his cuteness bulldozed all those barriers. Days following his arrival have been a war between my protective instincts and elder-sister privileges. One day, he was running around on his pudgy feet, and now he is all grown up and miles away from me, building his career the way he wants. Even then, he is still that chubby ball of sunshine to me. Till now, nothing can compare to the happiness those days gave me.

Now, rains come back religiously every year to our garden, but it never feels the same. The rose-tinted glasses are shattered, and the then 4-year-old is trying to mend the remnants with gold. In Japanese, they call this art of mending kintsugi, but I call it adulthood. Books are the only constants that are a takeaway from my childhood. They are overflowing my shelves and suitcases. Their familiar smell grounds me with peace.

Time taught me love, companionship, friendship, comradery, and whatnot. Time taught me to break my walls and move away from my comfort zone. Life taught me that living in the now was priceless. It taught me to appreciate the people who came into my story. It gave me the courage to let them in and survive the tides of tomorrow. Life taught me that having friends was a safety blanket, like life insurance, which allowed me to fall back when things went out of my hands. With all my happy memories and salty hardships, I would not have it any other way.