Summer Diaries

Chapter-4

“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.”

With every sunrise there is a new beginning. And every morning brings its own flavors of life. Our usual summer mornings would kick off at 6 in the morning. Jumping out of our beds, we would run towards the washroom to get a place in the long awaited queue 🙂 . And that time toilets were modern concept in Indian villages and we had only one to our rescue 🙂 To add on to our problems our elders would push us last in the queue by saying our freshen up could wait 😛 as we have nothing important to do 😉 After waiting for long we hurriedly finished our business turn by turn 😛 and raced towards the kitchen to get the delicious cow milk. Our grandmother had a cow named LALI who was Jersey cow and use to give about 10 liters of milk in a day. A glass of milk was accompanied with sweets made of khoya (is a dairy product) and white misres (Sugar cubes) 🙂 .

cone shaped sugar cubes

After relishing our mornings with sweetness we would rush to our GAME ZONE.

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Every day was different for us as we played different games each day. But the most played and exciting one was “Ghar-Ghar”(Home-Home). My elder cousin who was our boss usually decided who would play which character in the game 🙂 As I was quite obedient she used to make me her baby .Sometimes when someone else wanted to be her child she would become my mother-in-law and made me a newly bride 😉 At that time being bride was so beautiful I just had to wear beautiful sarees (a garment consisting of a length of cotton or silk elaborately draped around the body) that were taken stealthy from my grandmother’s closet 🙂 . They were my first lessons towards understanding Indian married life :). Those days taught me how to wear sarees and saved me in my initial days of matrimonial life 🙂

cotton saree

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Sometimes when my male cousins didn’t oblige we would decide to play shopping game 🙂 Here all boys would become shopkeepers and sell something 🙂 we girls would simply do our favorite work 😉 by playing shoppers 🙂 . My brother always opened a Paan shop 🙂 making a different kind of Paan with Litchi leaves having tulsi and sugar in it but the most amazing part was that the spit and stain was exactly of RED color 🙂

Our paan ingredients and original meetha paan

We would keep eating them until we were caught doing this by some elders. One of my cousin would become saree shop owner and would drape sarees on his body 😀 and would beg us to buy one from him 🙂 .The currency was made out of old newspaper with numbers written on them 🙂

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At times when we got bored of playing all the games we would accompany our grandmother to paddy fields and would get in the mud to help the labors in ploughing 🙂 .

paddy field

It was less of help and more of fun for all of us 🙂 . We drenched ourselves in mud and would be pleaded by labors not to help them anymore :P. After being dragged out of the fields we were taken to canals for quick showers 🙂 .After doing so much of work we were given roasted corns with sprinkle of lime and black salt on it.

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There were days when we would just roam on our village streets. At times we were entertained in other people’s home where they gave us their home grown fruits 🙂 Some were quite loving lot who would ask us to have lunch in their homes and we dutifully obliged to their insistence 🙂 . According to my mom and my relatives I was a very cute kid and people would love to hold me and use to take me to their home 🙂 One such time I went to someone‘s place and they offered me lunch and I said OK I will have it but let me call my other siblings too 🙂 In village my sibling grew from one to seven 🙂 I called them all from home and they had to offer lunch to all of us 😛 . After that they called us for snacks 😉 but never offered meal 😀

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To be continued …..

Please read the other chapters if you have missed them from below :

Chapter 1

Chapter-2

Chapter-3