Ah those days at ‘Nani ke ghar’. They come back to me on crisp winter mornings when the sun shines on me while eating curd. Those days we would visit nani during winter holidays. It was a large farmhouse that came after long weary travel from Bareilly. When we travelled on bus I hated the long journey from Shajahanpur to the Farm. It pained my butts to sit for so long and still inside the bus where ugly men would blow beedi smoke all over one's face. They werent a bit nice or smiley towards my mom and Dady on the bus! Why they didnt even know us or who we were!
At the farmhouse there was a neat row of peach and pink button roses along the boundry wall of the farm house. We would sleep next to that dirly yellow lime boundry wall that divided the house between nanaji's younger brother and nanajis house. Mama and Nana would go to the Rice Mill and fields to sow paddy at that time of the year and nani and the guests (my Dad when he visited along with us) would stay at home and read newspaper and go for long walks and go for fishing to the river Gomti which flowed nearby. We never caught any fish! At night we would have elaborate mosquito nets mounted upon our beds and the bed sheets which were shiny white would smell of sweet sun. It was nani’s efficient superclean laundry management. It made for a very peaceful night of sleep except for the times when kids wanted to go to Pee.
At the farmhouse there was a neat row of peach and pink button roses along the boundry wall of the farm house. We would sleep next to that dirly yellow lime boundry wall that divided the house between nanaji's younger brother and nanajis house. Mama and Nana would go to the Rice Mill and fields to sow paddy at that time of the year and nani and the guests (my Dad when he visited along with us) would stay at home and read newspaper and go for long walks and go for fishing to the river Gomti which flowed nearby. We never caught any fish! At night we would have elaborate mosquito nets mounted upon our beds and the bed sheets which were shiny white would smell of sweet sun. It was nani’s efficient superclean laundry management. It made for a very peaceful night of sleep except for the times when kids wanted to go to Pee.
Now peeing was a little difficult thing on those starry nights because the toilets were far far away and there were the farm dogs lurking in the darkness between the bed and the toilet.(big tibetan mastiffs or 'desi' as we called them) So often nani would ask me to haunch and shoot right next to her bed. The 5 year old me would feel part embarrassed and part disgusted but did it there all the same. Strangely in the mornings one never smelled urine. It must have been the cowdung swept floor that soaked in everything or another of nani’s magic tricks.
In the mornings when one started showing some movement in the bed between the white starched blankets the whole household would be warming up to the day. The kids could disappear for some more time in the blankets till the warm bottle of milk arrived. When it arrived it always tasted of ghee and was thicker than was familiar to us city kids. One took ones own sweet time in gulping it down making gurgling sounds in the throat.
Then the house helps arrived. The beds would have to be put back in the storeroom that smelled of kerosene. One would grudgingly wake up and be deported to the toilets with a toothbrush.Since the toilets were unfamiliar to the me as I had only experinced compact toilet of our Bareilly home Nani's toilets looked like monster toilets. I always had the morbid fear that I would fall inside the that wide Indian pot and will have to be painfully cleaned up of all the muck that would stick on me by nani(who had a cleanliness streak) I hated the Handpump that one had to struggle with to get water before going inside the toilet. It made me feel small and incapable and away from my home in Bareilly. It was unfamiliar territory where none of the loving attention of the whole family cushioned poor little me!
I hated the huge steel tumblers and buckets. They had a strange pungent smell. They smelled of Farm. Unfamiliar Wilderness. No one even said GOOD JOB done after I had successfully dealt with them. For all my mom's love for this place it was still unfamiliar territory for me! I wasnt ever given any space to adjust into this new territory. It was always thrust on me it seems in retrospect. For there wasnt much to hold the attention of a 5 year old. And It was soo far away from my home in Bareilly. Sigh!In nani’s village I had no friends other than the cousins who were visiting. Most of the times there were unwritten rules of conduct for even little children to not mix too much with the laborers who lived in straw huts. I hated their prejudice and rules being forced on me. I didnt know what to do with those 1 and half foots of me. After all there had to be more in live that taking rounds of green fields, picking up berries and running after chickens and collectin g eggs in the morning. Sometime's the Hen wouldnt even lay an egg shattering my world! So there was nothing to do except play all the time with oneself and while keeping elders happy!
The thing that always surprises me is that even in those days of being so green behind the ear’s I felt terribly self conscious. Always hated it when people laughed at what I had to say in my lisping voice. I thought I was an important man(trapped in the body of a plump 5year old girl) They never saw me for who I really was. I surely wasn’t somebody they ought to have told to go to pee before I came to sleep on that bed. Maybe it’s got something to do with having an old soul even inside a kid’s body.
The cynical crinkled wrinkled old soul inside the plump smelling like a sparrow’s nest kid hated Nani’s home because everyone oooh aaahheed at her. In retrospect I wonder why wasnt it as happy then as it looks now. Maybe Childhood is in fact a difficult period for those inside it but off course Roses havent tasted so sweet and pillows havent smelled so delicious as they did when I was as nani's home.
