Remniscences of a Desi Stuffaholic
A visit to the local children’s museum was enough to get me nostalgic for the umpteenth time this year. The sights of gigantic balloons that fill up by a lever-driven, pedaling or pumping action, mazes of different kinds, windmill replicas --- they all brought back memories of a childhood that didn’t need museums or fancy green islands to explore and learn about the world around. I mean, our own backyards or front yards served as learning stations, back at home.
I remember walking down to the windmill to get fresh “atta” ground, hand in hand with the other kids in the neighborhood, led by my maid. I also remember, as a little girl, of about seven, or eight, my intense love and fancy for stuff - which made me a stuffaholic - stuff like stamps, coins, pressed flowers, leaves, cashews (tucked securely in their shells), and a few other things I cannot seem to summon up at this moment. A stark contrast, I might add, to the manner in which our little American-born ones are saving their “favorites” in computer bytes, and gluing things that they might consider reminiscing later, onto pages of custom-designed scrapbooks, sometimes even e-books. Even their memories are a bargain --- which makes me wonder if they’ll ever be able to enjoy the little things in life like we did. Little things like picking fresh flowers, and leaves, and pressing them between dog-eared pages of books handed down from generations. Gathering bird feathers under banyan trees, eating fresh guavas picked from neighbors’ gardens, slurping on homemade tamarind lollipops, among other things.
When I was a little girl, the most exciting summer activity of all, was an unstated competition for collection of cashews. There were about six cashew trees in my neighborhood, and the biggest of them all stood in my neighbor’s garden. A strapping, grumpy woman, she was known to be rather hostile to children (and adults too, in general), and the right time to sneak in would be the afternoon, when she’d take her post-lunch siesta. I remember sneaking in there with my little plastic bag, clambering up the tree in a trice (I knew all its branches, nodes and safety handles closely), and counting how many were within reach. I would then end up biting into one or more irresistibly juicy cashew apples, and meanwhile, my friends, who were apparently shrewder, would have picked a dozen more cashews. The norm was to hurl the cashew apples away after the cashews had been pinched off. These cashews were then stowed away in tin boxes in our respective kitchen attics, and on one chosen day, they would all be counted, and the shells roasted, in a small garden fire, under the supervision of an adult who was considered wacky and wild enough to be a part of the squad. The winner would get a fruit picked fresh from the garden, or, on occasion, a pencil or a sharpener.
Sure, my little one gets to go apple picking, enjoy corn-on-cobs, relish cotton candies, and even popsicles. But there is a huge difference - her access to these things is limited, and not so much natural as it is fabricated. I wouldn’t dare let her pinch a couple of fruits off the neighbor’s garden, and the Scrapbook Groupies sell far more attractive pressed flowers than she’d end up getting if she took a shot at it on her own. She wouldn’t know the greatness of tiny, shiny marbles (as collected and deposited in little tin boxes, in my days). She wouldn’t know the value of stamps (as begged and beseeched from “foreign-returned” relatives) given the scarcity of snail mails. She wouldn’t know the thrill of counting coins (as segregated and stacked based on their geographical origin, in China silk pouches) given the swiping, sweeping abundance of Visa and Master cards around.
Even though my own stints with collecting stuff never lasted long, there was always something new to enthuse my little mind, during the good old growing up years. I seldom stuck to any one thing, and relentlessly kept at acquiring several fractionary collections, through the years. But rather surprisingly, I find today that it’s impossible to lay my hands on a single stamp or quarter or dime even if I rummaged the entire house, and my flowers and cashews are exclusively store bought. And being the modern, more reformed stuffaholic these days, the least I can ensure is to save my little girl’s visits to parks and museums on sleek little disks for her future viewing pleasure. But for now, I must get her to nibble on sugarcane sticks with rows of brand new teeth, this Pongal.
I remember walking down to the windmill to get fresh “atta” ground, hand in hand with the other kids in the neighborhood, led by my maid. I also remember, as a little girl, of about seven, or eight, my intense love and fancy for stuff - which made me a stuffaholic - stuff like stamps, coins, pressed flowers, leaves, cashews (tucked securely in their shells), and a few other things I cannot seem to summon up at this moment. A stark contrast, I might add, to the manner in which our little American-born ones are saving their “favorites” in computer bytes, and gluing things that they might consider reminiscing later, onto pages of custom-designed scrapbooks, sometimes even e-books. Even their memories are a bargain --- which makes me wonder if they’ll ever be able to enjoy the little things in life like we did. Little things like picking fresh flowers, and leaves, and pressing them between dog-eared pages of books handed down from generations. Gathering bird feathers under banyan trees, eating fresh guavas picked from neighbors’ gardens, slurping on homemade tamarind lollipops, among other things.
When I was a little girl, the most exciting summer activity of all, was an unstated competition for collection of cashews. There were about six cashew trees in my neighborhood, and the biggest of them all stood in my neighbor’s garden. A strapping, grumpy woman, she was known to be rather hostile to children (and adults too, in general), and the right time to sneak in would be the afternoon, when she’d take her post-lunch siesta. I remember sneaking in there with my little plastic bag, clambering up the tree in a trice (I knew all its branches, nodes and safety handles closely), and counting how many were within reach. I would then end up biting into one or more irresistibly juicy cashew apples, and meanwhile, my friends, who were apparently shrewder, would have picked a dozen more cashews. The norm was to hurl the cashew apples away after the cashews had been pinched off. These cashews were then stowed away in tin boxes in our respective kitchen attics, and on one chosen day, they would all be counted, and the shells roasted, in a small garden fire, under the supervision of an adult who was considered wacky and wild enough to be a part of the squad. The winner would get a fruit picked fresh from the garden, or, on occasion, a pencil or a sharpener.
Sure, my little one gets to go apple picking, enjoy corn-on-cobs, relish cotton candies, and even popsicles. But there is a huge difference - her access to these things is limited, and not so much natural as it is fabricated. I wouldn’t dare let her pinch a couple of fruits off the neighbor’s garden, and the Scrapbook Groupies sell far more attractive pressed flowers than she’d end up getting if she took a shot at it on her own. She wouldn’t know the greatness of tiny, shiny marbles (as collected and deposited in little tin boxes, in my days). She wouldn’t know the value of stamps (as begged and beseeched from “foreign-returned” relatives) given the scarcity of snail mails. She wouldn’t know the thrill of counting coins (as segregated and stacked based on their geographical origin, in China silk pouches) given the swiping, sweeping abundance of Visa and Master cards around.
Even though my own stints with collecting stuff never lasted long, there was always something new to enthuse my little mind, during the good old growing up years. I seldom stuck to any one thing, and relentlessly kept at acquiring several fractionary collections, through the years. But rather surprisingly, I find today that it’s impossible to lay my hands on a single stamp or quarter or dime even if I rummaged the entire house, and my flowers and cashews are exclusively store bought. And being the modern, more reformed stuffaholic these days, the least I can ensure is to save my little girl’s visits to parks and museums on sleek little disks for her future viewing pleasure. But for now, I must get her to nibble on sugarcane sticks with rows of brand new teeth, this Pongal.
posted by Ranjini | 9:00 PM
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