When I was a little…

Ashvin washing up in a pond.

The fifth time I uttered these words in two days I realized that I was happy but more importantly - I was growing old. This is something sure to happen to you if you take your kids someplace time slowed down at and retrace a few steps of your childhood. We went to a village a few days back.

On the train ride there I told Ankit how at his age I loved getting up on the top berth and reading books all night long.

Hours later, as we boarded the local bus, there was the story of me rushing to the back seats of  buses with my friends. Those seats threw you high up when the bus went over potholes. It was like a rollercoaster.

I think I held back my excitement and did not utter ‘when I was little’ till we reached our bed and breakfast and stood near a mango tree. The little raw mangoes bought back too many memories and another story of how we stole them. About how un-ladylike I was as I lifted up my skirt to carry as many as I could back home (I was five).



Walking along some fields.

 The next day we walked through paddy fields and had to cross a few irrigation trenches. I had spent many days in fields behind my grandmother’s house creating little dams and watching our slippers float down the tiny canals. My kids got to hear all about it.

Then sugarcane sticks showed up and another story followed as I demonstrated the steps - peel, gnaw, spit – to eating a fresh piece of sugarcane.

There were many more moments like that and when I finally got time to reflect I realized somewhere in all of this, I felt happy, I felt like a kid and then I felt really old.