Memoirs of A...nushya ;-)

I spent all of last sunday at home, helping my mother spruce the house.Cleaning and rearranging is loads of fun because 1.I seldom do it,so it's a novel chore for me and 2.Many memories and treasures eventually surface from beneath forgotten piles or unopened cupboards and boxes.As I was going through a particularly lonesome,decrepit suitcase;I found some photos of my brother and myself taken eons ago.It was a lazy afternoon and my mother was reminiscing stories of our childhood.My eyelids were getting heavier and heavier.Time revolved back in concentric circles,going round and round till I was 4 or even younger in Calcutta.

I could see myself running around in a pretty blue frock with a grey teddy bear tucked under my arms,talking to myself.While my brother was sitting on the dining chair,dressed in red,coloring a book,absorbed and intent as if he were working on some blueprint of a rocket design.All through these images,I could hear my mother's voice telling me how different we both were right from the beginning.My brother being the the first born was inherently responsible,mature,focussed and quite intelligent.When he was born,she had the easiest time teaching him,be it numbers or alphabets,to tell time,play chess etc.He took to lessons like a fish to water or err.....bears to honey ;-)

Then I came along.I was the antithesis of everything he was.I was noisy and gregarious,unpredictable and least interested in anything academic.I didn't learn to tell time till quite late and I seemed hardly bothered by it.To me,desires and moods were a better guide to do anything than numbers pointed by wall clocks.My brother was quiet and reserved,interested in cerebral things.I didn't believe in wasting time over anything for more than 2 mins.I believed in equality and giving everything,be it people or things,around me a fair share of my attention. When my mother tried teaching me chess,for the first time,I swatted all the unnecessary coins off the board,marched my king right across to the other and yelled check mate.I didn't see any point in weaving thick plots,meandering slowly through a game that could finish in a couple of seconds.Before my mother could explain the intricacies of the game,my attention was already diverted to other matters.




Those were the days when "older brother" meant someone to look upto,someone who stood up for you.Much to the annoyance of my brother,I did everything he did.When we went to restaurants,I ordered all that he did.I still remember for years I went around fussing and refusing to eat capsicum because he never liked it.And all that time I would dream and drool about that vegetable I loved.I guess,independant thinking was a process I developed much later in life.It was just safer to follow his wake,for he was never wrong.Some memories remain much longer than others and I still can't forget the rains in Calcutta,when every road would be flooded,rivers of rain water flowing by our apartments.We were let off from our schools and we would spend the whole day making paper boats setting it sailing in those rivers.

W stayed in Calcutta for 8 years.For me most of the memories from there are distant and hazy because they were the first 8yrs of my life.As my mother went over so many of them that afternoon,I was so grateful for the richness in my life,of relationships and good times,of a loving family and an interesting childhood.