I desperately searched for old photographs from my childhood spent in my maternal grandparents house in Godavarru. Pictures of the makeshift swing we used to play with all day long, the cool and cozy dining room with the red oxide floor, the kitchen with earthen stoves and musty smell of burnt coal and a cat curled up in the corner, the village school with charpoys for the kids to sit, the green fields lined with the irrigation canals, the huge banyan tree in front of the my grandparents’ house, the cupboard where my granny stored the goodies that she cooked for her grandchildren, the village well and many many more, all kept somewhere safe and secure.
I was pretty sure I put them all in that old wooden chest.
…and it dawned on me suddenly that they were just images in my mind that were so vivid, so alive and so real that I have not realised that they were only my memories which pulled me back to the place that I loved the most.
Not only you, Jyothi, I too have fond memories of the place and people, not only of my childhood but till the dilapidated house was razed down in Apr-May 2005. Your mother and other sister’s too have sentimental bondage with Godavarru. In fact, your mother travelled with me to the village on the day the old house was to be brought down, to have a last glimpse. Some time later, after a year perhaps, we both went there again and first visited the temple. After about 15 minutes I asked her to come with me to the site; she said she did not want to see the empty space where the house, a center of love and affection of family, which had marked grand memories, once stood.
You do not believe, but I dream of the place and people in my sleep almost everyday, as if I was living there with all my people around. I thought I would build a small house there so that we could spend a few days each year, but it has not taken shape for one reason or the other.