My Frequent Walks Down the Memory Lane

I live in the past. Nostalgia is my food. I go about my day moving in and out of my memories, some fond, some bitter, laced with sights, sounds and scents of the years which slipped by. Sometimes I have a painful longing to get physically transported to the times when life was simpler, pleasures were not materialistic, wants were limited to basic necessities and time was at your disposal. As I say this, I realise that I don’t like change. I feel suffocated with too many changes and too much transformation.

Of all the images that I cherish the most are those associated with my mother. She was a simple woman and was loved by everyone in the family. She was educated till PUC, learnt Carnatic music and would sing Tyaagaraaja keertanaas with such melodious voice. Draped in a starched cotton saree and with a fragrance of Cuticura talcum powder about her, she exuded a sense of peace and serenity that brought us tremendous comfort and warmth. As children we would just love to linger around her all the time, waiting for her attention. 

Our summer vacation was invariably spent in my maternal grandparents’ village Godavarru, which stood on the banks of river Krishna. Their humble village life and their abundant,unconditional love for their grandchildren were the most unforgettable memories of life in Godavarru. It was a place where time stood still, silence was deafening, punctuated with mooing of a cow or buzzing of a bee. We loved to play hide and seek in the cow shed or lie down on the warm hay stack for most part of the day, completely engrossed in some funny story narrated by a cousin,while a calf softly nudged us as though demanding a little attention from us.  Once when I casually mentioned to my 14 year old daughter, that I loved the smell of cow-dung, her urban upbringing was quite shaken. ‘You love the smell of cow shit? Yeeew, mom what’s wrong with you?!!’ But I was pleasantly unaffected by her outburst and I slipped back into the warm and cosy labyrinths of my mind.

It was in Godavarru that we learnt our first lessons – milking the cows, star-gazing on clear silent nights, textures of the earth, taste of a tender and unripe banana, the sharp pain of a bee sting, fragrance of wet mud, simplicity of the village folk,falling in love with nature, village customs and rituals, the sweet taste of water from a cool earthen pot, the art of relishing sugar cane with its raw stalk and a whole lot of things that are so part of me now.

Godavarru was like a sanctuary for us and we would escape from the humdrum of the city at every possible chance. For my mom, it was a piece of earth that was hers, the essence of which she carried with her till her last breath. Years later, now when I reminisce those times, my grandmother’s voice singing softly as she gathered flowers from the garden for her morning puja, the rusty but rhythmic sound of the hand pump next to the well, the high-pitched out-of-tune crowing of a cockerel in the yard,temple bells, all come alive as one beautiful symphony.