Back in the ’90s, I remember how my family would pack the bags with winter clothes and reach home after changing several buses to the home. The grandparents would sit all day long in balconies to wait for us. The one of a kind reunion! …especially over Diwali!
The celebration used to start early in the day and in the evening we all sat in a kitchen that had a chullah, on which my grandma made delicacies. Her feeble hand would artistically make round ainkali’s out of rice flour, babru (sweet fried bread with fennel seeds) and black lentils cooked in a generous amount of buffalo’s ghee. We all would sit in the kitchen, my younger brother occupying the seat near chullah stealing all the warmth and playing with twigs. The smoke from firewood added a flavor to the dishes and even to the boiling hot water kept in a brass pan over the diminishing flame.
Dad would tell stories of his youth, the mom from hers. I would hop from one place to another, watch Doordarshan at times and make some differently shaped rotis from the dough. Dad loved roasting small sized potato’s under the ash in chullah by covering them with the burning firewood. The smoky flavored potatoes with salt were unbeatable. My uncle would join us after his work and tell us everything that had happened in the village in the past few months since we last visited them. My aunt would caress my cousin, he being the youngest in house and rant about how wonderfully her son has started to verse poems.
I used to sit in a quilt with my grandpa, listening to the tales from his childhood and younger years. He would at times ask me to grab kangri, a small earthen handled pot meant for keeping burning coal to trap heat in. In his early years, he used to travel to school by foot and on holidays he roamed around the village, spent his day riding buffaloes, getting greens for them and fetching water from natural springs. He told me how he got married to grandma when she was just thirteen years old.
By 9 pm, we all would finish our feasts and get back to our beds to sleep. There was no pomp and show but I loved those gatherings. A week’s holidays at home meant freedom from school and the homework. I walked fields, sat in shade, ate wild berries, collected gooseberry on most of the days. The joy of simplicity was a treasure. I grew up and so did the things change, surely not for good. I miss those times.
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