This picture was taken in 1999 at my play home in Thippasandra when I was around five years old.
I remember stopping by at 'Shanthi Sagar' hotel with my mom to have 'idli-sambar' every morning.
My mom would carry my teeny-weeny bag for me as I would hop all along stamping the yellow Mayflowers on the way to my play home.
And then there would be Radha Miss sitting in her wooden chair in the play home. On the first day in the play home, I cried my heart out as I watched my mother leave through the door that was kept partially opened.
Radha Miss fed me bread with jam from my tiffin, wiping the tears off my face and nose, assuring me that my mother would be back in no time and pick me back home. My first friend was Kishan and then there was another girlfriend of mine whose mom would give me Cadbury's everytime I went to their house.
And then there were nostalgic memories of the kids from the not-so-far apartment with whom we played hide-and-seek in an under-construction building.
Those days I also had a nightmare. There used to be a stranger, sitting on the steps of a medical shop grinning, with a cigarette between his fingers, Looking at him, I used to get scared and hold my father's hand tightly. Evenings used to be spent with my mother on the terrace of my home with my baby brother in her arms. I would be busy plucking the pink flowers that climbed up through the stairs. I'd carefully put them into my straw basket as the wind ballooned my petticoat and blew my messy hair as the sun went down.
Now, more than two decades later, when I see this place, which is now called the New Thippasandra, there is a definite yearning to go back, walk on those roads that I once used to, drop by the play home and the house if they still exist, have a coffee with that old girlfriend of mine, who would now have grown up to be a lovely woman.
