Screenless summers

Back then, vacation meant a visit to the grandparents' home

We all have one favourite place that is close to our hearts. A relative, who is well travelled all over India and abroad, says her all-time favourite place is Puttur, a small town in Karnataka. Because it was here that her maternal grandparents had their home, where she and her siblings would go every year to spend their summer vacation. Cousins from different places would descend there at the same time, and there would be around 15–20 children and adolescents living under one roof.

Childhood memories are always sweet, especially for the generations that did not have TV and all the screen gadgets that followed. Our memories are of real people with whom we interacted, talked, laughed, fought, and made up. We did real things like playing outdoors, dancing, singing, etc. The ancestral house still stands intact, and the aunt who hosted the family still lives there, as warm and welcoming as ever. So our cousin can revisit it whenever she feels nostalgic.

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What fun it was playing hide and seek in the sprawling house and on the swings in the backyard! Boys and girls would play together, fight about some silly thing, and then go their separate ways to form boy and girl camps.

One room in the house turned into an entertainment den with a cot as a stage. Every evening, the children put on some
impromptu skits or dances to everyone’s delight.

At night, everybody would sleep together under the coconut frond shelter specially built in the courtyard. Everyone was blessed with good voices; antakshari was the norm every night, with an adult team and a children’s team. The former invariably won, as they knew more songs.

As my relative narrated, her uncle once bought a tape recorder, and everyone sang into it, thrilled to hear their taped voices later. Another uncle was an athlete. He used to go to the nearby college campus and practice running on the tracks. In spite of his protests, all the children would follow him and accompany him on the track!

My eldest sister spent most of her childhood in Rajkot, Gujarat, as our father was working there then. She had the opportunity to visit Rajkot on a trip to Gujarat a few years ago. Naturally, she went to revisit the house the family had stayed in, but she was not as lucky as our cousin. Forty years or more had passed, and all had changed. In place of the beautiful, spacious bungalow, there now stood a tall, multi-story apartment complex.

I too have sweet memories of dear old Calcutta (where I spent my early years as my father was stationed there then), but though I am very keen to revisit it, a part of me is scared to do so as I am sure everything has changed. I would prefer to remember it all as it was when I was there.