I was looking through old photographs today.
Pictures of Kabir and Sameer coloring.
Pictures of them cycling.
Pictures of them flying kites with Naved.
And suddenly I found myself remembering a time when we did not have phones.
We did not have tablets.
We did not even have a television in the house.
Entertainment wasn't something that arrived ready-made.
We created it.
When I was growing up, holidays seemed to stretch on forever.
There was school and homework during the year, of course, but holidays were different.
They were for time pass.
And somehow, we never seemed to run out of things to do.
We climbed trees.
We rode bicycles.
We played hopscotch and jump rope.
We played board games and card games.
We played tag.
We played catch.
We flew kites.
In Kihim, we went shell hunting.
We climbed over rocks looking for crabs, tiny fish, and bits of coral.
We watched birds.
We wandered through fields.
We dug enormous holes in the sand
and buried each other up to our necks.
It was always followed by food and a bath at the well!
We learned to rake properly and make the space look tidy.
Upkeep of the property was not just the job of the maali.
We balanced on rolling barrels, arms stretched out, trying not to fall.
There was only one old barrel and we took turns at it,
wishing someone would fall quickly so our turn could come sooner.
We pulled each other around in bullock carts.
We pretended to be royalty overseeing our vast kingdom on an elephant.
We explored.
We invented adventures.
One activity led to another.
There was always something to do.
There were no organizers.
No schedules.
No adults creating entertainment for us.
Children of different ages spent time together.
Older ones.
Younger ones.
Somehow we all learned how to get along.
How to make friends.
How to look after each other.
And yes, there were the little romances too.
The whispered conversations.
The crushes.
The awkwardness.
Growing up happened quietly while we were busy doing other things.
Sometimes we lay on our backs watching clouds drift across the sky.
One moment it was an elephant.
The next it was a ship.
Or a dragon.
Or something else entirely.
At night, after dinner was over and the ocean waves were echoing through the night,
Baba would take us out on the beach
and point out the stars.
Orion.
The Pleiades - the Seven Sisters.
My brothers had star charts and I think they could read them.
I know I couldn’t.
Mostly, I think, I stood there looking up,
wondering how many stars and galaxies were actually out there.
Years later, when Baba was seventy-five,
he took eleven-year-old Kabir to a three-day astronomy course.
Baba was the oldest participant.
Kabir was the youngest.
That seemed perfectly normal.
They were apparently the two who asked the most questions.
Baba was always learning something.
A language.
A book.
A new skill.
If he felt he had learned one language, he would start another.
Curiosity was simply part of who he was.
And perhaps part of who we became.
There were books everywhere.
Tom Sawyer.
Huckleberry Finn.
Nancy Drew.
The Hardy Boys.
Enid Blyton.
Fairy tales.
Amar Chitra Katha comics.
Stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata.
Akbar and Birbal.
We read constantly.
When the boys were too young to read much, I read to them.
I remember reading Harry Potter to them, chapter after chapter.
Books were adventures waiting to happen.
There were crafts too.
Embroidery.
Patchwork.
Tie-dye.
Origami.
Paper airplanes.
Mobiles made from paper and cardboard.
Marbled paper.
Handmade stationery.
We made cards.
We made decorations.
We made things from scraps.
If we wanted something, the first thought was not where to buy it.
The first thought was how we could make it.
Years later, I found myself doing many of the same things with my own children.
I remember one afternoon making flashcards with the boys.
We spray-painted paper.
Cut it into squares.
Wrote on them with sketch pens.
Decorated them.
I still have them somewhere.
At the time, it never occurred to us to buy flashcards.
Making them seemed perfectly normal.
There was music too.
Not always from a radio.
Sometimes from the people around us.
Naved would bring his harmonium.
People would gather.
Someone would start singing.
Others would join in.
Nobody was performing.
Nobody was recording it.
We were simply sharing the moment.
Music was a part of every day.
On long drives we took it with us in the car.
We played Antakshari.
Entire journeys disappeared that way.
Someone would begin a song and the next person had to continue with the last letter.
We realized we knew quite a few songs!
Nobody needed a playlist.
Even birthdays were different.
We packed a picnic and headed to Jayamahal Park.
The children played tag.
They played catch.
They ran.
They organized tug-of-war competitions.
The adults sat around or played with them.
We sprawled out on chatai’s spread across the grass.
There was home-made cake
decorated with sprinkles and gems.
Something cold to drink.
Conversations.
Laughter.
Everybody went home tired.
The good kind of tired.
Years later, friends birthday parties moved to places like KFC.
The children thought they were wonderful.
And perhaps they were.
But when I talk to the boys now, they remember the birthdays in the park.
The picnics.
The laughter.
The experience.
Not the venue.
The funny thing is that I never completely stopped doing many of these things.
The activities changed.
The people changed.
But the idea remained the same.
We had grown up playing Monopoly,
Pictionary.
Battleship.
Snakes and Ladders.
Figurix.
Scrabble.
Chatta patti.
The game was only part of it.
The real reason we gathered was to spend time together.
In Tupelo, some of my favorite evenings were spent with Sandy and Ray.
A board game or a card game would come out.
Someone would make tea.
We would both bring food.
There was always laughter.
Stories that had nothing to do with the game.
Debates over rules.
Occasional accusations of cheating.
Hours passing unnoticed.
We went paddle boating.
Kayaking.
We went for long walks.
The activity hardly mattered.
The conversation did.
The boys and I still go for walks.
On the beach.
Through the neighborhood.
Sometimes they are short.
Sometimes they are long.
The conversations always seem easier when we are walking side by side.