To and Fro
12:07 - Posted by Shilpa K - 0 comments
My earliest memories from childhood remain visiting my grandma's during summer vacations or May vacations as my cousin called them. I didn't particularly have anything to look forward to at that place, except for a lot of pampering in simple ways - mainly food. Nothing beats the taste of hand-cooked food of grand mom's. It has some magic ingredient unknown to most recipe books. This place was still coming of age even as cable TV was ushered in the living rooms in the 1990s and city children had devised silly games to engage themselves in free time. It amazes me how I could spend hours doing some of the most simple things, like making a trip to the terrace, attending singing classes just for the heck of it, looking forward to an evening outing to the river, exploring the hidden treasures of greeting cards and photographs stacked in suitcases, admiring the bone-china tableware, learning a stitch or a two, recording silly rhymes on the tape-recorder and making everyone listen to it, playing with tiny utensils that were passed from generations - the oldest form of toys perhaps, trying my luck at a game of carom and defending my every loss with the fact that I was the youngest player. Spinning the wheel in the Game of Life, hoping to be a doctor or an engineer with a handsome salary, counting away the colorful currency notes on each payday, and so looking forward to those white notes - the highest denomination that the game offered. I had made friends with people I probably wouldn't meet in my lifetime ever again. Yet they were my Summer vacation chums for a long time. We've shared so much, including our toys and books, the memories of which are slowly fading. I wonder if life will give us a chance to meet again. If by the luck of fate we do, would we even remember or realize that we spent the whole afternoon playing Monopoly together. Life is like one of my priced possession from childhood - a multicolored beaded purse that grand-mom gifted, of the many things my little eyes eyed and admired. Experiences, the people we meet, the times we share are so myriad, that the mind refuses to hold on to such vastness of  memories and peels it away slowly - layer by layer. But the crumbs still remain, in some unreachable corners, little figments that reside endlessly like time, only to evoke fond memories of times gone by even as life continues ahead of us.


Some Things I Love the most
11:41 - Posted by Shilpa K - 0 comments

Smell of beans and freshly baked bread
Big stuffed hearts, painted in red
Warmth of a towel after cold showers
Dew drops trickling over a bunch of flowers
Splash of water in the deep blue pool
Pony tailed girls marching to school
Pop! The sound of a bubble wrap
Blasting speakers with Eminem’s rap
A hot mug of coffee by the bedside
Tucked in the tent by the gurgling riverside
Gift wrapped boxes under the Xmas tree
Running in the fields, wild and free
The jingle of coins in a piggy box
Santa filling up my pair of socks
Funny little nose of the circus clown
Pineapple cake baked upside down
Paper planes flying all over the air
Tall giant wheel at the fun-n-fair
Golden braids of the old Japanese doll
Running up the escalators in the huge city mall
Shopping for candies, a whole handful
Smearing chocolate a whole mouthful
Stories about Casper, the friendly ghost
These are some things that I love the most