Snippets from the past

Yesterday I got home from work a little later than usual. My daughter was sitting in the living room, playing with her toys. She looked up to see me and I was surprised to see that her usual sunny smile was not breaking out on her face. She looked at me for an instant and then continued playing, as if she wanted to ignore my presence. Was she angry that I was late? Was she tired of looking at every single car that went by our apartment, thinking it would be me? There was a big tug in my already-guilty conscience. I went to her, kissed her and called for truce with an offer I knew she couldn't resist - I offered to carry her around as an "uppu chakku" (in which we would pretend that she was a gunny bag of salt that I was carrying for sale). Predictably, she giggled and came running to me. And all was well..

Later, I wondered as I watched her sleep - Was my baby old enough to feel angry at my being late? Or was I imagining things? How much of this would she remember when she grew up? My earliest memories started at around the age of 4 or maybe 5. I can't say I remember a lot, but these are some of the earliest things that I still remember.

I was then staying with my mother at her parents' home. I remember with striking clarity, a day when my aunts (mother's sisters, who were in their teens then) asked me to look at the old grandfather clock in the hall and tell them the time. They knew that I did not know to tell the time, but they just wanted to keep me from pestering them with questions. I went back saying that the little needle of the clock was at X and the big needle at Y. But that was not good enough, they said, and sent me back to stand near the clock till I could read the time properly. I remember standing in front of the clock, full of consternation, my mind filling with a sense of sadness and shame because I knew I wouldn't be able to do it. I'm sure my aunts didn't mean to be cruel or make me feel bad, but the strength of my feeling is proven by the fact that I can close my eyes even now and remember myself standing in front of the clock.

One day, when I was in kindergarten, my class teacher had told us to memorise a rhyme. I totally forgot and the next day morning, when my cycle-wallah came to pick me up for school, I remember the feeling of terror that flooded me when I realised I had forgotten. I refused to go to school that day, and it took a whole lot of persuasion and assurance from my mother and aunts to make me go. And I felt my feet turning into cold jelly when the teacher asked us to recite the rhyme - thankfully, she asked the entire class to recite together and I got away mumbling some nonsense amidst the noise. That rhyme, still etched in memory, goes "Cock-a-doodle-doo, My dame has lost her shoe.."

I remember all the books my uncle used to buy for me as a child. A most treasured one was a colourful picture book that had photos and names of beautiful fishes. I am in no way interested in fish-rearing and cannot even tell one fish from another. But I still remember that the most beautiful fish in that book was called "The Golden Gourami". I don't have a clue as to why I remember just that fish!

When mom and I moved to a new city to join dad, and I was put a new school, everything changed. I had to get used to a new language and make new friends. On my first day at the new school, I remember waiting after the classes for my mother to pick me up. For some reason, I can still remember the white polyester saree with small blue flowery design she was wearing on that day.

I remember stretching my hand out to mom for round balls of "paruppum chadam" (rice and daal). I have still not grown of it as my comfort food.

I remember being extremely shy till I was 6 or 7. So shy that I wouldn't tell my name or even say hello when we had guests at home. I have no idea what changed that!

And then there are these photo-frame kind of memories - walking down the morning market with my mother, and asking her to buy some plums(I hate them now) for me, sobbing my heart out when my mother insisted on my hair being cut short, the embroidery shop that my mom took me to have a beautiful lacy pink frock stitched on my 4th (or was it 5th?) birthday, the small shop she used to take me to buy "rose-milk" for me..

The pile of memories grew with me, but whenever I delve into the past, I find some of these earliest ones the most comforting.. and I love going back to them.