Its the memory of the vacation in my mom's home which makes me sad, that I have grown up. Wish I had never grown up, wish I had ever remained a child with all the pampering around. I bet you will agree with this once you read this.
The second part of our vacation is at my mom's home. My mom is the eldest kid of my grandparents. And before you know anything you should know a lil background of the family. My grand-grand father was a wealthy man. He has eight daughters and one son, my grandpa. He is the fifth in the family. Marriages happened at late teens for girls and early twenties for boys those days. My grandpa got married to my grandma at the age of twentyone. She is convent educated, English medium(trust me, she speaks better English than I do, sings poems, tells stories), and was around twenty then. There wasnt much age difference between my amma and her younger aunts. Less than ten years difference. So they were aunt-niece and they were friends too. My grand parents have 11 kids - 4 girls and 7 boys and hence I had 7 uncles. Alike, my amma's aunts have four-five kids on an average. Have you heard of labour room? Ever had one at your home? We had one at my mom's home. I said my grandpa have eight sisters and he have four daughters out of which one is a nun. Rest all are married. One after the other - aunts, grandma and the nieces(my amma and her sis) had bourne kids and delivered and there was this room where they all stayed sometime or the other. For some years, the room was occupied by one or the other mother and child. It is a bigggggg family during gatherings. Still is. All of us count around two hundred people and still counting. So much about the genesis.
Moral of the story was that I have seven uncles, we have. My sisters and me. Then my mom's younger sisters' kids - same like us. Two girls and a boy. So six of us had seven uncles to serve us. And they were of different ages that we could do anything with their help. All this because the elder ones were working and earning and the younger ones were so young that there was no age difference between them and my elder sisters. Nice no? My eldest uncle used to tease the youngest uncle who was a kid himself calling "Jais mon uncle" and raise him into air in his arms like a small boy, as he did us too.
So the routine during vacation. The day starts early because there are more mango trees than at my own home and there are more mangoes to be collected. Once the light shows there are many takers for them - crows and mainas and every other bird. So we wake up a bit early and start the hunt. Since sisters were elder they will lead us. Once the basket is full, we will transfer them into their skirt which they will hold like a fabric basket. Girls are too good at finding simple solutions, you know. Yes, so we gather all mangoes and then we attend to the nature's call. Its grandpa's duty to handle the mangoes and the realted stuff. He makes juice for us and the rest is dried and kept for use after the season. The memory still waters my mouth. After breakfast,we play for sometime, find the ripe coco fruits and eat. Find other fruits - sapota, guava, egg fruit etc. When exhausted, we go to the mill - rice mill which my grandpa owned. There will be people who work, boil the rice, dry it in sun, grind, fill the sack and load the lorries. Its all so green in the memories. I was so very fond of the mill that I used to ask for spoon similar to the one used in the mill(a showel). Also, at my mom's home, we used to have plates like those in hotels. One plate with different spaces for rice and curries. And i used to ask for that when i go there. Now a days I am so grown up(30 yrs old and married too) that I feel ashamed to ask for it.
The lunch is a big gathering again as all family comes togather. We had a big table with benches on both sides. I remember we had a wooden boat in the ceiling of our dinig hall, an old boat used by my great grandfather and grandpa too. My amma says, we owned an island somewhere nearby which was surrounded by the great periyar river. So the boat was used to bring coconut and other things and also to take people across the river.
After a nap, we all wake up and head towards the mill's office. There we will have one or the other of the eldest uncles. Its our right to have something from them and they know what we have come for. Its the sip-up. Yesssssssssss!!!!!! We had a small shop on the other side of the road where there were sip-ups of many colors. Orange, grape, mango flavors. We buy as much as we can with the money given by uncles. We stay there for some time. Entertain uncles for sometime and then we leave to the next destination.
Thats an electronics shop run by one of my uncles. He will be there working on the tape recorders and the radios. Once I got an electrical shock from there. I was on the process of getting some money, giving him kisses and tickling him. He was seriously working on some radio with a soldering iron and suddenly it happened. I got the shock. He dint as he was wearing chappal and sitting on a wooden chair. I suddenly stopped and went and laid on a cot nearby in the shop itself. He felt something happened coz i stopped all wooing atonce and was a nice kid suddenly. He asked if I got shock and since I could get scoldings too, I said no and escaped from there. We usually wait near the mill and the shop and get hold of any uncle who can give us some paisas to get some sip-ups.
The younger uncles treat us during weekends. They were in college and were cricket champs themselves. For that they should thank grandpa for being such an enthusiast in sports and games. He still is. He knows more about sports and games than any of us, I must agree, because he consistently watches and follows them. Cricket and tennis are his favorites. So, my younger uncles used to play cricket at home and on Sunday, they had the real pitch - the mills open space were rice is dried. Wowww!!!! nobody else had this opportunity. After the game, uncles will buy yummy yummy tuty-fruity bread from the shop nearby. We had a retail dealer for modern breads very nearby, near the shop from where we buy sip-ups. Those were so tasty. I still have the taste on my tounge.
I remember one incident. I got an eye infection. The medicine was made at home, an eye drop which cause so much discomfort. It feels like a hundred bees are stinging inside. I dint know this for the first time and I happily agreed to put the drops. Second time, I knew the sting and I started running all around. My grandma missed one shot in the afternoon. But in the evening, uncles were home and there were enough of them to catch the running me and put me on a bed and hold me tight on the legs, the hands and the head. Side effects of having so many uncles. He hee.
