I wish i knew....
The bright orange rectangular patch that was the tiled roof surrounded in a thicket of green, and a single visible serpentine mud path which meant active human habitaion.,like a simple signature.
The first flash of voice and picture that comes to my mind is my sister and me trying to make fire between blocks of red bricks somewhere along the path leading to the house, we are saying something feverently to each other, a few other flashes like the trailor of a movie are - my 'ajji' giving us freshly made butter, the well built dark and thick haired, dark skinned pork-eating 'Lingamma, one of the workers in the 'Thota', the 'yenne neeru' that was a rule that had to be carried out by Lingamma on us every weekend...she carrying the steaming kids to bed after the exhausting bath., bathing men with their backs being scrubbed with orange brick powder - they sitting outside the house, two men beating a sack to the ground (probably a rat or a snake ), the red hibiscus flowers soon as the door opens, my sister dancing in the hall with small fluffy yellow chicks fluttering about her, the man with his cycle supporting the bamboo basket full of yellow fluffs now pushing his bicycle up the serpentine path leading to the elevated main road, the kids looking down at big square green and small square orange below...the kids sitting in a 'jatka gaadi' - the man whips the horse and off we go to school.
Memories of people - good and bad ! But the place itself, the land, the greenary, the big well and the butterflies we chased (flourescent green and black and very restless) around the hibiscus plant - all of it so serene and ever giving and tolerant., is something i miss the most. Something i know is for real, the others of people could well be my imagination from what mom probably narrated or something overheard. My grand dad 'Bhaai' as we called him, left behind sons and daughters in good numbers, numbers only - who wanted the land split and divided ! Sold and gone, replaced by lifeless numbers - storeyed buildings.
...the 'hassan thota' was gone forever !
The bright orange rectangular patch that was the tiled roof surrounded in a thicket of green, and a single visible serpentine mud path which meant active human habitaion.,like a simple signature.
The first flash of voice and picture that comes to my mind is my sister and me trying to make fire between blocks of red bricks somewhere along the path leading to the house, we are saying something feverently to each other, a few other flashes like the trailor of a movie are - my 'ajji' giving us freshly made butter, the well built dark and thick haired, dark skinned pork-eating 'Lingamma, one of the workers in the 'Thota', the 'yenne neeru' that was a rule that had to be carried out by Lingamma on us every weekend...she carrying the steaming kids to bed after the exhausting bath., bathing men with their backs being scrubbed with orange brick powder - they sitting outside the house, two men beating a sack to the ground (probably a rat or a snake ), the red hibiscus flowers soon as the door opens, my sister dancing in the hall with small fluffy yellow chicks fluttering about her, the man with his cycle supporting the bamboo basket full of yellow fluffs now pushing his bicycle up the serpentine path leading to the elevated main road, the kids looking down at big square green and small square orange below...the kids sitting in a 'jatka gaadi' - the man whips the horse and off we go to school.
Memories of people - good and bad ! But the place itself, the land, the greenary, the big well and the butterflies we chased (flourescent green and black and very restless) around the hibiscus plant - all of it so serene and ever giving and tolerant., is something i miss the most. Something i know is for real, the others of people could well be my imagination from what mom probably narrated or something overheard. My grand dad 'Bhaai' as we called him, left behind sons and daughters in good numbers, numbers only - who wanted the land split and divided ! Sold and gone, replaced by lifeless numbers - storeyed buildings.
...the 'hassan thota' was gone forever !
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