Musings - I

Now I really don't know whether you have ever been to Dehradun. Neither do I really know whether you know anything about Bindaal Bridge. I for one have known Bindaal Bridge since I was a small kid. I loved having ice-cream or gol-gappe or papri-chaatstanding outside the Bindaal Shopping Complex (which is named after the Bindaal Bridge) with papa. It was a great experience everytime. To feel the cool breeze of the summer night, look at people skating in the skating rink in the Complex and watch the few cars zoom past me.

I remember I had always wanted to have a car and to learn how to skate. Of course, now papa owns a car and I have driven quite a good number apart from that. I have two pairs of skates, both inline and rollers (the latter is dumped somewhere in the Vijay Park home and the former in the box of papa-ma's bed), though I am still at the same level of skating prowess where I was some seventeen years hence.

Bindaal Bridge, now that I think about it, has been a very important landmark in my life. It has witnessed me growing from a small Mohalla kid (colony, or rather a cluttered colony) to a teenager ready to embark upon this life I am living now.
That and to some extent, Khurbura Mohalla.

Khurbura Mohalla was the name of that colony, where it all began for me. Since you guys may or may not be familiar with it, in short it is one of those inconsequential places in DD (atleast it was then; they tell me its changed a lot now) where you would definitely not want to live unless your budget is very small in quantum and/or you are coming straight from some partially modernized village. Truth be told however, famous or no, consequential or no, important or no, Khurbura occupies a special place in my life, maybe not as special as Bindaal Bridge, but it does.

It began on 28th December, 1986, a Sunday afternoon when most people were busy having lunch and had probably just gotten up from watching the famous Ramanand Sagars's Ramayana. I was born in the Doon Hospital, the landmark public hospital of DD. And I was then brought straight to our Khurbura Mohalla home in a rented auto-rickshaw, as Calenders were being changed in many a houses, including ours. Ma tells me, everyone in our family was very excited. I was the first child of a new generation in our family, and a son to top it. My dadi, even though she still maintains it doesn't matter to her that I and the rest of the kids are boys and would have been equally good if I or the rest of the kids were girls, always wanted to have a grandson (and grandsons later on, but a grandson to begin with for sure). 

Ma  has loads of photographs of that time stashed in the bed-box. Sometimes when I go to DD, me and ma just sit flicking through the albums chit-chatting about something or the other. I have the questions and ma has the answers. Its great and I love talking to ma about it. My childhood and the early years of my life that is.

I used to call ice-cream aatap and Parle-G glucose biscuits toodap when I was small. I have tried to work out the logic behind those names. But then, that's the beauty of it all anyway - there is not logic. Who would have though so much about logic back then anyway. Not me.

And yeah, I am told I was mortally afraid of cotton, rui. Apparently, I used to make a very funny half-afraid half-confused face on seeing rui and with a uuuuu sound, would cry out loud. I still don't know why! I guess, no one can really guess that part anyway.


More...later...