Taste of Fire

Childhood…rather early teen… I always considered myself to be a grown up girl (only that others never valued my consideration) Personally, I had no special interests…Apart from reading books or collecting stamps, I never specifically did something that would immerse me into any sort of serious involvement…Cricket, Football, Wrestling…for that matter, not even shopping or makeup…I was into nothing…yes, I danced, sang, played musical instruments…but only for the sake of it…

 

Ok, before I continue, let me give u a brief on my childhood mate… My family had shifted to this new home which was right opposite to his when I was 8 year old… He was one year elder to me and thus we became friends… We gelled well; mainly because apart from us, all the other neighbours were either too young or tooo old for us and we were not accepted into either side…So we made our team… and grew up as thick buddies…

 

As we grew up, we started getting temporary membership into the neighbourhood big brother gang… His elder cousins were part of that group… Thus, we started playing together with the elders and mostly all male group and me the only girl… More of a tom boy, I was fine with any game…rather I had no other option. But being a girl and for fear of hurting me the "Bhaiyyas" ended up allocating me as the official goal keeper of their football team… or the regular wicketkeeper during cricket… Frankly, the only sport that I could compete with them was the daily evening game of Shuttle…

 

Shamelessly, I sat with them on the boundary wall of our house as they sheepishly ogled at every college beauties that walked past our home…Maybe, me being a girl, gave them an extra brownie point to do it without much after effects… Not knowing the seriousness of what these “Big Bhaiyyas” were upto, I supported them, whenever one of them started falling in love… In return, I got a Dairy Milk… That was good, just sit there and u get a dairymilk… I was their Monica Seles…

 

OK OK, this was not what I wanted to share...Once in a while, I did enjoy being a girl too... To satisfy my craving, my friend would agree to play some girly games…Today, as I think of it, I feel “So sweet of him”…

Dark Room, Chinese Whisper, Passing the Message and many such games being our favourite; the best one was playing House-House… The space between my home and the boundary wall became our play area… We had our own pans out of Coconut shells, Leaves for spoons and plates, Sand for food and etc etc… But, could we be constrained into those limits? Naaaa, Soon we started expanding the radius of our imaginary home…

 

We started thinking. For a house to survive, we need income. Thus we started gardening. Our house maid provided us with Onions, chilly, grams etc which we started planting, watering and taking care…and soon yielding tiny crops too… Ok, that was the part to be proud…

 

Butttttt… things went out of control when the "Intelligent" us decided to cook in real…The enthusiastic us left no stone to understand how to make tea and to try it out in practical...Thus, from the kitchen we stealthily brought out some tea powder and sugar...After all, the over smart me wanted to surprise mom with an evening tea... With NO google to help those days, we set the fire alight below our pan placed in between 3 red bricks with lots of newspaper... Just that, we didn't realise that a COCONUT SHELL PAN could catch fire until we ran for our life as the newspaper bundles enjoyed the taste of it...

 

Taste of Fire….