Sugar and spice and everything nice...

There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again.  ~Elizabeth Lawrence


My mother's dimples(the one grudge I still hold against her, but maybe not so much now, when I see Zoran's dimply smile) the clear, crisp tinkle of her bangles and the soft rustle of her georgette dupattas are my earliest recollections of childhood. That and the dread I felt every time a bunch of lice infested cousins came to visit me, lest I be found scratching my head like a maniac at school the next day. Miraculously it never happened(apart from this one time maybe...) but the fear was always there...in some ways it still is. When I look back now, I think Dadda (my paternal grandmother) was the one reason I was spared the embarassment (and pain?). She wouldn't let those filthy, scratchy kids any where near me lest they corrupt my beautiful, cascading hair (well maybe I'm exagerrating just a little...but my hair was definitely not what it is now...sigh).
 Dadda. With her wrinkly face and cherubic, toothless smile(she insisted on taking off her dentures at night - much to my chagrin!), Dadda who took great pride in my long hair and would boast to all who would listen that it was after all the result of her hard work...the coconut oil mixed with aamla and blah and blah...I never paid much attention then...I so wish now, that I had.
Dadda took a lot of things with her...aaloo kay parathay, shaami kebab, daal bhary rotian...I have had all these things countless times ever since she left...but somehow they don't taste the same...and I know now, that they never will.
Why were the days so much longer back then?The summer afternoons especially would be tortuously endless. You could fit in all sorts of games and activities (playing doctor, teacher, archaeologist(I know - Ive always been the crazy one!) a passanger on a train being looted by dacoits, barbies) within one afternoon and still get time to sit for an hour and whine about being bored. (I dont need to highlight the fact that of course I was always the main character and this poor, little younger cousin of mine(no she wasn't from the lice infested batch!) would be forced to play the minor, boring roles.)
Ah to be a child again...when being ecstatic meant that I had been allowed to have ice cream before dinner, when my biggest treasures lay within my toy chest, when a grazed knee signified the greatest injury, when bed time stories were my biggest joys, when I really, truly believed in Captain Planet (I knew the whole song by heart...ermm I still do...Captain Planet He's our hero, gonna take pollution down to zero....cough) and when Liono was the handsomest hunk I'd seen(Gee, what in the world was I thinking...that bloke was neither a human nor a lion, was stuck somewhere in between...eeeoowww!!!)
The wind is howling savagely tonight. The rain is pounding ferociously at my window pane...craving my attention, much like the memories I have just revived. I can hear the Thames crash against its shore. Somewhere in the distance a police siren goes off.
Sleep still evades me. There is a place I must visit tonight. Tucked away in the folds of my memory is a quaint little apartment in that beloved City by the Sea, which beckons me. A myriad of questions await...the answers to which I still don't have.For starters, when did Time whoosh past me?I never heard a sound...