A trip down the memory lane...

I want to sniff at a nice smelling "rubber".
Oh yeah!!u read that right.I said I want to sniff at a nice smelling "rubber" not a bloody eraser.That statement should convey the desperateness with with I long to turn time back.And yet again,wearily,I repeat,its not cos of Anup.He still happens to be Mr.Right though at times he does drive me up the wall.But am digressing.
My longing did not happen in one day.It has been building up over a period of months.Scandalous as it sounds,sometimes I wish I had not fallen in love with the man cos had it not been for him ,by now I wud be back in the only country I can truly call home.I wud have returned after a 6 month stint in US.But as fate had lovingly charted out,my life's course took me tripping along the road to matrimony.Make no mistake abt the fact that am happy.Sometimes I wonder what my life wud have been like if I had returned to India for good instead of getting married to Anup.Its a complicated thought cos I wonder if I wud have finally agreed to follow my dad's wishes and settled down with some "nice boy".Since that is something I will never know ,I wish to turn time farther back..to a time when I was 4 years old...

It was the first weekend after I joined school.I had been fascinated by the chalk teachers used to write on the board and at the first chance I got I picked some of the pieces that had broken off while the teacher was writing.At this point I shall confess that I have tried eating chalk and till date believe it tastes good.For that matter,I have tried mud,slate pencil,bits of dried cement and loved it all...Mama,please dont pull out ur hair.It was years ago.If it helps,I promise I dont do it anymore.My mama was getting ready for office and I was the epitome of goodness, cheerfully playing with my chalk pieces.And then for reasons unknown to me till date,my mom took it into her head to tell me not to put the chalk pieces up my nose.To be completely honest,it had not occurred to me to do such a thing till that very moment.I gaped at her for a moment,said O.K.,ran to stand in front of the mirror in the next room and carefully stuffed a chalk piece up my nose.After wiggling my nose at the mirror I came to the conclusion that my nose felt rather uncomfortable and in trying to get the chalk piece out,managed to push it up some more.Now it really hurt.So I decided to run to mama and blurt out the tale.She as always saved me by poking a ear digger(if there is such a thing)up my nose and nudging the chalk piece out.

A couple of months back,mama and I were chatting abt this incident when all of a sudden I remembered another childhood incident of which
she was not aware.It happened when I had moved up to 1st standard,with my days of stuffing chalk pieces up my nose far behind me.I remember sitting next to a female whose name I cannot remember for the life of me.Anyway what I do remember is that this female had a fluorescent orange eraser or rather half of an eraser.And it smelt lovely.It was a teeny weeny piece but once I sniffed at it I fell in love.I always had a thing for nice smelling erasers and to this date when I see an eraser my first instinct is to smell it.my mom always got me the Nataraj eraser which smelt of ...well...nothing at all.So every free minute I got in class,I spent smelling this female's eraser.I wonder if she remembers me but if she does I am afraid it may not be fondly for one day in my attempt to sniff hard enuf to keep the smell in my memory,the eraser flew out of my hand and up my nose.Cripes!!!I did not believe it went up my nose but I cudnt find it elsewhere.Plus there was a feeling of something inside my nose near the ridge.I gingerly felt the ridge of my nose but there was no swelling of any kind to indicate the presence of the eraser.Nothing except a dark suspicion.

I told the female that I dropped her eraser and she was quite cross with me.Later when I was alone,I cautiously put my finger up my nose and felt around for the eraser.Nothing.I came to the conclusion that I had imagined the whole thing cos I cud see no changes in the shape of my nose when I looked in the mirror.But in my heart of hearts I knew it had gone up my nose.Fastforward to a couple of months later when I had forgotten all abt the eraser and we were spending the summer hols at a grand uncle's house in Delhi.All the grown ups were asleep on the hot summer afternoon while I loitered around on the porch.For some reason I had been sneezing for some time and my eyes were watering.All of a sudden,I sneezed a mighty big sneeze and something flew out of my nose and I opened my eyes to look around for the big ball of snot.And my eyes came to rest of a fluorescent orange eraser and in a rush came memories of another afternoon when the blessed object had disappeared below my eyes(no pun intended) and had gotten me a good scolding from an irate 6 year old.I toyed with the idea of picking it up,washing it and giving it back to her.But school was 2 months away and besides,I figured she wud have forgotten abt it or gotten herself a new eraser.

Sigh!!!Uncomplicated life that was!and more often than not,I find myself wishing I cud go back to those days,to the days when bunny and I played scooter scooter on Mom's unused Kinetic Honda,the days of peeking at my first dog while she enjoyed the evening breeze and the smells it brought along,waiting to see how long it wud be before she smelt me and stood up,ears perked,tail wagging,eyes bright,marvelling that she knew I was there though she cudnt see me cos I was hidden behind the wall,smelling mama's fresh laundered clothes(for some reason they always smelt different from my laundered clothes),watching mama drape a sari and wondering why she had to do it the hard way when it made perfect sense to a 6 year old to tie ends of the sari to the 2 cupboards in the room and spin in the centre,thereby draping the sari cleanly on self(this idea was inspired by watching Draupadi's sari being pulled from one end by the kauravas and Sri Krishna feeding her more yards of sari from the wall),waiting for dad to come home for lunch and looking forward to sleeping on his tummy,waking up to find him gently move me onto the bed cos he had to leave for office,listening to all those stories of unnikapakshi and chinnaraman and periya raman from my grandmother,supplemented with mashed rice,sambhar,pappad and crumbled fried fish,planning complicated Onamflower carpets supplemented with dried coconut scrapings mixed with food coloring(it helps to have a very creative mom)...

Sometimes I just get tired of being grown up....and thats when I feel like sniffing at a nice smelling "rubber"