A turn in the maze

Its strange what the human mind can come up with as u trot down the memory lane...I think its not just a lane..Its a maze and depending on the turn which u take u come across a different memory.And its the strangest things that make u take a specific turn.For instance,this morning while I was sitting outside with my customary cup of coffee,enjoying the early morning sun and rolling a few beads on the white sheets of the notepad Anup had left on the table,gazing into space when it suddenly dawned on me that I was staring at Anup's garden,a plastic trough filled with soil and in which abt 2 weeks ago we had a couple of flowers bloom...The plastic trough had some green stuff growing on the insides under the soil…and I vaguely thought of moss..and hpw I had loved moss as a child…In Kerala my grandmother’s house had a compound wall that was the joy of any kid…The right height to look over,I spent hrs taking in the details of the neighbours houses and simply exploring the tiny holes in the rough walls….and the moss that grew on the walls was one of my favorite discoveries…thick,soft and green and in places there were tiny stalks with a blob on the end …it was velvety to the touch ,a beautiful shade of green ..I had a thing for bright colors even then and I loved stroking the moss and using a stick to carefully scrape off a piece without breaking it and planting it on a flat part of the ground,imagining a tiny house behind it…It reminded me of the lawn in my aunt’s house at Mangalore and since I had always been fascinated by the lawn,the moss to me was just a mini lawn…I was always trying to scrape off really large bits and but my love affair with moss ended when once a tiny earthworm crawled out of a bit of moss…That still gives me the creepies….I hate worms of any kind…and the thought of them gives me goose bumps..
That was the age when u really believe that there is a mini world out there and that elves and pixies do live in amongst the daisies…That was the age when I wud read abt Brer Rabbit stuffing his goods in a hollow and set out to find a hollow,hoping to find the goods of a Fox considering we had a lot of foxes in the place… It helped that my grandmother’s house was located on a large plot with enuf Mango trees and gnarly branched trees to delight the soul of any kid…My favorites being one mango tree at the back of the plot and another a drumstick tree(is it really called a drumstick tree?) next to the house…The drumstick tree was my dream come true…sloping up at a very convenient angle ,it gave me direct access to the terrace of the house..I cud clamber up the tree and either sit on the branches or climb up on the sunshade and sit there with a view of the overgrown garden and the neighbour;s house…I have spent so many lovely hrs on that spot,reading a book,watching the breeze shake the leaves of the different trees there…Even though the plot was on the side of a very busy road,it still was a world of its own…Many are the hot afternoons where I have resisted the temptation of a nap to sit up on my nest where it was cool thanks to the shady trees all around…
I knew even then that Brer Rabbit lived outside of India and I really cud not hope to find his goods in any of our trees and quite often in the midst of my expeditions,wished that the foxes in our compound had a little bit of imagination and wud atleast get together and talk so that I cud watch them…In fact my grandmother’s house has a peephole on the front door which has a small shutter and at night the foxes wud roam the courtyard and come as close as the doorsteps and I wud peep at them ,trying not to breathe lest they know am there and run away….They were a bit too small than I imagined them to be but boy, were they beautiful…and it helped to have an elder cousin who was as loony as I was and stayed up with me to peek thru the peephole whenever she came down during her summer vacation…We both were supposed to be in bed sleeping like the angelic cherubs our moms had hoped for but alas,our respective mothers were sadly disillusioned. …In fact,I think they had never had any illusions abt my cousin cos from what I heard she always drove my poor aunt nuts by staying awake all night long and going to sleep all day long…chuckle…Ok..Mama..lets talk abt my sleeping patterns in private…

And then with a suddenness that comes from realizing that u are late for office,I came back to the present and trotted off to office…A colleague wished me a happy Diwali and asked me if we celebrate Diwali in South India..and that led me down another turn in the maze…
A dark night when the entire colony decided to celebrate diwali.The flats opposite to our house had all their lights turned off and their balconies decorated with lighted candles which were a less messier option than the traditional oil lamps.
My mama gave in to our excitement and we all trotted up to our own balcony and lit a row of candles bordering the entire balcony.And the desire for perfection had me and Buntu running around trying to keep the breeze from blowing out any of the candles…and then finally to our dismay there fell rain putting out the candles on our balcony and on the neighbouring balconies…My mom tried to console us saying that it always rained on Diwali…which was not exactly consoling to 2 kids who had just managed to keep the candles all lit…
Chuckle…I guess am right abt the memory lane being a maze.It just depends on which turn u take and u come across something u haven’t thot abt in years…