Childhood Memories : Summer Holidays!

I'm on the far side of sixty. Retired. Children. Grandchildren and so on!

Memories decorate life now, in a perpetual blaze of a glorious life well lived. Memories matter of-course! They define me - in a sense they're me. Get it?

I remember spending happy evenings in the various play gardens that dotted Bandra-Khar suburb of Bombay when I was five or six. Most moms in India were stay-at-home then. They would take us children to these parks to play in the long summer evenings.

There was Madhu Park, View Park (the one with a cement slide arching on both sides of the up-ladder. Near St. Andrew's), the Lion's Park at Juhu and so on. Both Bandra Gym and Khar Gym had huge grounds open to the public where budding cricketers honed their skills.

Visiting these parks was a joy. There was a special delight in visiting them during the long, lazy summer holidays.

Then, the parks came alive with the excited laughter and joyous screams of scores of children. The intense tropical heat, humidity and streams of sweat didn't seem to matter.

We were the ones whose families couldn't afford to go to 'native place' or just didn't have one to go to. 'Native place' didn't mean you were born there - just that your grand-parents were. That's from where your parents migrated. Almost everyone was a migrant to Bombay.

Few were lucky to go for holidays to Ooty, Kodai, or Kashmir. Their parents were usually Government employees who got an LTA or Leave Travel Allowance. Or Railway or Airline employees who got free tickets!

For us ordinary folk these were just dream destinations.

The whole of Bandra-Khar was wooded.

Neatly laid out single storey homes were common, each with it's own green patch usually with flowering shrubs and fruit trees.

Some even had full-fledged backyards. Like village homes in the Konkan still do.

Complete with a well plus a draw wheel and bucket. Surrounded with a fruit orchard - mango, peru, jaamb, coconut, sitafal.

These would be fully loaded with fruit in summer. As though God was providing for us children during vacation time. Raiding these orchards for the fruit was great. Stolen fruit were the sweetest!

Almost every compound had an arbour of bougainvillea arching over the gate. Some had them growing wild. Along the compound wall. These came alive in the summer with florets of every hue - purple, blue, yellow, orange, red! They seemed to set the place afire!

Unlike today, the suburbs were spaced-out. Separated by a stretch of no-man's-land. No buildings for about a kilometre or so. Often studded with green fields and shrubbery.

That was when one could honestly ask - are you from Bandra or Khar?

Multi-storeyed buildings were few and rose no more than 1+2 storeys. This was when the tallest building in 'the City' was still to come up much later - a building named Usha Kiran at Tardeo - all of 25 floors.

We in Bandra-Khar weren't considered to be from 'the City'. We were easily recognised. Maybe we had some sort of the rustic odour about us that only 'City people' could smell!

The day usually ended when the menfolk returned home from 'office' which was invariably in 'the City' and we all sat down on the floor for a simple dinner.

Dining tables were still a luxury!