When a fragrance stirs a memory, when berries on trees against a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you walk down a path and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm. I need the magic of memory to conjure magic again. I need to know and remember, and I want to tell you!
Last week end, I attended the wedding of our
friend’s son. We were old friends, we had known each other from the time we
went to school, and we knew their parents and our brothers and sisters were
friends too. Both our families have traveled far away from home since. So we were eager to meet a lot of old acquaintances
from our hometown; many of whom I had seen in school uniform. Now we had
families of our own, including children and grand children!
I welcomed
the guests with flowers, in the traditional South Indian way and was shocked
when I was introduced to them. I had been unable to put the name to the face
and had failed to recognize my friends from back home. It gave me little
consolation that they also had been unable to recognize me. But this hasn’t
been the case always.
Walking down
my street one evening, I was pleasantly surprised to spot long white tubular
flowers under a tall flowering tree. I picked some of them and the fragrance
took me back, decades ago. These were the same tree jasmine flowers which used
to be strewn in the bus stand of my school. It was in an area, just outside the
last gate, a place covered with the Indian Cork trees. The school buses waited
there and when the bell rang, we would come running out and wait in lines to
board the various buses which would take us home. In High School, I used to cycle home and the
cycle stand was at the opposite end, near the first gate. I used to come to the
bus stand every afternoon, chat with my friends until their bus left school.
Then I would run back, hop on to my cycle and join another group of friends to
cycle home. It is difficult for me now
to name even one of those giggly girls, but the flowers and the fragrance are a
reminder of those happy days.
I also used to go to school by bus when I was
in Primary School. A long red bus would come to pick us up every day. It would stop
at the culvert under a huge wide Indian Beech tree behind my house. In spring,
the whole area used to be covered with tiny white blossoms, some with a purple
tinge. I used to be the first to reach the bus stand and sit on the culvert
alone! I felt like a snow princess and
if I had a mobile then, that is one Selfie I would not have missed!
The most
enduring ritual of my summer vacations spent in Calcutta, was the eating of
Nungu or Taal fruits. The seller would
carry clusters of the Palmyra fruit tied to the two ends of a bamboo pole,
balanced on his shoulder. Then he would sit down at a comfortable place at the
entrance of our home and with his sickle and knife; carefully gorge out three
juicy fleshy fruits from each nut. It came with a delicate white peel which we
had to remove carefully and suck in the contents. If the fruit was too tender,
it would ooze down your hands or neck, if you managed to get it that far! The
fruit had to be gulped down and it was sooner done than peeling it. That was
the post breakfast ritual, and we kids looked forward to it.
Decades
later, when we were transferred to Chennai, I chanced to see these fruits which
are a specialty of the coastal region. Every season, my husband patiently
gets a dozen or two, every day, and ensures that I have these fruits to my heart’s
content. And what do I learn about these fruits when I open the magazine
section of the newspaper yesterday! They are called Ice Apples in British
English especially by the immigrants living in India.
Another
fruit I discovered from my childhood is the gooseberry. One afternoon, from my
balcony, I spied two young boys desperately trying to bring down small green
berries from the tree behind the watchman’s shed. I was curious to know what they
were. Strewn on the ground, under the tree, I found the small green berries,
goose berries!
In school,
when I was in class 4-5, we were given a handful of berries, every season. One
of the various helpers would carry the berry basket, while another placed
fistfuls of the sweet- sour berries for each one of us. I never saw the tree nor
saw how the berries were collected. The next year, the tree in my compound was
laden with berries and I gathered them with child like joy. Only this time, they tasted so sour that I had
to pickle them.
You know, I do believe in magic. I
was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town. After you go so far away
from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it.
Robert
Mc Cammon, Boy's Life
