The Summer of '82 - Chapter 1

I woke up in a startle. It was dark when i looked around. Far on the other side of the room, i could see two neon needles. The shorter one was close to the number 5 and the longer one marking the number 2. Under normal circumstances i always woke up when the shorter needle pointed to 9, but today was an exception. Today was the day when we left for my hometown, Kerala. My heart was beating with a loud thump. The larger needle hardly moved. It moved taking its own time. A light peeped out of the door, with hushed sounds. With sleep no longer holding my eye, i got up and moved to the light.

My mother was awake, there were a 100 utensils spread over the kota platform, with two utensils steaming on the burner of the gas stove. She hurriedly like a master craftsman cut the vegetables, dropped it into the steaming vessel, took out a handful of salt and dropped it into the other vessel, while my father sat next to the table spreading little cut banana leaves and putting rice on it with pickle. I looked in awe at my mom working with breakneck speed. She was super-mom to me. When she saw me awake, she rushed me to the wash basin, put tooth paste on the brush and left me on a short stool, so that i could reach out easily to the basin and spit at my own will. I loved the taste of the paste and i kept chewing on the brush as the clatter of the steel utensils against each other made an irritable sound. I felt a tug on my shorts. My sister looked at me with sleepy eyes. She was awake too. After i chewed my brush for five minutes, i hoisted her on the stool and put the paste on her small little funny brush and she started chewing on it. My younger brother was fast asleep. He slept like a log. My father used to tell me that even if there was a bomb blast, he would not wake up, such was his deep slumber.

As i walked into the kitchen again, my mother thrust a glass full of milk in my hand.
‘Here, drink this full’ and kept another glass of milk and covered it with a smaller plate ‘and this is for Sita, make sure she does not pour it down the washbasin’ she said ‘And wake up Shaiju, he will take ever to wake up, we might miss the train.’
My father got up and went into the living room where he snored. ‘SHAIJU’ he called out. It was a short shout, a shout that sounded louder than when he talked and a little lesser than when he was angry. It had its desiring effect. He shot up from his sleep, sitting upright, blinking his eyes as if he was never asleep. He woke up and walked briskly to the stool and pulled down Sita and hoisted himself on to it. Sita, in the midst of her brushing started crying, dropping the foamy toothpaste all over the floor. My brother and she were always at loggerheads. There was an invisible love-hate relationship between them. They would fight during the day and even in the middle of the night, i could hear them talking and shouting at each other, though their eyes were closed.

My dad intervened and my brother had to give up his throne to the wash basin while my sister had a smile on her face that pronounced victory over him. Sulking, he stood on the side mumbling in anger. This was not unusual in our household. My sister was the youngest, and the apple of every eye in our family, I was the eldest, elder to Shaiju. My brother was stuck between both of us. He always felt lost most of the time. Being the middle brother, he always felt that he was loved lesser than my sister and I. He would never challenge me and if he had a fight with me, my sister would face the wrath of his anger. Our relationship was a complex one, but in those days, the complexities never mattered to us. Our life was completely immersed in the present, not knowing that these were the years that mattered the most, in developing a growing mind.

Later as we sat in the train and the landscaped moved past in blurred color palettes, we thought of the wonderful days that were awaiting us, the mango trees, ripe jackfruits, the open rice fields, elanneer (fresh coconut water) and our adventures into the near by forest which we had named ‘Rakshasvan’ mainly because of the weird noises which came from the south at the advent of stars in the night.