Nostalgia

Today when Ammi and I were having our evening tea in the small veranda of our house, I looked up at the sky and the thick gray clouds that were heavily floating in it. It reminded me of the evenings we used to experience in our hometown - a small and peaceful village in the Bhakkar district - during summers. Years and years ago when all three of us were studying in school, we used to spend our summer vacations there. Life, I think was way too peaceful back then. No worries at all. No apprehensions regarding the future...

... And then the call for maghrib prayers resonated all over. I again looked at the sky and saw that Ammi was heading for lounge. I got up and followed her... But something inside made me stop at the threshold that seperates the lounge and the veranda... I thought I had smelled something. A fragrance that Karachiites have not had a chance to experience since quite a long time. Yes, it was dust. I announced to Ammi that probably, a dust storm was about to come! And then it would ... RAIN. Ammi laughed because she knew nothing of that sort was happening. Probably I was just imagining things ... But one thing that I am sure of is the fragrance. I smelled it in my right, sane mind... =)

Standing still on the threshold, I sighed... the memories of those careless days flocked my mind. I could not help but think about the shaam when all of us children used to gather and diligently do the chhiRkaao in the huge sehen of our grandfather's house. Aapa (my grandmother) used to sit in a sagging charpoy watching all her children with immense love in her eyes. Then any four of us would pick up her charpoy and shift it from one place to another - with her sitting on it, as she suffered from severe arthritis and could not walk, and we never gave her the trouble to get off the charpoy and hassle with her wooden staff and all that - so that the chhiRkaao could also be done on the place where her charpoy rested. God! It used to be so much fun. The sun would set in the meantime and none of us ever bothered to think about the sorrows that impregnate the twilight air - the sorrows that we think of now.

... And then the raat when we were at phupho's - who did not own a big house at that time and it was a small, rickety cottage with a small sehen, unlike the one that was there at Aapa's. There were more than five charpoys, some placed in a horizontal way while the others resting perpendicular to them. At least two of us huddled on each. Lights used to be switched off and we would get so scared at seeing bats flying not much above us. And every night, someone or the other 'enlightened' the rest with one new scientific fact about bats. Bats were the first topic of discussion that was broached up every night. Lying on our charpoys we used to talk incessantly... But on that particular night, after having gone to bed (not to sleep, of course) we saw that the only tree which stood upright in the sehen was being shaken by the wind. And I remember phupho shouting out to all of us, kahaanian daal lo! lol. I had heard the expression for the first time in my life and did not know what it meant. I never heard phupho using it ever after that incident. I remeber asking one of my elders cousins as to what it meant and she told me that we were supposed to narrate stories to each other in order to dispel the fear which the shaking tree might have induced in us otherwise... Weird? =) Well, I thought so too at that time...

... And then time passed. No matter how cliched it sounds but it actually did pass like wind. We moved ahead in life.

School got over. College. University. And almost no vacations. When I am free my siblings aren't and when they are free, I am not. Hence, no more 'summer vacations' in the hometown.

The gaaon moved ahead too. Phupho does not live in that old rickety cottage with a sehen in which you could actually feel the bricks when you walked barefoot. Aapa, having suffered a terrible long illness silently passed away last year in Winters. They tell us that she was sitting upright and after a few moments she was no more. Yes, people do leave like that too. Without saying goodbye...

And the huge sehen where we used to do the chhiRkao has also changed. The entire house has been 'renovated' with split air conditioners installed. Sliding doors and windows. And what not. What is not there is us. Summers are not the same as they used to be. The word 'vacations' does not make us jump with excitement - the excitement of visting our little hometown. And it is not just about material things that undergo a change. It is primarily about people. People who mutate with the passage of time...