Summer Vacations

Bapa n Maa have arrived today in Chennai. Well that's Bapa n Maa for Lil' Sam, Nana and Bou for me. In other words my parents have traveled all the way from Odisha to Chennai for the summer vacations.

Here I am 14000 KMs away all alone. Miss being there in Chennai now. Good days have come to roost in Chennai. My niece will be travelling from Ahmedabad to Chennai for her school vacations. The house will be filled with cheers and shouts of joy when two grand daughters get reunited with with their grand parents. Cartoons 24 hours of the day. Ice Creams, cold drinks and of course chips flowing. Story telling sessions during the evenings. Running around the house. Swings in the park nearby. Perhaps a visit or two to the beach.

Time sure flies by. It still feels like yesterday, when all of us cousins used to get together for summer

vacations with our grandparents. We used to be a motley bunch of kids numbering sometimes up to 15 cousins. Ohh!! The fun..The games....The fights....Moments which will remain etched forever in all our hearts.
My grandparents used to live in a village named "Nalihana" which was about 30 KMs from Puri. They owned a farmhouse which was spread across 35 acres. Warm sunny weather with the cool sea breeze flowing in the evening. Trees to climb all around the place. Mangoes to be plucked straight from the 100 odd mango trees and eaten without being washed. "Hoo-doo-doo ing" the bullocks which to the uninitiated was the war cry to make the bullocks go faster as they pulled the bullock cart. Fishing in one of the several ponds. Long lazy baths in one of the ponds owned by our
grandparents. If I remember correctly there used to be seven ponds but the best was the "Bada Pokhari". Nature at its best. Fresh coconut water from one of the coconut trees. Fresh honey from the apiary. Cricket matches and the occasional kabadi matches with the village children. 


My grandfather owned a Luna.Moped. That Luna was probably the first bike all we cousins ever rode. The thrill of zooming down the broken village roads at 25 KM per Hour......Wooohooo!!! I tell you we were speed demons...lolz. Evenings brought with them the
cry of the cicadas. The sea breeze made the evenings much cooler, not that we cousins minded the heat of the day. Night came early as most of the times there was no electricity in the village. The night brought with it, "Chuda Ghasha". That heavenly concoction of flattened rice mixed with generous amounts of pure ghee and lots and lots of coconut and jaggery. Yummy!!! I am salivating just thinking about it. 

Personally for me the best part of all those summer vacations spent with my grandparents were the story telling sessions. Both my grandfather and my grandmother were voracious readers who could read Odiya, Bengali, Hindi and English. The stories they would recite to us while all of us cousins sat with them during the evenings under a star lit sky still ring true in my ears. My favorites were the Jim Corbett stories. My love for story telling and story writing probably comes from those stints with my grandparents. 

Time sure flies by. That small lad from Nalihana today is in the USA and has his own daughter of nearly two now pestering her grandparents for a story this summer vacation of 2016.