Still child at heart

Today when I am writing a decade after my childhood, I know I have lost it- even with a photographic memory, old calendar full of red marked dates and two big photo books. My childhood, the things and people encircling it, are now the swirling of ribbons on the aroma of total black. When I meet up with an old kindergarten friend lost with time or hear someone tell a story about how I loved bread loaves, small moments engross before my eyes as if they are really big.
Pricking them constantly, sorting out fragmented memories, I get a few of them clear and when I do, sometimes it’s me ending up laughing like a drunk, otherwise sobbing to red under the skin.

Growing up with spiritually intimate parents, I was always told that people die away but their souls remain enclosed on memories: easy chairs with tarnished legs, square glasses with one frame missing, notebook pages written about the smell of ripening mangoes and others which sometimes make their appearance, to zero expectancy and take us aback with their integrity, even with the bygone years. For me, though, I remember most the two-storey house we had when we were living in Dhanmondi. It was a bridge connecting meadows, shores and lush green forests. Then we’d had a big swing to ride, neighbours to play with and long distances to run with the exercising-clad in the morning and that wearing tracksuits.

Life was very simple: wake up to the cacophony of the birds and sunlight entering straight through the hole in your eyes. Eat a light breakfast of either cornflakes or butter with pineapple jam and get ready for school. School was the workshop of the devil for us. We had impish friends along to play trick on the teacher, sometimes secluding a cockroach on the tiffin box and then flinging it to the teacher’s table for a free class. Sometimes, the teacher would identify the mischievous students’ and punish them with scale beatings and bruises, but nothing to stop them from inventing better ideas next time.

On summer, Dhanmondi would be a carnival full of fuchka carts, lesfita-wala, popcorn sellers, juice-makers and what not. Once in a while, parents would allow us to spend an entire day on Dhanmondi Lake, provided we assisted properly to an elder cousin. We strolled the roads with polythene bags overhead to beat the heat and munch down spicy fuchka and then Igloo ice creams to neutralize the tongue itching. I reckon buying so many useless things like rags, balloons, puppets, plastic dolls, which had to be always removed a few days later for space constraint. But, the temporary happiness that sparks in me, with their non-usefulness, is the memory to be cherished forever.