Place: Our home in Palayamkottai. It was a mansion (by today’s standards) – a huge, old house with big granite blocks for steps, tiled roof, and a huge garden. The garden was big enough for us to dig trenches for water – we had a lot of banana trees, a coconut tree, a bunch of neem trees, a tamarind tree, cotton trees, papaya, drumstick (with the caterpillars), a big bush shoeflower, mom’s flower garden, and granny’s greens patch. And, we had a lot of space to play after all these. It is a best of all places I’ve lived in. 

Anyways, I didn’t mean to describe that place so much! What I wanted to talk about was a frog that sneaked in everyday. Those days, dad had a bicycle and nothing more. And, every night, we’d find this huge froggie on the seat of the bicycle. It was quite a mystery how this guy got there – because the doors and windows and pretty fine mesh to keep the insects out and the cycle was parked inside. Well, it was a mystery until we caught mister froggie making his way in. He was squeezing his way through the mesh – and I couldn’t believe he could do that! 

And ya, that’s the moment I so clearly remember – some kinda freeze frame moment!

I can still see my sister wearing the striped dress with big red, white dots – she happily came down the slide without seeing the muddy ground -thanks to the rain. And, we had to go home, across the road, for her to change!