found the tie-and-dye fancy things I’d made in college – looks ridiculously funny now. I found a good load of saree blouses – my inheritance from granny!! I don’t think I’d ever wear them nor do I have the heart to throw them! In fact, I don’t even remember why I took them.

I found a favorites dress of mine – a pretty orange one with beads and laces. I don’t know about you – but I have some favorite dresses – the ones that have some special memory or just made you feel like a princess (or a prince). This one and a couple of other pretty dresses have a story behind them.
Years later, when I was no longer the kid, when I could appreciate the prettiness of a saree, I got to know that some of my prettiest dresses of younger days were made from mom’s sarees. When they couldn’t buy nice dresses and new material for festivals, mom would cut one of her pretty sarees and make dresses for me and my sister. This orange frock is from one of her sarees. I don’t know if I’d have the heart to cut a saree as pretty as that! Mother’s love!

And then, I found a bunch of letters from school pals. You know, the good old days of writing in one of those inland covers, dropping it in a postbox and hoping they haven’t changed their address… and then you’d get the reply in a similar cover after a couple of weeks – or even months. No pings, no diggs, no tweets, no calls, no emails – just the good old snail mail.

And guess what – I found something that looked like a baptism dress and asked mom – it’s my brother’s. I can almost see a baby there

So, that’s how I spent my day today! Remembering my childhood and thanking God for my wonderful family

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!