Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Tea is not my cup of tea!

That might sound an odd title to start my first blog with...But since that is what may reveal to you why 'i m nostalgic', i will surely go ahead.
I am a person who gets attached to anything and everything. I have a certain nostalgia for my childhood days. No wonder i am greatly attached to my maternal grandparents who brought me up. I relate my life, my very existance with them. They made me what i am. They taught me all lessons of patience, honesty, culture and life.
I could still remember how my nanaji(my grandpa) rode his old bicycle to a nearby village in heavy rains just because i was 'feeling like eating mangoes'. He was all wet and shivering with cold when he gave me that most delicious mango i ever had in my life...
I could still remember my amma(grandma) giving me imlas(dictations) so that i do not rank low in class. She was very strict when it came to studies. That is more than one can expect from someone who had only had her primary education!

I still remember how they both heard all the non-sense that i uttered after coming to school. Nanaji remained very worried about my low grades in maths. He used to take me with him to the garden. While he did his gardening he used to hear from me all the tables, prime numbers etc that i was supposed to know.

I still remember the day when he bought me a new bicycle and ran after me when i rode it so that i do not fall. He gifted me an alarm clock on my birthday and said "Its very important to be punctual and value time". (Though i could never become punctual as he wanted me to be:))
I still remember how amma would make 'gajar ka halwa' and 'til ke laddoo' on my birthdays(and she still does it without a miss) inspite of having a severe backache.

I still remember how she allowed me to talk to guys despite her strong disliking. She is much of a narrowminded person or rather we have a 'two generations gap' between us. Still she never stopped me from anything that was out of her realms of transgression.

I still remember how they never called me when i went to college so that i may learn to live without them.
I still remember how they boasted in front of all relatives and aquaintances how i never spoke a lie, how well mannered i was, how nice chhapaties i made, how i had never tasted tea.....
They felt a certain sense of pride when they told others that i have never even tasted tea. And somewhere inside i also felt the same kind of strange pride. Whenever someone offered me tea i simply,bluntly said "I do not drink tea. I have never tasted it, you see...."And true enough, i never tried to taste tea and i never wanted to. Even three years after leaving home i never thought of tasting tea because if i taste it, back home my nanaji and amma must still be saying to someone "she never drinks tea. She has never tasted it you see..."
Tea, certainly is not my cup of tea!