“Every Summer
Like the roses,
Childhood returns”
-Marty Rubin
Those summers of my childhood were the most idyllic ones laid out like the Yam Kolka river. My grandfather was stationed in Bulsar after his retirement from Railway Police. He was the head of the security operations at one of the prestigious paper mills during that time. Bulsar was a small town in South Gujarat which you would not even register its existence as you passed by on your way to Udvada ( a coastal town and the holy place of the Parsis’s agiyari called ‘Udvada Atash Behram’ ) or Navsari city.
The river passed by our flat and I would often wonder how it would fill up so much in the rainy season, given the frightful stories that my grandmother would fill me up on the water level reaching the 1st floor of the flats. My young mind would imagine her swimming around or using boats in the rains. However, the river was integral to all our summer activities.
Early mornings were meant for swimming and I never learnt to swim but rather hang on to the rubber float though I marvelled at my father, my uncles and my sister (aunt’s daughter) swimming with no fear deeply into the river, sometimes crossing it and coming back. They knew the river too well, knowing which spots had whirlpools. My father was once struck into it and I still don’t know how he came out of it. But he was an excellent swimmer so he knew the trick to escape.
Afternoons saw us preparing for the evening or next morning’s catch. We had professional and crude fishing poles especially kept for fishing in the river and each adult member had their own rod. Looking back I realised how expensive my grandfather’s fishing pole was given the fact that no one dared touch it. He had a special small box in which he kept his small fishing tools. I would pluck up some courage to circumambulate around it but that was the extent to which I could come close to it. My sister and I had crude fishing poles out of which mine was the smallest. I hated it sometimes and only indulged in liking it when I was fishing (or rather attempted it). There were rare days when we had the company of local folks while fishing. They would always fish some distance away from us using a thin stick and small balls of mud. They mostly used to catch lobsters and they were really big ones. Though we tried emulating them, we failed to catch even a single lobster. Always we ended up buying from them. They did share the secret of the mud balls to be mixed with turmeric but we still don’t know how they did catch the lobsters. We would mark their place of fishing lobsters, making balls and noticing the distance their rods fell – all to no avail.
Evenings were a delight on weekends with white cloth put up in the society garden space and a movie projector fit at the perfect viewing angle. All the bollywood movies were the weekend escape for the people in the colony area. As for me, I was never interested in them so I would go and swing in the grand children’s garden. The garden had coniferous trees like pine and fir lined up on its back after which was the riverbank. Bats had made their homes on the tall trees and they were an excellent alarm system for us kids. As evening descended into nightfall, the first bat flying out would be an indicator for us to return home and we would all run uphill to where our flat was.
Special days were allocated to beach visits. Tithal beach was the place I felt myself. The rolling waves, the salty air, the bracing breeze and the footprints on sand highlighted with tiny shells. The beach was a much loved place, making me run towards it with gay abandon while my perplexed parents tried to grip my hands, preventing me from going deeper. They could not understand why I never shared this kind of joy in the river right besides the house.
Traveling back to childhood memories serves a way to give a new perspective to a small place that many people would have otherwise never known. What is your memorable place from your childhood? Care to share? Email us and we shall post it!
