Summer

This post has been waiting in the wings for a long time....Inspired by memories of our childhood, I will now describe a game we played for the longest time, when we were kids. We even played it when we were old enough to know better.
The game was called 'Job'. You may recognize it from 'Doctor-Doctor' or 'House-House' or even 'Teacher-Teacher'. The difference was that we all had to pick different Jobs. Money was a pack of cards. We spent hourse at this game. For all of you who think it isnt possible to play this game for hours and days on an end, let me first explain that we had planty of props. My grandmoms house is huge, the entire upper storey was devoted to this game. Thats 3 huge rooms. We also had tons and tons of toys.

Our creativeness knew no bounds. From staid and boring jobs like doctor and shopkeeper, we soon graduated to : Witch, Hoopla Boy(we called it 'Hoopla'), "Cooker",Pujari etc etc. Most of the above mentioned careers were thought up by Yam. However, my personal favourite was "Helper", also thought up by Yam. It was the job with minimun exertion. The 'helper' was hired by the 'priest' or 'doctor' or whoever else was playing, to mind their business when they went to call on each other.
The hoopla started off as a series of stals set up by the person while the other payed for the privilege of playing there. As was to be expected, hoopla soon became a game in its own right.
The witch typically sat in a small darkened corner, under a dupatta preferably. We would go to him/her and ask for our future to be told. She would then light an agarbatti(which was banned later), paint our faces with a mixture of powder and water, tie up our hands, and tell our future, for which we would pay the princely sum of the King of Hearts.

So and so our chilhoods passed, without us even realising. I miss it. I wish i could sit under a dupatta and tell someones future with paint on my face.

Evenings in Mumbai and other Randomness

Im living in a hostel of sorts, it isnt really a hostel, its like a bunch of rooms and one tiny room where they serve food. Its called "the mess".
Hostels on Girgaum Chowpatty, which as ppl from bombay would know, is a lovely place to live in. Pretty soon though, im going to have to find some tiny poky hole in the wall and pay an astronomical amount to live in it. Not waiting for that day.
In the meantime, i intend to enjoy myself. Hostels right next to thre beach and most evenings, we go for a wlk. I use the term walk loosely, because the breeze is so amazing, we 'walk' very very slowly. any slower and we'd be going backwards.

Yesterday, i had a gelato. An apparently italian version of icecream. On every 1st of the month, Gelato serves a scoop of the 'flavour of the month'. Yesterday, it was...drumroll......frutollo!

It tasted of strawberries, cherries and banana.It sounds awful i know, but it wasnt. The minute it touched my tongue, i was taken back to swimming days. whole summers where all of us would turn up for swimming lessons at Casino Hotel. The reason i thought of this is because it tasted like one of the many many sundaes we had at Abad Coffeeshop afterwards....
Those were the days. And one of my dreams is that all our kids grow up the way we did. Playing cricket, job, swimming, eating....creating memories.