Life Measured In Memories

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Sometimes I think my life is measured in memories and I love it.

My son’s still on vacation and we have a lot of time to “chill” together. It is an easy routine with him and we enjoy talking about “old” times. He especially likes to listen to stories from my childhood. We were looking at photos of the foliage from the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens and one particular pic triggered an old memory.

I grew up with my Grandmother and adored her. Ah, we’ve spent some wonderful times together. I was lucky to listen to a lot of stories, mostly village folklore, from her.

♥

So, those days, each time the crow cawed, my Grandmother said we should expect a visitor. It would always turn out true. Coincidence? Not sure. But we always had visitors. Some were house guests, some arrived in the morning and left after dinner and some, well, just flitted by.

Then years later, around the time I was ten and in the seventh grade, we lived in a different city in a house surrounded by trees. During summer, we loved walking around, crunching the dead leaves under our feet.

On one such day, as I aimlessly loitered around with a stick, prodding whatever I could, I sensed a movement in the leaves. I could have imagined it, but I was pretty sure I saw something move. Curiously, I prodded some more and this time, saw definite activity. Too late, I realized we had an unexpected visitor. A snake, no less.

Stunned, I ran to tell my Grandmother. Smiling, she decided to humor me and accompanied me to the back of the house where I claimed I saw the snake. Naturally it wasn’t there. Quite unlikely it would wait to see my Grandmother, right?

So anyway we gathered the other neighbors – I must have sounded quite convincing. The owner of the house lived on the premises and hearing all the commotion going on, her siesta disturbed, came out to investigate what the ruckus was all about. When we told her we saw a snake, (see how quickly it became “we”), she smiled enigmatically and went towards the gate.

Puzzled, we saw her open it and look to the left and to the right. Then she clapped her hands. Nothing happened. She clapped again. Wondering what she was up to, we joined her at the gate to see, in the far distance, under a large tree, a couple of people resting. And resting with them, were a couple of round baskets – the sort snakes are kept in.

She managed to attract their attention and beckoned them over. One of them came to the gate and she asked them if one of their snakes was missing. The man turned to his companion and said something. He too joined us. The landlady spoke to them sternly and they scurried to the back of the house. I wasn’t sure what she said, because I didn’t have a good grasp of the local language yet. Fifteen minutes later, they had caught the snake and apologizing, slunk away.

After they left, the landlady serenely informed us that while there was the possibility of snakes in the foliage, it was extremely rare. More often, it was a ploy of the snake charmers who would release their snake into a property and then pretend to be the saviors who caught the snake, so they could be rewarded in cash! Very clever, indeed!

Impressed, we all went back to what we were doing.

Whenever my Uncle visits, he still teases me about this!

Hmm. So here are some “memories” we created with photos from around our area. It is always the little things for me.

Happy Memories

These photos are from the Krishna temple near our house. It is a lovely temple with a serene atmosphere and we love going there.