Aais paais, you duffer

I threw my school satchel on the sofa, and ran as fast as I could, evading my mother’s calls, to my friend’s house. The sweltering summer didn’t dither me, neither did the closed window. I knocked his window, and after some earnest whisperings too, he opened it. I demanded, “Where is it?” Still rubbing off his sleep, he gave it to me disapprovingly. I had got my prized possession, and ran back, again as fast as I could, to my home. My mother had laid out my lunch, and I sat on the dining table, and opened it by the side of my plate. Ah! ‘The new comic’s release of Super Commando Dhruv’ How long had I been waiting for you, Dhruv.? You are great, better than Nagraj. My school mates are buffoons. They don’t realize that you, unlike Nagraj, do things without supernatural powers. Thus quickly granting victory to me, I got immersed into the comics, with my mother coaxing me to eat first and read it later.

I am smiling now while I write this. The professed sense of adulthood can’t approve it, but a few years back, those were my moments – each day. I was reliving these moments with my colleagues during our post-lunch walk a few days back. Following a discussion, we had somehow jaunted off to our childhood, and before long, we were throwing out similar, if not same, stories of nonchalant innocence. Each gushed out his blissful days in never-to-return mood. Remarkably we were all floating in the same zone.

There is this laid out field of cricket, the only difference being that the field is the lawn of some house. Leg side play is barred because the wall patrolling the leg side has some glass-pane windows, some already broken. There is a well in between, and whenever the ball is hit inside it, the batsman is admonished for being too perfect. Not only he is given out, but he also has to borrow the bucket to draw the ball out, from some hard-faced and hotheaded uncle of us.

Then there is this lukka chippi (hide and seek) being played among the half-raised walls of an under-construction house. Vivek has counted till ten. Hey see, Raj has swapped his yellow shirt with the brown one of Sohan. And Ram is sporting the now-borrowed blue cap of Gopi on his bald head. Gopi is walking with his scalp just peeking above the wall. To complicate matters, Raj is dangling the flaps of his yellow shirt beyond one corner. Poor Vivek! That’s you, Sohan. No idiot, aais paais. It’s me! Raj. Go and count till ten again, you duffer.

Also there is the clutter of kites flying around. Today instead of borrowing comics from my ever-sleepy friend, I had run straight to my roof, because I had an inkling of a kite landing on my roof. Even though I didn’t find the kite, I found the string which led me to its mother-kite, hopelessly suspended from the maze of electric wires. I rescued her, and now it is flying high among the skies. Hey, some other kite is coming. Shit, it is of big bully Kitu’s. Oh! It is gone. Hey, you fool Ron, why didn’t you sharpen our strings with the crushed-bulb mixed colloid.

Never mind, there are a plethora of other things still. Vish amrit, buddhiya kabbadi, kho kho, denga paani ….

We were just laughing; then followed the ever-consoling sigh of the days gone by. Someone looked up his watch. It is time to go now. I have a conference call to attend. We walked back, perhaps a bit differently this time, if not with moist eyes, then at least with moist feelings.