After almost 5 years of living here, experiences of India and especially of my childhood seem almost surreal. We lived in the same house for 12 years, since I was 2 years old. One of my favorite stories of growing up in India has to do with the plot of land next to our house in Shantinagar, in Bangalore.
The plot of land went through many avatars, the earliest one that I remember is the "cow shed". During that time, us kids ran around and played among cows. The place smelled of dung and urine and the cow shed was dark and dingy. There were maybe 30 cows in there..and chickens. Little chickens that arrived in round baskets, balls of yellow fur that we would cup into our hands. Just to put it in context, this wasn't farmland or suburban, it was pretty much in the center of the city. I guess zoning hadn't made it's way out there yet!
One days the cows were gone and replaced by vermicilli, lots of it. The cow shed was now a vermicilli factory and the courtyard that we used to chase chickens in, was now where the vermicilli was dried. Long lengths of the pasta were hung from a framework made of rows of iron pipes. In between eating the raw pasta we also hung from the pipes using them as monkey bars. Sometimes we would tie coir rope to the pipes and make swings.
In the last few years that we lived there the plot of land became a saree dyeing factory. The rows of pasta were replaced by colorful sarees in hues of red, orange, green, purple and so many more. When the afternoon sun came into our house, the light would come in filtered through the fabric, washing our interior walls in the colors of the saree of the day. It's one of the most vivid visual memories I have of growing up.
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