Sunday, March 11, 2007

A ride down the memory lane

The front page article on Krishna Menon in the Sunday Magazine took me a lovely nostalgic ride. Those childhood days i spent in the small little town of chennai called Chromepet. It was such an unassuming place which became famous after the 'pettarap' song in one of Prabhu Deva's movies. Wait..they have not shot the song here, its just that the first few lines of the song has the place name..it goes like this, 'Saidapettai Rainpettai Chrompettai pettarap ... '.

Chromepet holds a special place in my heart more because of the lovely times i spent there with the most wonderful people of my life - my grandparents. The evenings used to be so much fun, when i spend time with nature - the lovely neem tree i could see from the huge balcony of our house. There would be 2 chairs facing each other just close to the balcony grill. Grandpa used to sit there eternally with the news paper or a book in hand and sometimes listening to a bhajan on the Walkman. My favourite place is the chair opposite to him. As soon as i come home from school, i would happily go and sit there, remove my shoes and keep telling my grandpa what all happened at school. I never bothered to check if i was boring him, i was always so excited to keep sharing my experiences. My grandma would soon come with a some tiffin - dosa or idli or upma. And if it was not my favourite there always a second choice at least for me :)

Grandparents are a treasure. They always had time for me no matter what. They crossed the seas of generation gap trying to connect to the present. A walking talking library, no matter what question i had on history or philosophy - my grandpa used to have an answer which he used to put in the form of a good story. And those lovely stories my grandma had to put me off to sleep :)

Having got to spent close to 20 years of my life with them has been the best gifts which will always be very close to my heart.

Treasured are the times i spent with you both
Amazing are the values i imbibed from you both
Love you hameshaa...

3 comments:

Senthil Kumaran said...

a nice recollection. like a r.k.narayan style. :-)

Prakash Venkat said...

Its always nice to recollect the child hood memories .... I never stayed with my grandparents , but I know for sure they are real treasure ....

BTW nice way of wording things ..... Does all tamilians inherit R.K Narayanans style of writing ???

Unknown said...

really touching!! especially the last three poetic lines says it all!!

got reminded of my chilhood days and the time i spent with my grandparents....if there is an option, i really would love to go back to my childhood days!!!! :)