Its funny, one of the things that I can recall so vividly about our yearly trips to Delhi are the kolhapuri chappals I used to ask mom to buy for me. They obviously had to last me the entire year… I loved how they used to hurt my feet when they were new… and how, slowly… they would smoothen out… and become almost like second skin. I don’t think there is anything in the world more precious than old kolhapuri chappals! Just the thought of them makes me ache for them! I don’t know why I don’t buy them anymore – I find it tedious to wear them out. The very thing I used to love as a child.

Nani’s house in the summer… in the scorching, mind numbing Delhi summer. That small house sure had a big heart. It could take in endless people… I have seen it so full of family during my aunt’s wedding… they just fitted in… God knows how, they just did. Now that I think of it, that house was really small. If I tried going there again, I’d feel like its caving in upon me… it was small and dark and lovely.

We used to live for a couple of years in this really back of beyond town in the tip of what is now Chhattisgarh. There was no railway line there, so one had to drive 300 kms to the nearest big town to catch the train to Delhi. I remember once me and my brother were so excited to leave, we could not sleep… so we bathed and got ready in the night. Then just stayed awake all night… to leave…

There is something so special about these trips to Nani’s place. It felt the same when we were in the same city. It was not just about going to another city. I remember the older RK Puram house… strange things I remember of it… this grape vine running along one side of the house, it felt so exotic then… getting my ears pierced by one of these men who used to roam around with a wooden box with them… and had these really pretty ear-rings in them….the first ear-ring I wore… a gold string with a tiny red and black bead in it…Benji, the big white pomerarian jumping on me soon as he saw me (he came from a long line of poms that we bred at home!)… the really pretty pink lace material nani gifted me… I remember the exact moment she turned to open her almirah and showed me the cloth… and the dress I eventually got made after that… the trips to the RK Puram market… the small library nani got her Mills & Boons from… the ice-creams and masala dosa she always treated me with…the long chats my aunt had with her friends on the street… the Chinese van that my aunt’s pal owned… and the yummy food we got to eat there!....fish curry on Sundays… my mom standing on the main door of the house after she got her first stylish hair-cut…mama’s Yezdi…

30th January, 0035hrs.