Mysuru
When I was a kid, I used to play a lot with my friends. We played hide and seek, lagori, hopscotch, cricket, badminton, tree to tree, and more. Ahh, those were such wonderful times. I was a popular kid (only because my voice was the loudest), and therefore everyone knew my name. During the weekdays, it was very hard for me to wake up early, but on Sunday mornings, I would be the first person to get up. The whole day, I would be outside playing with all my friends, and only after 9 p.m. would I remember the homework I had to submit the next day. I would get scolded by my mom because even to get printouts, the shops would obviously be closed by then.
I had a lot of friends; we were around 7 to 8 of us. We used to fight so much in deciding which game to play for that day. I remember how we invented our own games. We played tag (running and catching) when the power was cut on the whole street. You know, those were the days when most houses didn’t have power backups, so that was considered the best time to play. Hide and seek was our go-to game; almost everyone would hide in the same house where counting to 100 was done. When the seeker went away from that counting spot to look for everyone, we would go and call out “hide and seek” to save ourselves from being the next seeker. Everyone loved this game.
And Holi… oh my god, Holi was so much fun. All the kids came out to play Holi (we didn’t have any organized events for Holi back then; people just came together and had fun). We played UNO cards; our friend Harsha introduced us to this card game, and I think he made his own rules too. We used to play it for hours. There was Muttu, who dominated everyone when we played cricket because he was the oldest. All our English vocabulary was so bad except for this one person named Poorvik, who took a lot of pride in knowing and talking in English. Because of him, I started carrying a dictionary around just to avoid his lectures!
During summer holidays, we played so much that sometimes I forgot about food. Sometimes we would bring food boxes from our homes, meet at one of our friends’ houses, and eat together. We would be on the streets playing all day. I remember the aroma of the air, the breeze that came in the evenings. I remember how we went to the house with a mango tree at the end of the street to pluck raw mangoes without getting caught by the owner. We threw stones aiming at the raw mangoes and got hit by the same stones almost all the time. We would cut them into small pieces, add some salt and chili powder, and eat them.
There were days when Harini and I used to paint. We even went to painting competitions and won prizes. And there was Amrutesh, who I think was the fairest-skinned among all of us… we used to tease him as “tomato” because his face would turn red in the summer while playing. Papa would peel the skin off the mangoes while making a dessert, and my sister and I used to sit next to him only to eat the cut mangoes directly from the vessel. Making the dessert was like a ritual; everyone loved it. It was made out of mango, banana, and some milk. We ate it with chapathi, dosa, akki rotti, poori, etc.
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I remember how I waited for 9XM and MTV to play my favorite songs. How we went on picnics on weekends, played in the water, had lunch, and came back screaming songs in the car. How we took selfies, which were trending at that time. How all the cousins went to Ajji’s (grandmom’s) place and watched movies.
During Deepavali, we bought crackers. The competition among all the friends was about who was going to burn the first cracker in the morning and who would first finish one full packet of Bijli pataki (Bijli crackers). My friends, who never got up early and were late to school almost all the time, got up early to win this. Some even joined two to three Bijli patakis to add some fun and also to empty the packet faster.
Talking about Mysuru and not mentioning Dasara is not possible. ;) Dasara in Mysuru happens with the traditional Dasara procession (locally known as “Jumboo Savari”) held on the streets of Mysore city on the day of Vijayadashami. Preceding this, a lot of events are conducted such as concerts, food fests, exhibitions, sports competitions, skits, etc. When I was a kid, my dad would take us to these events throughout the nine days of the festival. The whole Mysuru city would be decorated with lights, which looked amazing, especially at night. And since it was Navaratri, each day all the kids went to houses that kept toys for pooja and got a lot of Indian snacks like chakli, kodbale, etc.
During Christmas, I used to get holidays for 10 days while other friends of mine had to go to school. So I used to make fun of them that I had holidays but then get equally bored at home until they all came back from school. On the 25th, one of my friends, Supriya, who was a Christian, distributed cakes to all of us. And on New Year’s Eve, we all contributed some money and organized a New Year party with balloon decorations, chocolate cake, potato chips, and chocolates. We even practiced dance performances on the popular song tracks back then. We played games like Antakshari or Police and Thief. The party used to get over by 10 p.m. because all the kids were allowed to stay out only till that time. It’s funny how now most of the parties start after 10 p.m.
The best thing about memories is making them.
The below picture is from a get-together we all did recently. With so many memories and such a strong bond, it’s heartwarming to see how our friendships have stood the test of time and how we can still come together to create new memories.
