For everybody the place they grew up is special and they have great memories about it. My Thatha says his first 20 years of life was the best, Appa says he had a great time with his Paati in his childhood, Amma was happiest enjoying herself in Kumbakonam temples with her dear brother Babu Mama. My favourite place to this day is 1, Ranganathan Road, Nungambakkam. I am sure all my sisters will also say the same thing! Sadly, the building is not there anymore, even the road name is changed to Village Road! But what a time we all had there! The number of friends we all used to bring, Thatha’s friends who used to come and stay overnight playing cards with him late into the night, even distant relatives like cousin’s cousins were welcomed and had a comfortable stay with us. We shifted to this house when I was just about 3 years old. My first memory of this house is meeting Lakshmi Mami (house owner Subburathina Mama’s daughter) and her daughter Vidya. I remember being fascinated by the stairs going down from our verandah to the ground floor house hall (where the owners stayed). I and my immediate elder sisters Sabitha and Jayashree were put in the school next door. To this day, we call it pakkathu school and not by the name of the school. The school was let out for weddings during summer holidays. Though I don’t remember, Amma tells me that I used to cry that I want to attend the weddings there! I do remember that the school ground was used as an open air theatre where movies were shown. We had a great view of the screen from the open space (veli maadi) behind our house and enjoyed the movie sitting at home, which was a great thing those days with TV unheard of!
Side maadis - As soon as we climb the stairs, before we reach our front door, on the right side there used to be an open space which we used to call side maadi (as it was in the side and we were in maadi) The number of afternoons were spent in this space is countless! As there was a huge neem tree giving shade to the whole space, it was a great place to spend the afternoon. Only thing is we did not have any steps to reach it, but have to climb over a small parapet structure. Even my Thatha and Paati did not have difficulty to climb over. I recall that we used to take Thatha’s easy chair to side maadi and he used to rest there in the chair. I heard that the side maadi had a very low wall initially and when I was sleeping there with my uncle, I fell over on the asbestos sheet (which was the roof of the shop below). After this the wall height was increased and we had 2-3 concrete seats attached to the wall from where one can have a view of Ranganathan Road. Sabitha and I have spent so many evenings there sitting on the concrete seats and talking nonsense!
When my Chittappa and family used to come for holidays, I remember that Sabitha and I used to sit there and count the number of cars and check out which taxi they were coming by! When the then President of India Mr. Fakrudeen Ali Ahmed passed through our road, all of us gathered in side maadi to look at him. When Indra Gandhi died, I remember that my friend Manju who was staying quite far away, stayed in our house overnight and we checked out the mobs on the road only from this side maadi!
Behind this side maadi, there used to be two more side maadis – again we were supposed to jump on a small parapet to go to each side maadis. The house owners used to dry vadaams in the second side maadi and the third side maadi overlooked our hall window.
More on my favourite place in part II
