Nostalgia is not what it used to be...
The journey between Hyderabad and Guntur used to take around 6 hours. The 10.00 p.m bus from Jubilee bus stand in Hyderabad's old city would deposit me bleary-eyed into the just awakening, dawn twilight of Guntur. No need to set your watches...There is no time zone change between Guntur and Hyderabad.
A cycle rickshaw ride through the early morning pleasant smell of dew and dust would ensue. The unforgettable sound of the bell on the rickshaw, a hard-abrupt sound like a horse's hoof on marble, because rickshaw bells were actually attached to a rope pulled by the rickshaw-wallah, unlike the usual metal cycle bells that you pressed on.
In Brodipet, my uncle's house reminded me of a strange combination of an adobe bungalow and Jantar Mantar. It was a shade of faded pink, with porous limestone walls, coconut trees framing its perimeter with their leaves like a wedding tent, a six-foot wall surrounding it with a wooden gate, a slate moat as wide as the gate, laid over the gutter that separated the road from the compound wall.
I always arrived unannounced, no one ever seemed surprised to see me, and no one ever asked how long I planned to stay.
I would make my way past the verandah (which served as a preliminary living room used for visitors who were not family or friends), past the formal living room (used for more important visitors), past the second living room (where family hung out), and into the dining room, where a hot cup of filter coffee would materialize out of thin air, served in a metal glass and bowl, frothing from being poured from a height, back and forth from bowl to glass.
My bag, deposited in the family living room, would find its own way upstairs to whatever guest room I was going to be staying in.
Morning ablutions and a hot bucket bath would follow the coffee, and it was only after the bath, with all the travel germs and muck washed away, that I would settle into the family room with the day's newspapers (delivered overnight by the Madras mail train).
Between the age of 11 and 16, I spent several weeks in Guntur, mainly devouring the contents of my uncle's library, a perplexingly wooden cabin nestled upstairs between a bedroom and another living room. The collection of 25 years worth of Reader's Digests went first through my 12-year old brain processor, followed by Alistair McLean, Arthur Hailey, and Irving Wallace. All the Reader's Digest condensed books were sucked in and spat out. As the years passed, my tastes shifted to Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and Ayn Rand. The end of my boyhood and the beginning of my teenage years were spent full-time in character. I was the secret young protagonist of Enid Blyton, the owner of chairs with wings. I was part of the Famous Five, the Secret Seven, the Three Investigators of Alfred Hitchcock. I was an English Lord in Wodehousian England, and an American Hero in all the Alistair McLean novels.
The one thing I was certainly not, at least in my head, was a middle-class teenager with hand-me-down clothes and less than a rupee jingling in my pocket who went to visit his uncle in Guntur not least because said uncle reimbursed his travel expenses.
I remember with fondness that my education was made possible largely because television/VCRs had not taken over the family living room until my last stay in Guntur in the summer of 1988.
I wonder how the children I eventually plan to have will be educated...
A cycle rickshaw ride through the early morning pleasant smell of dew and dust would ensue. The unforgettable sound of the bell on the rickshaw, a hard-abrupt sound like a horse's hoof on marble, because rickshaw bells were actually attached to a rope pulled by the rickshaw-wallah, unlike the usual metal cycle bells that you pressed on.
In Brodipet, my uncle's house reminded me of a strange combination of an adobe bungalow and Jantar Mantar. It was a shade of faded pink, with porous limestone walls, coconut trees framing its perimeter with their leaves like a wedding tent, a six-foot wall surrounding it with a wooden gate, a slate moat as wide as the gate, laid over the gutter that separated the road from the compound wall.
I always arrived unannounced, no one ever seemed surprised to see me, and no one ever asked how long I planned to stay.
I would make my way past the verandah (which served as a preliminary living room used for visitors who were not family or friends), past the formal living room (used for more important visitors), past the second living room (where family hung out), and into the dining room, where a hot cup of filter coffee would materialize out of thin air, served in a metal glass and bowl, frothing from being poured from a height, back and forth from bowl to glass.
My bag, deposited in the family living room, would find its own way upstairs to whatever guest room I was going to be staying in.
Morning ablutions and a hot bucket bath would follow the coffee, and it was only after the bath, with all the travel germs and muck washed away, that I would settle into the family room with the day's newspapers (delivered overnight by the Madras mail train).
Between the age of 11 and 16, I spent several weeks in Guntur, mainly devouring the contents of my uncle's library, a perplexingly wooden cabin nestled upstairs between a bedroom and another living room. The collection of 25 years worth of Reader's Digests went first through my 12-year old brain processor, followed by Alistair McLean, Arthur Hailey, and Irving Wallace. All the Reader's Digest condensed books were sucked in and spat out. As the years passed, my tastes shifted to Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and Ayn Rand. The end of my boyhood and the beginning of my teenage years were spent full-time in character. I was the secret young protagonist of Enid Blyton, the owner of chairs with wings. I was part of the Famous Five, the Secret Seven, the Three Investigators of Alfred Hitchcock. I was an English Lord in Wodehousian England, and an American Hero in all the Alistair McLean novels.
The one thing I was certainly not, at least in my head, was a middle-class teenager with hand-me-down clothes and less than a rupee jingling in my pocket who went to visit his uncle in Guntur not least because said uncle reimbursed his travel expenses.
I remember with fondness that my education was made possible largely because television/VCRs had not taken over the family living room until my last stay in Guntur in the summer of 1988.
I wonder how the children I eventually plan to have will be educated...
posted by Ravi Mantha at 9:31 AM
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