Dheera's Workshop of Whimsy

4/03/09

I love Delhi. Sure it is chaotic and rude and loud and angry but it is a beautiful city. It is the city I grew up in. The city of violently contrasting seasons, of flowers and lush trees. Winter in Delhi is a time of magic for me. The fog which disrupts people’s lives and air traffic, to me is romantic and mysterious.

This month, I lost a dear cousin. He was suddenly taken ill with cancer and within four months he was gone. All of us, left behind cousins are stunned and sad. One of my younger cousins decided to have a prayer meeting so that all of us could get together and pay our respects to Uday, who lived in Washington, D.C. but also very much in our hearts.

That is what took me to Delhi this February. The weather was crisp and pleasant. The sky was blue and I had a few hours to kill before I was expected for the prayer meeting. I decided to go on a ride down memory lane. Lodhi Road with its brick houses and red boundary walls was where I asked the driver to take me. We passed the well-groomed Lodhi Gardens, the India International Center, once a regular haunt, and then onto Lodhi Road.

When we were young, we lived in the last house on the first lane. I remembered that a school was being built there and that there were always two beehives on the tree closest to the garden gate.

The school now is a full fledged one, with school buses blocking the lane leading to what used to be our bungalow. The driver turned into the drive way and memories flooded in. The lawn which I remembered as a huge garden on the left of the drive way was just a narrow strip but the main lawn, which housed our roses, was large and as awesome as I expected. The garden wall separating our home from our next door neighbour, a gentleman my sister had christened Uncle Bull Frog, was still intact and not as high as I remembered. Nothing about the house looked any different after all these years. I could almost see the four of us, my parents my sister and I sitting on the wide verandah and having tea. I thought for a moment that I saw my mother’s soft touch, the flowers, the colourful cushions and the warmth. Tea cups tinkled, laughter wafted in the breeze and then it was gone in the blink of an eye, like my whole family.

 I looked back towards the gate and there sure enough were the two large, menacing beehives clinging to the tree by the gate of my old home.