Summer snacks

The idleness of lazy summer afternoons always resulted in some or the other form of expression - either creative outlets in crayons and watercolours, or playing with light and air, sometimes the usual sibling fights, and many a time, some innovative snacks.

Our old refrigerator, which is amazingly still functional, used to get a big layer of ice frosting all around the inner walls of the freezer. Every few weeks or so, the fridge would have to be switched off and cleaned after all the ice melted. But my brother and I found a way to have some fun; as a side effect of which our mother's job of defrosting the fridge became much easier and less frequent.

We would scrape the ice with the sharp edge of steel bowls (katori) and add a splash of a summer drink concentrate to it, Roohafza and Rasna being our favourites. And there you go, a refreshing icy snack perfect for summer afternoons. This was probably our first taste of the ice-gola that we weren't allowed to eat outside because of questionable hygiene. The stale old freezer frosting is much better!

We also made a couple of other inventions, like Bikaneri bhujiya with ketchup - a spicy attack on the taste buds, but equally enjoyable and unhealthy! Occasionally, when we had some more patience, we would make a "biscuit cake", by layering the ubiquitous Parle-G biscuits with a mixture of cocoa powder or drinking chocolate, sugar and milk. We would have to wait for a few hours to chill and solidify it in the fridge, but this yummy treat was totally worth it!

Teacher - Teacher

If you are a girl, it is highly likely that growing up, you played "teacher-teacher" with your friends or maybe even with your dolls and toys. My little niece tries to play teacher with me now, and I happily oblige (as long as there's no homework!).

Back in Delhi, my dad had painted a part of the balcony wall with black paint and got me some colourful chalks and a duster. Many evenings, my friends and I would cram into the small balcony to play. I don't think I ever got the chance to play the teacher since I was the youngest among our neighbourhood friends. Silly power play, I say. :) Since Pia and I lived in the same building, we would hang out in the balcony more often, especially after it would get too dark to play outside.

Somehow I never got the idea that a blackboard can be used for something other than teaching, and since I had to be the student even while playing, it didn't attract me that much. Looking back, I wish I had used the blackboard more often. It would have been a fun place to doodle, or play cross and noughts. Maybe I'll do that now, with my colourful markers and whiteboard that I use to make boring grocery lists. Maybe I'll try to play the teacher this time. I promise I won't give homework! :)

Newspaper elevation

If you ever feel like killing yourself out of frustration, try talking to my brother while he's reading the Sunday paper. For an hour or so, you cannot get his attention no matter what. He would recline on the bed, Vishnu style, and disappear into the newspaper, and if you are lucky, you might get a rare monosyllabic response from him.

But did I ever tell you that he is the most patient person I have ever known? I mean, he taught me Maths and Physics, so that really is the biggest test of patience anyone can give.

Anyway, when we were growing up, we used to get newspapers rolled up and tied with a black rubber band, thrown up four storeys by the superhuman expertise of the newspaper men. Once in a while, they would miss and the paper would land up in the downstairs neighbour's house. No big deal, if the neighbour is actually there. But our neighbours were out of town for almost the entire year, so we had to get creative.

We would tie a hanger at the end of a long rope and lower it into the downstairs balcony and then try to hook the rubber band with it. It would require some Zen-like concentration, and my brother has no shortage of that. Also, he really had to read the Sunday paper, so he was always up for the challenge.

Long, quiet minutes in the sun would pass as we would try to grasp the rubber band; and once done, slowly and carefully try to pull it up without dropping it. Once the newspaper was within arm's reach, the feeling of triumph was just so rewarding!

But the real challenge was when my brother "accidentally" threw my hairband downstairs and had to bring it back up. He created a weird contraption with a hanger, a clothespin and some rubber bands to act as a spring system. The Zen master of perseverance used some physics this time and caught the hairband in the clothespin contraption, once again proving himself to be the king of patience!

New books!

There is something about the smell of new books and stationery that takes me right back to school days. I can boldly say that not many other smells compare to it. Our school used to reopen for the new session during the first or second week of April, the days leading to it were quite exciting. New books and notebooks, so neat and pristine, waiting to be dog eared over the course of the year. I would also get some of my brother's old books and I was quite lucky because he was so neat that his books looked like they had hardly been used.

We had to cover our books and notebooks with brown paper sheets, topped with another layer of clear plastic sheets. We would gather scissors and tapes, clear the space on the dining table and get started with an assembly line of sorts. When we were younger, our parents helped us with putting covers on the notebooks. I could never match up to how neat my dad's method was. I still am quite a lousy gift wrapper, a skill I still haven't inherited from him.

Sometimes we put sticker labels on the notebooks. There were all sorts of stickers available, colourful ones, decorated with cartoon characters or flowers, but I preferred plain ones, or even writing my name directly on the brown paper.

Of course, I loved this entire process, for the excitement of new books, the thrill of writing my name along with the name of a new class and yes, savouring the smells of fresh paper and stationery! 

Holi hai!

Living on the third floor of a building, with access to the terrace has many advantages, especially so on Holi. It was the only day where I would wake up early willingly, without any excuses or tantrums. Only because I had an evil plan in my mind.

I would be up by the chilly dawn (it used to be pretty cold during Holi before global warming hit us all) and get set to prepare my ammunition. I would start filling water balloons, forgetting in my excitement that I hadn't yet learnt how to tie them up. So I would wait, quite impatiently for my brother to wake up and help me tie up the water balloons.

Once a couple of buckets were filled with water balloons, we would go up to the terrace or sometimes the balcony to target unsuspecting passers by. Quite a stupid thing to do, in retrospect. Thankfully I had, and still have, very bad aim and would have a success rate of about one in a hundred. My brother was an easier target being at close proximity, so at the end of it, we would end up hitting each other with water balloons and make a mess of the terrace.

Well, making a big happy mess is what Holi is all about, isn't it?

Bubbles in the balcony

Kids have a fascination with bubbles, and I've seen that with my little niece, who becomes an even more bouncy version of herself when she sees bubbles. I still love bubbles and once in a while end up buying those small bubble kits from street vendors. And I blow bubbles and stare at them till I realise my fingers are all sticky and my feet are wet.

As kids, we didn't have the patience to go and buy bubble kits, so we made them at home. The timing of our bubble play would coincide with my mother's stitching projects. As soon as a thread reel would get over, it would become a bubble blower. Laundry detergent mixed with water in a little steel bowl from the kitchen - that's all we needed for an afternoon of lazy fun.

Sometimes we blew air into the bowl till multiple bubbles would overflow all over, and the bubble-y sound was a bonus. I'm sure you've done that with the last bit of some milkshake and a straw.

The bubbles from laundry detergent were not as great as those you get in a bubble kit, but it was good enough to keep us occupied as we watched them slowly drift down three floors. Shaking and wobbling, sometimes touching a wall and bursting quietly, sometimes reaching all the way to the ground, it was quite amusing to watch those bubbles shining in the afternoon light.

Happy Diwali

Our roles and responsibilities were very well defined at Diwali. I would be in charge of making Rangoli and my brother and I would put up the lights and decorations. Puja was dad's department and food was mom's. I would intend to wake up early to start off the Rangoli, but it being a holiday, I would always end up oversleeping. Then I would start planning an ambitious, elaborate design, the rough sketch of which would take up half the day. The fun part began after that - painting in the design with bright, thick poster colours. By this time, it would be late afternoon and slight panic would creep in.

In the meantime, we would remember that we should put up the decorations before making the rangoli, not after. But since I wouldn't have really made much progress with my rangoli, the day would be saved and decorations put up. Our favourite ones were those colourful paper-accordians with colours that never seemed to go very well with each other.

By early evening, everyone would pitch in to compete the rangoli, just in time to get ready and start the celebrations. Somehow we managed to repeat the same sequence of events every single year. What fun it was! 

A little to the left

We got a television when I was about three years old, and as I grew up, I saw it change from one channel - Doordarshan, for a few hours in the day, to countless channels playing non-stop on cable TV. Of course, I had to wait till the last day of my 12th Board exams to get cable, but till then, we had DD 1 and DD 2, and an antenna.

Now, this antenna would wobble and turn in the wind, losing signal at the most crucial moments. And then the task of adjusting the antenna would begin. It would take some brilliant co-ordination from the entire family - one person checking the TV, one in the balcony, one at the terrace and one adjusting the antenna - relaying messages and instructions. Some back and forth and a bit of precision, and the signal would be back. Sometimes as soon as we would get back to sit and watch TV, the signal would go again and off we'd go to our respective places to fix it again. What patience we had!

Fast forward a couple of decades and I can't even sit through a twenty minute show without my phone next to me; you know, just in case there is a ten second boring scene. But I feel lucky to have been born at a time that I could see things changing, to have had a childhood without the distraction of smartphones and a world of information at my fingertips when I'm old enough to handle it. We might just be a most unique generation.

Puddles and paper boats

Anyone who is old enough to have experienced climate change would know that it doesn't rain like it used to. At least two or three times every monsoon, it would rain so heavily that water would fill the streets and we would have to wade through almost knee high water while coming back from school. Sometimes the water would come all the way inside the apartment buildings, getting into the scooter garages and even going up a couple of steps.

The water would be muddy with all sorts of debris floating in it. I distinctly remember getting tiny Gulmohar leaves stuck to my legs as I would make my way back from the bus stop to my house.

But the dirty water never stopped us from playing in it. The building entrance with the garages would give us shelter from the rain, while also giving us easy access to water to play in. We would tear off pages from old notebooks - the rectangular shape of those pages was perfect for making paper boats - and float the boats in water.

Paper boats are probably the first thing I learnt to make by folding paper, maybe even before I learnt how to make paper planes. I'm sure anyone who has experienced heavy monsoon rains would definitely know how to make a quick paper boat. 

Mystery of the missing chappal

Pia and I were inseparable. We lived in the same building and would spend our entire time together, right from coming back from school, till dinner time. We would refuse to go back to our houses and sometimes we had to actually be shoved out of each others' homes at night. When I would go to Pia's house and stay for too long, my mom would send my brother to fetch me. And being silly kids that we were, Pia and I would devise different games so that I could stay a bit longer.

(I can't stop laughing as I write this and I laughed throughout drawing too)

Sometimes, we would hide my slippers and pretend to look for them, just so we could spend those precious few minutes having fun together. Eventually, my brother would lose his patience and find my slippers, and then I would have no more strategies to stay back. Until the next day, when I would be back at her place or she would come over to mine, for another day of fun.

Street Ramayan

When I was growing up, there were not many programmes on the TV and there was only one channel - Doordarshan. DD2 came a few years later and we finally got cable the day I gave my last exam of 12th standard. Anyway, the one show that was really popular was Ramayan. The whole family would watch it together on Sunday mornings and us kids would re-enact it later in the day.

During Durga Puja festival, there would be stalls which sold toys at the pandals - plastic maces (gada), cardboard swords, cane bows and arrows, all covered in shiny paper. Add the Ramayan fever and you get some really spirited re-enactments of the fight scenes from the serial. Our neighbour kids, along with my brother would re-create scenes from the battle between Sugreev and Bali, complete with dialogues from the serial. I being the only girl had to play Sita, so I had pretty much nothing to do but get bored, waiting for my turn to play with the "weapons".

Embarrassing and endearing at the same time, childhood memories always make me smile.

Chai chai!!

While every generation feels that kids of the next generation are perhaps more spoilt than they were, I am no exception. But I do feel that we had the most fun when we didn't depend on toys, but let our imagination play the game. I've always had an affinity for tiny, closed spaces and loved to hang out in this little niche in the wall where we used to keep our blankets, quilts and other such things. The higher the better. And when my brother and my friend, Pia, would join the fun, we would act as if we were in a train, taking turns to be the tea vendor, calling out "chai chaiiiiiii!" We all had very funny ways of saying "chai chaiiii" and thinking of how Pia used to say it still makes me smile.

As we grew up, a cupboard took up the space in the niche, but just as well, we were perhaps getting too old for those silly games.

But give me a pile of blankets and razaais in a cramped up space any day - that's where you will find me, with a book or a sketchbook perhaps. I'll still give you the best chai-chaaiii sound. :) 

Sunny days and rainbows

Prism_sunlight

There are dolls and cars and blocks, and there are lenses, mirrors and prisms. We played with both.

Summer afternoons were sometimes spent burning carbon paper with lenses, making rainbows with prisms, or simply spinning the colour wheel to see a muddy grey mix of colours (instead of the theoretical white). We would be fascinated by how things appeared upside down when seen through lenses, and how they would distort in convex and concave mirrors. Sometimes we would just lie back and look inside a kaleidoscope, and sometimes we would try to look at the moon with binoculars.

While my interest in science took a deep dive in high school once it became all about formulas and calculations, optics remained the only subject I managed to enjoy in Physics.Even now, I occasionally gaze into this dusty old kaleidoscope I bought a few years ago.

Even now I run outside every time I see a rainbow, staring at it till it fades into the sky.

I try to zoom into the moon more and more with every new camera phone.

And I still get lost in the colours of light scattered by glass.

Up and away

Kites in this country are associated with Uttarayan or Sankranti, on 14th January. But growing up in Delhi, we used to fly kites around 15th August, cool monsoon winds making them soar high. My role was mostly limited to holding the kite and throwing it up and then running to the other side to hold the 'maanja'. Sometimes my brother would let me hold the kite string for a minute or two, before he would have to swoop in and save the kite from taking a complete nose dive.I've been planning to work on a series of illustrations and having an iPad makes it so much easier. (I never thought I would get so much use out of it!). So here it is, me and my big brother on our apartment terrace with its faded red walls and that beloved neem tree at the back. And while the watercolour version is definitely more relatable to me, I discovered the crayon tool on the software and decided to make another one. I can't decide which one I like better, so I guess there will have to be more illustrations in my nostalgia series for that. :) Which one do you prefer?

Utopia

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When Paint was the Photoshop

Part 3/3

of the "decade old stuff'

So since I had a lot of time and no awareness of the existence of "softwares made for drawing", I used to sometimes make stuff on MS Paint... ya with all the colours and transparency type effects done manually. Phew! Was good fun though...

(click to view original size)

It was the time when I thought "Banarasi" is a kind of embroidery and the only Indian motif is the Paisley.. etc etc... hehe... These are the "not so bad ones" and that ends my 3-Part reminiscing about old stuff.

Should focus on learning watercolours now :)

PowerPoint Misuse

In the series of "decade-old" stuff.....
So back in 2000-2001 I used to totally trip on PowerPoint... Since we had a new computer and I had too much time.. And what better way to give an outlet to your imagination than clean lines and fun patterns that are totally easy... PowerPoint, you are great, but I am officially a designer now, so I'm trying to make friends with Illustrator :P But nothing beats your awesomeness!

Reminiscing...

My first "brush" with MS Paint back in 2000...

I had made these photo frame thingies with little themes.. Seems funny now, but 11 years back I totally used to trip on Paint. Will post more "decade-old" stuff soon. :P

Illustration Friday - Toy

Who needs to buy toys when you can make your own?

Managed to finally put up a very late entry, just before Friday. Was thinking of doing a series of 3-4 drawings, but got time only for one. Another attempt at watercolour :)

Coming back from school....