Childhood memories are something that everyone cherishes, the reminiscences does not fade away a bit, wherever you are. The conversation is filled with melancholy at times; yes it is not so cheerful after all you do miss those days. So many things take me back to those days, tiniest, something so trivial and common holds a place; a very special place in your heart, very special I say.

…. Like the horrible weekend that went was not just due to my food poisoning… something added to it too… In the middle of the night I woke SM up to tell him that (I could not stand his snore) I am not feeling all that well and I needed some help with the headache, Mother of all! My man wakes up and very dutifully brings this small bottle from nowhere (I never knew we had one in our room)…And takes the content of it rubs in on my head gently, he could have stopped. I would have been just OK, but, he shoves it up in my nose.

.. The stir was instantaneous, like a lightening that is just the next thing of a thunder most of the times. The nostalgia swept me completely, like a gush of water from the waves that damp you! From head to toe! It is a very uneasy feeling for a person like me who is always a ‘feeler’ and am very ‘poignant’ about certain things. Hmmmmmmmmm I inhale, not able to fight back the phrases and frames that I get in front of my eyes…

We all get to bed at 9.30PM sharp, the only advantage of not having a television at home I say. Dad was pretty much NO to it, he thought that the element of distraction was its highest peak with the TV. Poor thing, he dint know that we sneaked in to vasu maami’s house to get a glimpse of ‘nazare’ and ‘Seahawks’ and ‘Rangoli’, you see those were the days I am talking about!

I would sleep only between mom and dad (!!) and my sister only next to mom and dad will start by asking how the school was, partially because mom would have told him that I came back with some bruise or swollen face. Thanks to the volley ball games I played. From there the conversation would go to what happened in the house the whole day and mom would fill him with every single, itsy bitsy detail and then from there to what I want (the scale I generously gave off to the girl who I thought was pretty and homeless, and the pencil I forgot to take back from my Science teacher or the Ink pen which did not write anymore or the shoes that I had torn the other day), I always had something to ask for. The thing is we all have our own ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ but there was something very simple about it like a ease about ‘wanting’ in those days we were not worried about asking for anything.

On the other hand AR (my little sis) was quite a peace full kid and painfully organised too. I am the one who always shook up things. Then on the corner AR would start to make faces at me and tell mom of how I am getting all the attention from dad (I was my always a dad’s girl, while my sister is ‘amma ponnu’) or she would be happily yawning in moms lap some days. I told you she is this very ‘chamathu’ types.

After all this, dad would take this small bottle filed with the yellow thing and apply it on his head, nostrils and throat and would also do the same to me. He had big hands and I loved it when he caress my cheek and move the hair off my forehead and applied this yellow thing smoothly, the air in that room fills with its smell, the feeling of comfort soothes you over and I slowly close my eyes. This is how I would sleep and this is the ONLY way I would sleep!

These memories are MOSTLY because that I encountered the thing after almost say 8 or 10yrs I guess! Oh! Till that particular night I never realized that ‘this’ particular smell could take me past so many years.

This Amurthanjan has gotten itself a profound importance and significance in my life. It reminds me of few things I would never fail to remember, My Childhood days which was a bliss, The Surety about life while sleeping between mom and dad you know you are safe you are sure that nothing can happen to you none of those cockroaches or the mosquitoes are going to be successful and then the most important thing of all Those memories, those Happy Days where everything was FUN! Right from someone falling of the roof to the rain that came knee deep into the house. I remember me and my sister giggled through everything.

Now dad has stopped using it. It is a long forgotten habit for him. I wonder how he sleeps without his sweet bottle next to him. I did ask him the other day ‘eppadi pa thungarey un sweet bottle ellamey’?! And we all laughed about few more silly things for the next 1hr or so…

Nostalgic !!