Well my best childhood memory was the time I spent with my 3 cousins .Those were the days were we saw wonder in all the mysteries of nature .But as we grow up we got all the explanation from the science classes. Human beings can never accept the ignorance, it really hurts their complex if they don’t know something .They make up stories ,gossips or whatever they can if they are not able to find any logical explanation for something .That is how superstitions were born .It was so fun to think about the imaginary countries we made up when we were kids. How we set up defense, government, wildlife, marine, transport, houses .Well we were mostly interested in guns, war and animals as my playmates were boys and they never agreed to play with barbies and dolls, so for the girly plays I used to invite my neighbour girl, who was almost about my age. I still remember the fun we had planning operations in war, playing dead and the thrill to watch soldiers getting killed in war in movies. We were so ignorant at that time and took pleasure in all that .But when I look back now I see those innocent faces, not knowing the meaning of death or birth, not knowing which is right or wrong, just being happy and playing all the time. At that times our minds were more free, there was no need to think about consequences, no need to measure the words .We could play in the rain and not worry about catching a cold, we could dress up the way we like and don’t care about the commands others say, we could just gobble up anything without worrying about our waistline getting bigger.
A sadist thing we did when we were children was to load the snails (hard shelled big ones….nasty right?) to our toy trucks and dump them in the trash and when the servant came and burned the trash we watched the green and blue flames coming out of those poor creatures. When I think about it…..I feel sorry for those snails that attained martyrdom for our pleasure. Another exciting part was when we went to collect flowers for onam…we exactly didn’t ask the neighbors permission before plucking flowers from their garden….During one such flower plucking expeditions we encountered a snake…we ran howling all the way back to our homes throwing the flower baskets …near that snake……….
