Monday, September 8, 2008

Nostalgia

This picture is from Ningngol Chakkouba last year: sometime in November it was. The festival itself is a lot like Bhai Dooj celebrated in north India. In the Manipuri version, married daughters are invited for a grand luncheon and showered with gifts. Post lunch, they bask in the afternoon sun, have paan, and catch up with their moms and aunts. Children have a gala time of course...

I miss the days I used to go to my Grandmother's place with Mama. Now that I am no longer a kid, I don't feel like tagging along when she visits her maternal home and I would really prefer to stay at home to meet my paternal aunts and cousins. Still, those were the days...Papa would drop us brothers and sisters there on his green scooter. It was a Lamby (or Lambretta) and really huge and noisy...I being the eldest used to ride pillion while my brother would stand in front. We'd take a lot of fruit and snacks with us for our Grandmother...except that she'd usually distribute them among all her grandchildren rather than having them herself. We'd get to meet and play with our cousins whom we don't meet otherwise, so it used to be a lot of fun. Post lunch, when they distributed gifts to Mama and her sisters, all of us cousins too would get a "dokhina" of INR 10.00 (a lot of money to a 5 year old in the 80s) from all the uncles. The fact that my mom had a lot of male cousins ensured that we at least got INR 30.00 each. And then we'd splurge on Parle Poppins candy...and greeting cards for Christmas...what fun. Sigh. Life was so simple then....

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