A Walk to Remember

A few weeks ago I took part in the company cricket tournament. To suit our staff, most of whom stay in the western suburbs, the matches were held in the Poisar Gymkhana which is in Northwest Bombay. Since it is very far from where I stay and is very close to where my maternal grandparents stay, I decided to go stay with them the night before so that I would be spared of an early morning commute to the cricket ground.

My grandparents live in Borivali West. I lived in Borivali East until I was six, and spent a substantial amount of time at their home when I was a kid, mostly during the hours between when school got over and my parents came home from work. I haven't gone back to Borivali too often since we moved town-side in 1992, but I still have vivid memories of the place.

I pulled up my car into the tiny building compound. The watchman woke up with a startled look on his face. He asked me who I was and where I wanted to go, and also said that outside cars were not allowed. He was adamant even after I explained why I should be allowed to park my car inside Apparently growing up somewhere does not mean one can park one's car there fifteen years later. Too tired to argue with him, I parked on the street outside and dragged my suitcase up one floor to my grandparents' flat. I was coming to their place after more than six months and pretty much nothing had changed. I thought for a moment whether to tell my fiery grandmother that the watchman had not let me park my car inside the building compound. But I took pity on the poor soul's life and chose not to mention it.

After the customary cup of tea, I looked around for something to do for the rest of the evening. Borivali isn't exactly the most happening place in Bombay. Besides, my grandparents live smack on SV Road, which is undergoing a radical transformation from a quiet suburban street to the retail hub of a suburb of half a million people. The noise and dust overwhelmed me pretty quickly. I figured, maybe I should go visit one of my relatives in Borivali East. I decided to go to my dad's aunt's place. She was, and continues to be, one of my favorite people. I vaguely recall how she would tell me stories from the Ramayana while putting me to sleep on Saturday afternoons.

I began the walk to her place. I tried my best to soak up the surroundings, and notice the changes they had gone through in the last fifteen years or so. I couldn't recognize any of the buildings on SV Road. The old three story apartment buildings with names like 'Kamal Chhaya' (Lotus Shade) had given way to glitzy malls with massive signboards advertising some sale or some brand of perfume. I thought of taking a short-cut I knew from the back side of the building through a back-alley that went straight to the railroad crossing. When I reached the back side of the building, the alley no longer existed. What I saw instead was a construction site. I grumbled to myself on how the only thing constant is change, and walked back the long way to the railroad crossing. The railroad crossing didn't exist either. It had been walled up, and a pedestrian subway stood glumly.

I remember the excitement I would experience while waiting for the faatak (railroad crossing) to open. I would watch all the vegetable sellers shouting away, trying to sell their wares to the people waiting for the train to pass. In the meantime, hawkers selling everything from stationery to trinkets to handkerchiefs would walk among the crowd. There would always be some smart-alecs who jumped over the faatak and crossed the tracks right before the train would come through.

But they were all gone, and all I could see was the entrance to the subway. It seemed dark inside. It had paan stains all over the walls. It looked like the entrance to hell, with the red stains looking like little flames. I made a face describing disgust and went inside. Crossing from west to east through a subway was no fun compared to running across a railroad crossing pretending the train was about to come.

I reached the east side and heaved a sigh of relief. Nothing seemed to have changed. Maybe it was just me, but even the air seemed cleaner. There was a peacefulness about the place which seemed a distant world away from the hustle and bustle of SV Road. I walked towards Carter Road #1, which is where my grand-aunt lives. She actually lives in the same building where I used to live. I recognized a lot of places along the way. Crystal Classes, where Joan miss would smack me with a ruler when I spelled a word wrong in English tuitions. Bharat Gas Service, where I would come with my nanny to order a new cylinder of gas. Chimanlal and Sons, where to this day I don't know what they actually do. The tiny grocer's store into which a BEST bus had rammed into. The whole neighborhood couldn't stoop talking about it for days. They had a clipping of the news article about the accident stuck on the storefront window. The buildings were the same, the streets were the same. It seemed a lot of them hadn't been painted since I had left. I recalled a well at the intersection near my building. One summer, I had engraved my nickname 'Ada' on one of the cornerstones of the well. I remember throwing stones in the well along with my friends before being chased down the street by the building watchman. My eyes hungrily searched for the spot where the well stood.

A big grin appeared on my face as I found the well. It was no longer an open well; it had been sealed off and on top of it was a pigeon-feeding enclosure. However, the cornerstones of the well that once existed were still in place. I crouched down near the spot where I had engraved my name over seventeen years ago. I found the very stone, and I started rubbing the dust away with my handkerchief. A couple of people stopped and looked, wondering what the hell I was doing. A few seconds of dusting later, I saw it.

The letters engraved into the stone had endured seventeen years of dust, pollution and construction activity to be found once again by the very kid who wrote them. I smiled from ear to ear. Unfortunately, it was too dark to take a picture. I took a moment to absorb the memory, to etch it in my head for ever.

I entered the building compound. I saw the watchman's cabin, inside which five of us kids would hide while playing cops and robbers. I saw the boundary wall with the license plate numbers of the residents' cars painted above each parking spot. I saw the cricket stumps drawn with chalk on the building wall, which kids used as the batting end. They all looked much smaller. The watchman's cabin was barely big enough to fit me now. The building looked tired and in need of renovation. The tiny printing press which operated out of a small office on the ground floor was now a tailor's store. As I climbed up the stairs, thoughts filled my mind about how some things had changed beyond recognition, some had fallen into decay, and some bore remnants of the time that was my childhood. As my grand-aunt opened the door, I gave her a big hug.

Everything was the same once again.