I've only realized in the last few years that I was a rather fanciful little kid. I thought that all kids were fanciful, right? But, from the chuckles and guffaws I get when I share these stories with friends, I've come to realize that I probably lived "in wonderland" a little more :) These are a few of my favorite fanciful memories from when I was five or six or seven.
- It's raining! If you had a little house on top of the mountain, with a window open, well, it was quite likely that a cottony cloud would come in from the window, float across your house, and go out the window at the back. And if you ended up poking it, you might have rain inside the house! Did this mean you would need to carry an umbrella with you even while you were at home? :)
- He's tottering! What were the dashed-lines in the middle of the road? [That they could be there for dividing lanes for driving didn't hit me.] Of course! All scooter and motorcycle drivers needed to drive on that line! :) Toe the line, you!
- Will it? After swallowing a few orange seeds by mistake, I remember seriously wondering: Would a tree take root in my five year old tummy? And if it did...would the branches come out my mouth? [Admittedly, this one is the freakiest!:)]
And this is one of my favorite ones:
- My letter is on it's way! When we lived in Bombay growing up, there was a post-box just below our building at the entrance gate. I'd write one-page letters to my grandmom on colourful stationery, decorate it with sparkles, and drop the letter in the postbox on my way to school in the morning. My grandmom was in Baroda, so how would the letters reach her? Well, when the postbox ate your letter, it fell into the curving maze of underground tunnels, took the tunnel to Baroda, and then came out from the postbox there of course! I'm not sure how exactly it reached her, though; I knew there was a postman in the picture who delivered letters because that's how our mail came....so maybe the postman stood at the postboxes waiting for the letters to fly out so that he could collect them and deliver them? Yes, that was probably how it happened!
It's such a pleasure remembering these thoughts! It somehow makes me feel that, you know what, I am creative. That creativity might be hidden beneath work and to-dos and practicality, but it's there if I want to find it. And I do :)
P.S.: After hearing all my stories, my husband wondered, "Did no one tell you things?" :)
