Whenever I see an abandoned toy-part2

 Whenever I see an abandoned, tattered toy, nostalgia grips me in its tight arms. Initially, I feel suffocated with the hard embrace but slowly the warmth of intimacy relaxes me. A smile meanders its way on my tight lips and for a long time it refuses to leave. It watches the stack of toys that I have bundled up in a corner of our bedroom in the 1bhk home. There is no personal bedroom. It is a space I share with my parents and younger sister. The toys occupy a colossal part of the room.

Clapping joker, flabby monkey, a copper kitchen set, a pair of plastic badminton rackets, a shabby doll that is oh so dear to me and umpteen other toys jostle for space in the corner. This treasure trove is a shared property. I don't have sole ownership over it but there are no qualms about it. No quandary over it. Infact, the treasure has grown by leaps and bonds with the arrival of my partner in-crime, my sister. Yes, she is the one who makes us, US! The incredible US. Our toys now have rattling, banging, whistling to easily create an outstanding orchestra. The toys are hugged, licked, kissed, torn and again mended with different intensities. But it is the toys who are our entertainment, solace and surprise in times of tantrums.

Fortunately, we do not have the idiot box to divert our attention. We shower unadulterated love and care on our toys. The toys eat, drink and sleep, too, with us. Toys go with us on vacations, to market, to the neighbor's house and specifically to the doctor. When Ma has to distract us from the injection, she has to just bring the flapping joker in our sight, the howling reduced and buttock muscle relaxed. The needle finds a smooth way through! 

When settling bills with baniya uncle, Ma tells us to mock buy essentials for gudiya. Thus, a little Riya and her bubbly sister turn parents to their plastic gudiya. They hold grim discussions over baby powder and baby food, on what is safe and what is not. They tap curious cheeks with confident fingers and then in a jiffy arrive at conclusions. Sometimes, there is a squabble and Ma's duly bought lollies come to the rescue. Thus, Ma accomplises the tasks at hand and toys are her, Rescue Rangers, too.

This wave of nostalgia takes me to the forgotten islands of memoirs where toys are shared with cousins, friends and even with the watchman's son and the milkman's daughter. Toys dissolve boundaries of hierarchy. They dilute differences of caste and creed. They belong to only innocent children. They are not objects used to identify a Muslim or oust a dalit. Toys are toys. Nothing more. Nothing less. 

I feel calm and peaceful after the frothy wave of nostalgia gently drops me on the shore. The shore is quite. But the quietitude is disturbing. There are no children building sand castles with shovels and little buckets. They are all glued to the idiot box. Unswerving, transfixed to the screen. Nothing can pull them out from the curse of television. Not even a toy! Their hands no more adorn a rattle or lolly, it's the monster mobile!

They don't mock play. They watch real mockery of human life on Netflix. I flinch in this realization. 

Whenever I see an abandoned toy, disgust with remorse too grips me in its hard embrace. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In the pursuit of pizza, discovering people.

Image
  I can only tell stories. That doesn’t sound like a great opening to a blog, right? Especially when you are looking at a giant called Happiness. Well, I can’t do much about it because I can only tell stories. Stories to me are happiness.  What kind of stories you will ask? Love stories? Horror stories? Thrilling stories? Adventurous stories? A little bit of everything, I would say. Like the Mumbai bhelpuri, tangy, spicy, sweet, and fulfilling. Again an old comparison. But what to do? That is what I’m made up of. Stories and food. Stories of people around me. I’m no unique individual. I’m a fragment of my mother, my father, my son, my husband, my friends, and even my milkman and house-help. Sometimes, I’m also like the rickshaw driver, in whose vehicle I commute every day to work. You must be finding it very funny. But many times, I’m like my pressure cooker and mixer grinder, too. I start abruptly whistling, when the there is too much pressure inside me. When I find too man...
Read more

Not Before Me- a book raising questions in a quest to find answers on disability.

Image
 Sixteen years ago, fresh out of the medical college, as an enthusiastic doctor, I visited the Bidada Medical Camp in Kutch Gujarat, as a volunteer. Amongst the thousands of patients I saw, this mother, aged between 65-70 years, stayed in my troubling thoughts for a long time. She had come to the camp to meet specialists who were visiting India to treat the ragged and frayed people of Kutch for free.  I remember her as a mother of an adult specially abled child. The father had passed away a few years back. No siblings to follow. ‘What after me?’ was the thought that stung her day in and out as she cared for her son. She had come to the camp in the hope that somewhere there would be a place that would care for her son once the heavens had embraced her. The staff refused to help the mother because her plea did not fall into any surgical or medical category.  Years later, as I read the book Not Before You, authored by Lata Gwalani, this mother knocked on my doors in Jaya’s d...
Read more

KICKED INTO LIGHT

Image
 What a miracle she was!! Waking up at the crack of dawn, before the first ray could find its way flittering through the dense blanket of darkness- she was my Amma. Splashing some cold water on her comely but tired face, she lit the firewood to facilitate a warm bath for both of us. This firewood was a stellar luxury, for the zamindar granted us the comfort only on special occasions. And today was Diwali!  As she washed her long locks, which were tied in a taut bun, Chutki, my elder sister, demanded to be lifted in her arms. Amma quickly winded up the bathing ritual and rushed to comfort Chutki. The first light that dispelled the darkness of the hut scared Chutki. It had become a routine for her to wake up crying, as the demons of the past brought out their ugly heads in her dreams.  "Kuruvi…" Amma's little birdie, that she was, "…we are far, far away from the tormentors. The ghosts of animosity have left for their graveyards."  Amma clemently brushed aside the ...
Read more