The first memory that I have is that of a road..a village road, made of red soil. On both sides there were rows of tall trees...what trees i don't remember,and beyond those trees a huge expanse of tall green grass. When i asked Maa where this place was and whether this even existed or was just an imagination,she couldn't believe that i actually remembered that particular place.This place happens to be a small village, far away from my home in Kolkata, in Onda,Bankura. My Maa,a doctor, used to be posted there as a rural health officer in the very initial days of her service.I was barely a year at that time.
Many a times I heard stories of Onda from my parents.The health clinic with the adjacent doctor's quarters was some 30 mins rickshaw ride away from the railway station. The rickshaw used to rattle across the red roads and then the "al" between two huge rice fields.The grass was as tall as a full grown man; and among those tall grasses and trees and huge rice fields there was that tiny clinic where my life started..
Since then I have stayed in five different places, in and around Kolkata.In big houses,in a jungle of concrete,in places where you breathe in enough carbon particles to blacken your lungs in ten years.Travelled around most of the country from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.Seen so much beauty in the nature's lap.Made various and sometimes strange acquaintances,some I cherished and some which totally shook me.Made friends,some temporary and some for the life.Learned that the bad things in life are more important that the good ones,they help you survive, they teach you to appreciate the good times.Learned to love,learned to care.Fell in love and out of it.Saw dreams of growing big,in every aspects of life.Dreams of being happy.Learned that ultimately its happiness that mattered. Not money,not status,not anything else...but only happiness.Learned that if I could once find out what would keep me happy nothing else would matter.In these 21 years I have gone through so much and I know that there is so much more to come.
But even after all these years there is one place and one time I want to return to.That tiny village in Bankura.To that winding red road,those rows of tall trees,to that never ending expanse of tall green grass.Want to walk down that road once again,in those tiny steps,faltering every now and then,engulfing the beauty,the warmth of nature with those innocent eyes.Want to go back to that childhood,those bygone days of innocence when the world seemed so much bigger but even the smallest of things gave so much happiness...to that childhood...
