Read Type-II: Memories Of My First House for Free Online Page A

player under the name Candico. But back in the days I
am writing about, Bakeman’s was big.
    I won’t say I was
a bread connoisseur, or that Bakeman’s had an incomparable taste,
but it was definitely good. For us children, the chief charm was
the numbered stickers that came inside each packet. Carrying the
wax paper-wrapped loaf home we scanned the surface for a small,
dark rectangular patch made by the sticker.
    Sometimes the
sticker lay at the bottom of the packet where it was impossible to
spot because the wax paper was thickly folded. To get to it, we
used to rip the paper and were roundly scolded for it. We bought
bread only on Sundays, and mainly in winter or when mummy was
unwell, so I didn’t have as many stickers as most of my classmates.
But the few I had were stuck on doors and my school notebooks.
    Bread slices in
those days used to be smaller and softer. Brown bread was unheard
of but the white bread we got had a delectably sour taste and a
rich aroma. It used to turn golden brown, not chocolate brown, on
toasting and tasted best with homemade white butter. You don’t get
factory sliced bread like that anymore.
    Mummy made butter
at home every weekend, although it was safest to eat in winter
because power cuts were fewer and the cream removed everyday from
boiled milk kept better in the refrigerator. On Sunday mornings we
had butter on toast for breakfast after the sun lit up the terrace.
The light used to creep down the wall of the house as the sun rose
higher and entered the verandah through the large glass windows and
the open door.
    My sister and I
used to sun ourselves against the wall while papa toasted bread and
mummy heaped butter on it for me. My sister always pulled a face at
the sight of butter, removed the film of fat that floated on her
glass of milk, and many were the mornings when she got spanked for
pouring her glassful of hot milk down the kitchen sink. I always
liked milk and anything made from it.
    ***

Furry Tails
    As the morning
warmed, squirrels appeared on the top of the terrace walls, They
usually came in twos and twittered around like birds. Swift on
their legs, they were impossible to catch and I could never pet
them. The boy on the ground floor—he had a trunkful of Indrajal
comics and Amar Chitra Kathas—once told me the stripes on
squirrels’ backs denoted Ram, Lakshman and Sita. The little rodents
had been blessed for carrying small pebbles to build the bridge to
Lanka, he said.
    The squirrels
didn’t come before 8am, by when sunlight had turned the top bricks
of the red wall orange. I would rush inside to fetch peanuts.
Pulling out the blue Rath Vanaspati 2kg tin in which they were
kept, grabbing a few unshelled nuts and running out to the terrace
took me all of a minute, but every moment mattered because it was
almost time for my favourite He Man show. Everybody remembers He
Man, and even Giant Robot, but what about Appu Aur Pappu? I was a
fan of that Sunday show too.
    It was fascinating
to watch squirrels hold nuts in their front paws and shell them
with razor sharp teeth. They would clamber up the wall near the
kitchen ventilator as I came near and then watch me with tail
raised as I softly placed two peanuts on the ledge, and then wait
for me to retreat to a safe distance before coming down.
    The squirrels
always played on the westward ledge and crows—although they came
infrequently—sat on the eastward wall. Pigeons seldom came down to
the terrace but rested in whole flocks on the TV aerials planted on
our roof. TV aerials used to be huge in those days. They were
bolted on to tall poles and caught signals from as far away as
Delhi (but not the Delhi-2 service) and Jalandhar. The smaller
antennae caught signals from Kasauli, which was close by, and for
our TV we used only a small aerial that we trussed to the brick
lattice of our terrace wall.
    If the TV signal
played hooky—and sometimes it disappeared for more than a
day—people said “lagta hai Kasauli mein