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

baraf pad gayi hai (Kasauli
seems to be under snow)”, regardless of the season.
    In winter, when we
needed it, the sun shunned us. It shone late on our terrace and
retreated early. By the time we got back from school it had
deserted the terrace floor and even the walls. Mummy got precious
little of it, although she needed it the most after starting her
day with washing and mopping. By the time she wrapped up the day’s
chores, it lit up only half of the terrace’s eastward wall. Minute
by minute, the light blocked by our own house slid up and she had
to move with it along the wall. The sunlight hours were shortest
during late December-early January, and when papa came home for
lunch at 1pm, he got just a bit of sunlight on his neck and face.
The light quickly shrank to a tiny triangle at the top corner of
the wall and was gone before he finished his three chapatis. But
when the days grew longer again, he was able to shell a few peanuts
after lunch lit up by a slightly larger patch of light.
    Both papa and
mummy loved soaking in the sun. He stayed in office from 9am to
5.30pm five days a week and so didn’t have any way of sunning
himself, but mummy used to go downstairs in the afternoon after she
had fed us. She spent most of her winter knitting for the four of
us and divided the week carefully between the various colony
aunties to not stretch her welcome. When I think of her knitting,
the first thing that comes to mind is the rustle of the plastic bag
in which she kept the skein of wool. The bag rolled with the ball
every time she tugged at it to loosen a length of yarn. The other
sound is of her counting knots for a sweater border under her
breath. Surprisingly, though I remember the chatter of needles
well, it doesn’t jump to mind the way the other two sounds do. When
I was in class 7, baggy sweaters were in, and though mummy hated
them, she knitted me one in maroon wool that was only halfway
baggy. I wore it for many years and used it roughly in my athletics
days. It spent hundreds of hours squeezed into the steel trellis on
the school stage, yet survived in good shape. That sweater and
three others—two of them very finely knitted in mustard and olive
colours—are waiting at home for my son to grow up. My only worry is
that he will turn out taller than me, and not use them long
enough.
    Mummy was friends
with the two aunties on our ground floor, but the aunty she clicked
with best lived a few blocks away and she spent more afternoons
with her than anyone else. Then there were a few first-floor
aunties who weren’t sun-deprived like us and mummy spent a couple
of warm, happy hours in their terraces too, sometimes. But on many
days, she didn’t visit anyone and just knitted standing by a hedge
with her ball of wool kept in a bag on the hedge top. On Saturday
and Sunday mornings, papa spent a quiet two hours lying on a cot in
the sun-lit terrace.
    ***

Sinning Under The Sun
    I was a timid
child with a volatile temper. I got bullied by the older playmates
in the early years and had a cruel streak. I am not juxtaposing
these points to justify my behaviour.
    Papa worked in an
optics lab and sometimes brought home a damaged lens to use as a
magnifying glass. Lenses and prisms were playthings for me and I
had been warned early on not to look at a light source, especially
the sun, through them. I was always careful on that point, but
after finding out that a magnifying glass could not only make
objects and letters appear bigger but also concentrate the sun’s
rays, I put the lenses to diabolical use. In summer, the sun also
shone in through the drawing room window (despite the sun-breaker)
and I burnt a hole in the dining table’s Formica veneer by focusing
the rays on it with a lens. I also burnt a tiny hole in a
tablecloth once. Newspapers were the quickest to smoulder. Paper
never really burst into flames but let out a wisp of smoke rapidly.
The burning would start with a small brown circle that turned into
a black