Do you remember those days?

We all come from somewhere. A small town, a village, a big city. So often we hear people talking about their hometowns. The good, the bad, and the special stories.

When I was younger, I never realized that people sometimes never live in the same place where they spend their whole childhood. So whenever my brother (who is around 8 years older than me) and I speak on phone, we often talk about our childhood and glory days at Amritsar.

Amritsar was a place where it seemed that everyone knows everyone. Even though no one from family, but friends, lives there now but I miss my old dusty hometown. I miss the bright light that revelled in every corner of the city, the savoury smells of the punjabi food, my cricket pals from school, the loud shouting street hawkers, the confusing traffic at railway crossings, the sight of dhoodwallahs (milk-sellers) on their old rusty bicycles, the fresh morning air and many many beautiful memories.

One of such memories my brother reminded me of a couple of weeks back was of the time when I was, I guess, in my early teens. Now that time stores some of the most treasured time of my childhood that I spent with my brother; time that would never come back again.

My brother reminded me of how our mother, despite her mighty power of love on both us, had labeled us in a way The Inglorious Snack-Hunters. When it came to snacks in the house (where ever they may be concealed, she feared us the most. We made sure that any snack, whatever it might be, be it a pack of Cookies to Haldiram Bhujia to Namkeen Dal to Cheeselings to any thinkable form of snack be searched, found, and assimilated same day and all proofs of such hunts be terminated. The proof termination was to keep our mother puzzling. If she would find out, then we always played the Blame Card! It was aces for us.

The only times that she used to be pissed off at her snack-hungry lads was when we put her in embarrassing tight spots. Actually, ours was a house where the flow of guests was always on the high. Our guests usually made surprise visits in the evenings. It was then when she used to find all the snacks cleverly missing from the vault. This situation in addition to the pressure of playing a hostess, sometimes, brought swift but predictable anger. But all her motherly anger magically disappeared when one of us gave her an earnest, dreamy look.

Interestingly, in all the odd situations that I mentioned, the only quick resolve used to be her placing money on my palm for a rapidfire snack purchase from the closest store. I used to run like a hare to fulfill what, to a boy in early teens, was the most interesting act of the errand--the money-spending act.

But did all this stop us from our future hunts—No. As they say, boys are boys.

With all these thoughts, I feel my childhood in my ‘hometown’ is clothed with some really joyful memories.

I hope I visit my hometown and ‘visit’ my childhood, some good day.