F is for Fishing

“One, two, three, four, five
Once I caught a fish alive
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten
Then I let it go again..”

This was one of my favourite nursery rhyme and fishing was one of my favourite pastime activity. Fishing just intrigued me and still captivates me.

I would spend my summer holidays at my grandmother’s place – in a quaint village nestled around mountains, fields and rivers. There was this flowing river, close to the neighbourhood, which served as a prefect fishing spot.

I had close friends from the neighbourhood whom I used to pester and coax to join me in my fishing expedition. And off we used to go to the river, sneaking out our homes every afternoon.

We would carry some borrowed cane baskets and prepare a colourful dough of a mixture of flour and turmeric for the bait. Once we stepped inside the still areas of the cool river, we would lower the basket into the water with balls of dough stuck to the bottom making it like an attractive ground for the creatures under water.

And interestingly the tiny, slimy fish would get attracted to the colourful dough balls and once they were busy picking at the dough, we would pull out the basket out of the waters with all our might. And we would catch of the some tiny helpless fish who were so lost eating the dough.

Depending on our mood we would leave the fish back in their home or we would carry them back to our homes in glass jars serving as aquarium.

It was tougher to catch bigger fish because that would require large nets and swimming expertise to go into the deeper sections of the river. And so we left that to the village elder boys who would catch the larger fish that one could take home and cook a tasty meal. On some rare days, looking at the plight of us fishing in the swallow waters, the boys would be kind enough and give us a big fish or two from their catch.

Days passed and the basket technique seemed to fail – either the fish had gotten smarter or the dough balls were no more colourful and tastier! – we couldn’t figure out. So we decided to switch the techniques of catching fish. One hot afternoon, we sneaked into the store rooms of our houses (me in at my grandmother’s house) and fished for something, some tool to help us fish!

My friend found an old netted dress which she thought would make a perfect net to catch fish into! While I found a reel of nylon thread and a rusty metal hook which sparked the idea to build us a fishing rod.

We sneaked out into our safe space along with our newly found items and began to plan out and strategize. First we neatly cut out the net portion from the beautiful dress and kept the dress folded back in place as if it wasn’t touched. We spread out the net, tied some small heavy stones at the ends to have a sort of a grip while pulling the net up.

I used a long bamboo cane stick as my fishing rod, tied the nylon thread to it and tied the rusty hook to the end of the thread. Now all we need was worms for bait just like we saw in the cartoons.

Since we didn’t have any worms, we settled for our dough balls. I also sneaked in some meat pieces from my afternoon lunch.

Off we walked that afternoon, with our net and fishing rod to venture and try our new fishing techniques. When we reached the river, we noticed that we wouldn’t be alone that noon. There were some village women present washing clothes – disappointed, we sighed – the water would now be disturbed because of the washing and soap and fish would not swim that stop.

Upset but determined to catch something that day, we decided to venture into a new spot which was a tad bit deeper in the river. The waters were waist down deep here. None of us knew to swim, but we had the daring approach to protect each other and definitely to catch something no matter what. And so, my friend dipped the net nicely into the waters at that spot and waited patiently as usual. Fish entered and fish left. The small, slimy, quick swimmers. While I choose a spot to cast my fishing rod into and placed a nicely rolled yellow dough on the pointy edge of the hook and set the string and hook under water.

After a while, my friend started signalling me and I saw a bigger fish caught in the trap of that makeshift net. I signalled her back telling her that I would come back to help her. But suddenly I felt a tug at my fishing rod. A strong tug as if the rod would slip of my hand. I was holding on weakly though. As soon as I felt the third tug I held on firmly and pulled the string up to find a catfish caught on the hook squirming away for its poor life.

I pulled the whole string out of the water spot and placed it on ground. I panicked at the sight of the fish and was a bit shocked that such a big fish had got caught.

My friend seeing me pulled up the net and managed to catch some tiny fish which she quickly placed in the glass bottle. She then headed quickly to fishing hook, set the catfish free (was really tough and a bloody sight). She put the catfish into another glass jar that we had causally carried.

The catfish even though hurt by the hook and out of breath for some time, swam uncomfortably in the jar which we took home to showcase as our treasure.

And thus ends the escapade of my fishing trip where the biggest fish got caught in my trap.

E is for Eagle Hunters

I really cannot recall how and why the fear of Eagles crept in the childhood of my cousin sister and yours truly.

Yes folks!, this is gonna be yet another childhood story – after all they are the most entertaining ones I feel. Don’t you think so too?

Well, let’s dive straight into this escapade then.

So those were the days where I lived on the highest floor in the city. Living in an urban area meant having every necessity at your door step! It also meant having garbage here, garbage there, garbage, garbage everywhere! There was a small garbage dump yard besides the building where I lived in. And this garbage yard attracted these mighty birds of prey – the raptors – the Eagles! These eagles loved garbage picking and went at it like nobody’s business.

Being the 90s kids who loved to play outdoors, but helpless to find a suitable ground in the urban concrete jungle, the only place that we found compatible was the good old terrace. And off we would go to the top to play games, chit-chat and plan some mischief! Often during our playtime, there were  these creatures – the Eagles – hovering, low and below, atop our heads with their sharp eyes focused on us alone. Yes, its true! I guess that’s what brought in the fear.

Once, during summer holidays at my grandmother’s place, I saw an eagle swiftly pick up a chick (the hen’s obviously) and fly high away. I shuddered with horror at the thought of what might have happened next to that poor chick.

And so whenever we had these raptor creatures come to our play zone, we would run and take shelter and wait till the eagles leave. Often they would never leave and we had to sacrifice our playtime and run downstairs! We just hated those eagles!

This situation of sacrificing our playtime was getting out of hand. Moreover it felt like we were being defeated by these birds, after all we had learnt that man is the most powerful on this planet. And, so both my cousin and me decided to take courage (it was more of revenge) and devise a plan to shoo those eagles away from ruining our playtime!

Now, we had watched too many videos on Discovery and National Geographic channels but never came across any antidote to drive off the Eagles. So we came up with a plan to fight them – well not bare handed of course – we couldn’t fly like them duh! We thought of a perfect weapon and settled on using the longest stick. Thankfully we found one at a neighbouring construction site. So we took it on the terrace and nicely placed it at an accessible spot.

Since, we took up the task of this brave job, we decided to give ourselves a title – and after much thought a name came up – the Eagle Hunters!

Don’t you smirk, we preteens felt so brave to defend ourselves against these raptors.  

We decided on designing uniforms for ourselves so that we get into the hunter zone. My cousin who is artistic drew and traced out eagles with tracing paper on some old t-shirts and shorts titled Eagle Hunters and we wore these and headed to the terrace waiting for those creatures to come out.

After a long time of waiting, the dark brown eagle flew across from the opposite building and came straight targeting our building. Both of us held on to the stick tightly, our heart beats accelerating we also dived up after the raptor and jus waved out the stick together at it like crazy shouting some slogan that I cannot remember. The poor eagle freaked out and flew higher and higher away. We rejoiced at our victory on the first attempt. We were truly the Eagle Hunters! 

Days passed by and we kept shooing the eagles away, courage building up each day. The logo on our t-shirts had also faded away. The plot had gotten a bit of a bore too. But we could enjoy our relaxing playtime and have the terrace to ourselves. We also proudly spoke to our class friends about our wild adventures with eagles. Ha!  

Until one day as we were playing on the terrace, there came a huge gang of eagles who were circling around the garbage pile. We ignored and thought that they wouldn’t fly down to our area. As we continued to play we noticed that the circle had reached closer and was hovering above us. It was then that we noticed that the Eagles clan was not after the garbage but was circling or possibly following a larger Eagle who looked different – it had a white head and breast unlike the usual brown eagles. We were so stunned and looked up in awe at that particular Eagle breed. We had never seen this white head eagle before. It was like the brown eagles had called their Queen to defend them. And we felt them hovering lower and lower us in circles that we stopped counting. We were so nervous that we forgot about our weapon and just fled from the scene and let the Eagles have their play time atop.

Years later, we learnt that the mighty Queen was a Brahminy Kite – most probably a female one whom the male brown eagles were after. And she just ended our crazy eagle adventure.

D is for Doll

Well playing around with dolls was never my cup of tea.

Dolls were not the toy category that I would enjoy playing with or even prefer having; especially after watching the horror movies – Child’s Play and Papi Gudia at a young age. Remember Chucky?

This is turning to be yet another post stolen from the childhood stage.

As a kid, I preferred bikes, cars and kitchen toy sets to play with and probably that’s why I rarely had girl friends. I vividly remember I had just this one mother doll of an arm length with a tiny finger length baby doll that was gifted to me. This doll adorned the showcase cupboard that was in my living room and I wasn’t interested in playing with this mother doll even though she would open and close her eyes and there would be a musical lullaby playing out of the speakers from her behind!

Anyhoo, an event was scheduled at my prestigious primary school – a tea party with our dolls! We children were asked to bring our dolls for this party at school. Sounds so funny today right? This was way back in the early 90’s. I can’t remember what the boys were asked to bring along. Probably their car toys.

My school was a very strict one and not honouring the theme or even skipping that party would mean getting into serious trouble with the principal and further even leading to detention. I didn’t want that. I couldn’t carry that big mother doll to school and even if I managed, the other children (who were probably crazy about dolls) would tear her apart. Nor could I afford to buy a decent doll at such a short notice. So what would a child do?

My neighbour friend had a large collection of dolls especially Barbie doll collection. She just enjoyed playing with dolls and had brought different dresses for each of them. I thought of asking her to lend me just one of her dolls for the party. After all she was also one of the student in the same school in a higher grade than me, and so she would definitely understand my plea of not having a toy to take to that party. After politely requesting her, she hesitantly agreed. I was her only girl buddy in that neighbourhood and we would spend a lot of time after school together, so I guess she couldn’t refuse me. I promised her that I would take great care of the doll and that I would return it to her safe and sound.

My friend gave me a simple, petite, blonde haired doll. When I reached home I began to notice the features of this doll. She had this gloomy look on her PVC face. She was not the typical fancy Barbie doll. I was so glad she wasn’t one. But I thought she needed to brighten up and look cooler and happy!

I opened up her braided blonde hair and thought to myself, “Hmmm.. how can I help you girl?”, “What sort of makeover can I do to make you look prettier?” I felt like her fairy Godmother.

There was no time to stitch her some new fancy clothes as the party was the next day. Nor could I add some makeup to her pale face – (I disliked makeup in that era). So the only thing left was the hair. Let’s make her an Indian I thought. This blonde hair is making her look paler.

Filled with determination and forgetting that she wasn’t my doll, I stepped into the bathroom, reached out to the wall cupboard and carefully took out the Godrej jet black hair dye which was used by my father for colouring the greys in his beard and moustache.

It was noon time and everyone at home was asleep, so I was free to conduct and succeed at my experiment (that’s what I thought). I mixed something into dye, dipped an old toothbrush into the solution and started to paint the poor doll’s beautiful blonde hair black.

After washing the hair and once it began to dry down, I realised that the experiment turned out to be a disaster. The colour instead of the turning into a smooth black finish turned out to be patchy and ugly dark brown black colour which also had accidently seeped into the poor dolls forehead and some got into her eye sockets. She seemed scary. She looked like Chucky’s girlfriend turned brunette!

My thoughts of restyling this pale blonde into a bold brunette went to the garbage! I was all the more terrified to take her for the tea party and even more horrified to return her back to her owner.

And thus she became the last doll that I ever toyed around with!

C is for Clubhouse

Once in a while, don’t we all feel the need to have our own private space to just relax and chill out? As adults, isn’t it easy and convenient to drive to the beach alone or to just step into a cozy bar and just rewind. This personal space would help gather our thoughts, think rationally and make decisions especially when life’s rollercoaster is at a twisted turn!

So as a kid did you feel the need to have such a space? Well, I for one, did yearn for a personal home! – As a kid, I often dreamt of building and living in a tree house. I should write more on that in my subsequent posts.

Anyways, living in a tiny apartment with a large family, I craved my personal space. And so did my cousin sister who was my partner in crime in various ventures. We were huge fans of the author Enid Blyton and all her classic adventure stories. In many of her books, the characters owned a private space – a clubhouse.

And so one fine day, we decided to search for such a place where we could be all alone, think and talk business strategies, discuss personal problems and plan our future mischief! And so the search began for our own clubhouse aka our adda!

One sunny afternoon, on our way home from school, we happened to pass by an abandoned heritage villa facing the main road. The house was constructed at a height with a high plinth level above the road.

We drew closer to the villa, stepped on our toes and peeked inside through the cracked glass of the villa’s french windows. The interior was dark and dingy and smelt gross, but the light bulb in both our minds sparked! – this house was meant to be our clubhouse.

Since it was way past lunch time, we decided to head home and visit this abandoned house the next day. On our way home, we discussed how we would clean and set up the house or at least a room in that house.

The next day we both waited impatiently for the last class of the day so that we could quickly head to our designated clubhouse. As soon as the last school bell rang we ran out of our classrooms and headed quickly to that house. We had saved up the water from our water bottles and had carried some old rags to clean up at least one room which we could set up and chill out.

Once we reached there, we realised that the entry into the house was apparently locked with an old rusty padlock; also the entrance was covered with wild bushes and most importantly the entry faced the main road where passer-by walked and vehicles continuously drove past. It would be risky to break the lock and sneak inside in broad daylight we thought. It might be a crime if we did so and probably get us into trouble. “Na, there has to be another way inside – possibly a back entry”, we reasoned. We started walking at the extreme end of the house, through the thick cobwebs and the thorny bushes of probably years old. As we were looking for a backdoor entry, we across a life-size concrete horse statue who seemed majestic and strong stationed along the length of the house as if it were guarding the villa. Reaching the end of the house, we saw that the back door was also locked and it was completely covered in wild bushes and would be difficult to cut cross with our small bare hands.

Disappointed, we started walking back to the front and stopped near the handsome horse. There we spotted a window exactly facing the horse and whose glass was completely shattered. With the school bags tightly clung to our shoulders, we left climbed up the horse and reached out at the window and rattled the glass lightly with our water bottles. Instantly, shards of glass fell off and the window was bare enough to jump through it.

Guess what? – we just did that – we jumped in through the window of an abandoned old dingy villa in broad day light right in the heart of the city! I had just turned 10 years old that year and entering into that villa, I felt so proud to have finally found a clubhouse!

B is for Borders

Last year while traveling across the international conflicted borders into the West Bank, Palestine from Israel, I was terrified. The armed Israeli military, the electric fencing along the borders and the in-your-face striking red warning sign boards to trespassers being shot at sight popped up along that dreaded journey.

Have you ever been lost or stuck or left out along the international border between nations? Do you know of anyone that has been left out and all alone at the border of rival nations?

Well, yours truly has been in such a scenario! I was out early morning at the Indo-Pak unfenced border in No Man’s Land. Thankfully I wasn’t alone; there were two other wild kids with me.

This crazy escapade happened during a holiday tour with my friends to the Rann Utsav – the White Desert Festival which is held every year during the winter season in the Kutch district of Gujarat. My long awaited bucket list trip finally manifested and I visited the Great Rann of Kutch – one of the largest salt deserts in the world!

So apparently the international border between India and Pakistan along the Rann of Kutch is not fenced but is guarded and watched over by the stationed Border Security Force (BSF) personnel. It cannot be fenced mainly because of the terrain being a salt marsh and also because of the weather conditions that would not allow any metal to withstand without getting corroded and deteriorated. Lately I learn that there are venomous snakes and scorpions in that area which have possibly kept terrorists at bay.

Getting back to the tour – our first day was packed with exciting activities and scrumptious vegetarian food which we Goans voraciously devoured. The next day we woke up at wee hours since we were scheduled to witness the sunrise at the magnificent White Rann. And so we set out, stepped into the tour bus along with other tourists to reach the sunrise point. This point apparently is termed as the ‘Zero Point‘ which falls along the unfenced borders of the India and Pakistan and such an area is called ‘No Man’s Land ‘.

We excitedly climbed a huge three floor structure using our phone lights as torches and waited impatiently to view the sunrise. Suddenly, mesmerizing hues of the sunrise began to appear in the pale sky. The three of us scrambled amidst the other tourists to capture the best photographs. Once the sun was out it shone its beautiful light on the white desert. Our tourist guide allowed our group to spend few minutes walking along the White Rann and clearly informed us to be back in our buses at some scheduled time.

The three of us were sleepily excited and so caught up with nature’s view that we walked for a long while away from our group and for moments had turned into the Gen-Z snapping numerous photographs and selfies playing along with the soft sunlight. After all one looks the best when photographed in the early dawn sunlight – it’s the Golden Hour in professional photography.

And so we completely lost track and time. We noticed a family few metres from us and thought that they were from our tour group and so we continued our nature walk and shots. After a while, we realized that family whom we thought was amongst our tour group was now heading into a private car which was far from reach and sound. The only motor vehicle in sight zoomed off and that’s when it struck us that we were left out in the White Rann.

We looked all around again in our plight for the sight of a bus or of people. But there was nobody around. Except for some camels resting, it was just us three Goan girls (aka three wild kids) standing on ‘No Man’s Land‘ along the unfenced borders and a few kilometers away from our neighbour Pakistan!

A is for Aeroplane

One of my favourite hobby is travelling! – discovering new places, exploring off the beaten paths, journeying through unknown territories is what brings me joy. And in order to venture out to these cities, states and countries one would use various means of transport – air, water, road, rails. Well, I enjoy traveling via the rails and I wish every country on this earth was connected by the railways.

Anyways! Let’s save the crazy stories of my train journeys for another day. Today, I want to mention my least preferred mode of travel – which is the mighty airplane or like the British spell it – the aeroplane!

I do not prefer and in fact dread flying in an aeroplane or any aircraft for that matter. It just messes with the equilibrium in my vestibular system aka my inner ear!

I get earaches like crazy along with the feeling of blood oozing out even though there’s nothing of sorts. And just after the mighty plane descends, I feel perfectly fine with just a temporary loss of hearing.  So it seems that this phenomenon which I dread before boarding every flight is called the Airplane ear or ear barotrauma as mentioned in an article that I just came across.

There was one such time where I had to fly to another state for a project that I was working on. I was accompanied by this cheerful, lively and hardworking woman – my project Consultant who would be flying in an aeroplane for the first time.

We boarded the late night flight and were seated next to each other. As we fastened our seat belts, she said to me, “I am really nervous since this is my first time travelling by flight.” And the prudent me confidently told her, “Don’t worry, it is just an hour journey, just relax and enjoy the flight. You will be fine”.

Since it was a domestic flight we had no entertainment screens set up. Nonetheless, I plugged in my ear phones to help ease the Airplane ear as soon as the plane started to accelerate to gain the take-off speed.

As the plane fiercely sped up, I kept an eye on my companion all ready to reassure her in case she felt uneasy or scared. But she was very confident and enjoyed the take-off. “I guess she loves those roller coaster rides at amusement parks”, I thought to myself.

And so began our flying journey as we tried to take naps in between a crying baby and some annoying passenger who kept calling the airhostess. Suddenly, an announcement is made requesting all the passengers to fasten the seatbelts and to be seated upright since the weather was bad.

Yes, it was the monsoon season and there were probably too many clouds along the path that night. In the next moments, our plane started to rattle and shiver as it passed through turbulence. This was something new to me, in my travels across states and countries and a number of flights – I had never ever sat through turbulence!

I started to panic trying very hard not to showcase my anxiety attack. I remembered the plane scene in the Bollywood movie – “Pyaar To Hona Hi Tha”. I wish I had something to drink I thought to myself to calm down those nerves.

I shivered in my seat holding on tightly to the arm rest. It was then that my project Consultant, noticing my panic situation, held my hand firmly and patting it gently she calmed me down whispering, “It’s gonna be fine. We are going to be fine. Just try and relax”.

Since then I have two reasons why I hate travelling by the Aeroplanes.

A to Z Challenge 2023! – Theme Reveal

Hello reader!

So this year I solemnly pro-mise not to miss any day in the one blogpost each day challenge – the April 2023 Blogging from A to Z challenge!

I have never done a particular theme before in my failed attempts in this blogosphere contest but this year I am feeling hmmm.. (*smirking*) adventurous enough to not only declare that I am gonna blog for 26 days straight but also to maintain a theme in each blog. Guess I just made it more difficult. (okay I might be slightly drunk).

So here goes my theme reveal.. (*drumroll*)

MY CRAZY ESCAPADES – or may I say My Crazy Adventures!

So each post will start with the Letter Alphabet of the day for 26 days all throughout the month of April and you my friend will be entertained with the craziest life decisions in the most craziest circumstances of my journey through life till now.

So hold on to your seats and get ready to be entertained.