Diwali Vacations

Today, I went to my aunts home in the same colony. She has just migrated in the city with her family as her son got a job here in Nashik and her husband got retired. They left the small town called Lasalgaon, forever. As these are Diwali days we started talking on how we used to spend this festival years ago.

Her town was really a cool place to spend days of holiday. All of our family, my mom, dad, my sister and me used to visit her place in every holiday. They had a small colony where all of the families were so close to each other. The whole day all of us children used to play around the house or in the colony. When in home we played cards or watch movies on VCR. When we were out, we used to play hide and seek or go to the riverside to catch fish.

Every evening people from different families used to gather at her place just to chat. All of the children used to play either cricket or a very interesting local game called ‘Lingorcha’ on the colony road. And when it got dark, we played badminton in the street light.

Every evening a ‘kulphiwala’ used to come and served ‘Matka Kulphi’ for 25 paise. It was so tasty that we never missed it as far as we stayed there. My uncle was a professor in the only college in that town. The college had a basketball court. Sometimes we used to go to the campus to play basketball.

The town also had a railway station. It was 2 km away from her home. Sometimes we used to walk to the station. There was hardly anybody on the platform. I used to enjoy looking at the trains speedily passing the station. A steady silence, then sudden disturbance for few seconds and again the same steady silence. I still remember the smell of burnt coal which I used to experience on the station.

In the night all the colony looked like the milky way in the sky. All the houses were lit with hundreds of small oil lamps. Nobody stayed home. Everybody was seen chatting on the street or on the steps of some home. (Mobile phones were not available then).

Before sleeping, my uncle used to tell us Tarzan stories. We used to go to sleep with the images of Tarzan jumping from tree to tree with the chimpanzees. How fortunate we were to enjoy all this in our vacations!

But as we grew up, going to their town became rarity. And now they themselves have left their home and are here in a big town where people hardly know their neighbours. Now we can just remember those days.

My cousin brother is married. We just thought where will he take his children in their Diwali vacations?