Summer of '89 - Those were the best days of my life

The summers of the late 80ies remain evergreen in my mind.I was about 5 then and all summer vacations used to be spent at my grandparents.I was really lucky to have 2 lovely sets of grandparents.The paternal side of the family lived in Trivandrum and the maternal side in Cochin, both in the lovely state - Kerala.I always am biased to cochin, partly because I was born there.Vivid memories of the extremely good times that I have spent in our huge mansion 'GOKUL' come rushing to my mind.Gokul was a massive place.It was a typical 'grandparental' home, with a blue gate and a lawn leading to the driveway.My grandmom loved plants and the front of the house was invaded with plants of every type.I recollect the maroon pots with ferns hanging from S-shaped hooks in a row along the porch.We had a big jackfruit tree(It never gave any fruit until we were there, much to the annoyance of my grandmom.However she continued her pursuits of stimulating the tree to give fruits.She would talk to the tree and we even did a traditional puja.. can you believe it?????). There used to be a swing tied on to the tree during our visits there, and I still can feel the breeze on my face, as I tried to swing higher and higher.My grandpa had lived in Bahrain before settling down in Cochin and the house had a nice collection of bric-bracs from there.My favourite past time would be to take out each one from the shelves in the pretext of dusting the shelf and listening to grandpa as he used to cleverly come up with a story every time for each of the collectibles.My grandpa owned a small photocopying shop just around the corner to keep him occupied.I used to devotedly accompany him and we used to set off from the house every morning in his blue lml vespa.There were huge godowns used to store spices on either side of the road and I could get the whiffs of dried ginger, pepper, cardamom .What a divine concoction!!!!At the shop I assumed the position of the cashier, and spent my time toying with the huge black calculator.My grandpa was an extremely meticulous person and made me write all the transactions in a neatly labelled book(I wonder if the book is still there, for me to see my squiggles against his perfect cursive writing).
I always looked forward to the returning home part.It was then when we took a short cut across the market and I would be treated to various goodies - one day it was an ice-cream soda from the cornerstore owned by a jew (he lived in jew town close by), another day it was a katchori from the gujarati shop, sometimes it was a couple of bondas (those were the best bondas I have every had in my life,they used to serve it with some weird red chutney which tasted heavenly!!!), and of course 'ball ice creams' - these were plastic tennis ball shapes filled with vanilla ice cream.Most of the evenings, we went out.My grandmom was a wonderful cook and she made all kinds of yummy stuff to eat.If we were going to the beach, it was definitely masala peanuts which she made at home.Sometimes me, my brother and my grandpa took off in the moped to explore places on our own with the supply of snacks courtesy my grandmom.We got drenched in the beach, we watched the chinese fishing nets come up with loads of fish, we watched the sunset from the marine drive.... No vacation was complete without a visit to the jewish synagogue and the Mattancherry palace.Oh and of course, the traditional visit to Chotanikara temple. After visiting the temple we would sit around as my grandpa conjured up more exciting stories of the temple.And there were the boat rides...we endlessly used to travel in boats literally island hopping until I was sea-sick!!!! When I look back now, I can't quantum the amount of fun I had then.I am overwhelmed and my emotions get the better of me.I desperately search a loop in time to switch to those days again.I try to grasp and hold on those fleeting moments racing through my mind.My mind is flooded with bits and pieces of nostalgia....I can even picturise happy scenes from those years.Happy,carefree,fun filled summers..... Definitely the best days of my life.

PS: I will continue my experiences in my paternal garndparents house in my next post.