The time portal that sent me traveling across time, back to my childhood was the Jhirpani Bridge. Without even an iota of fatigue, my legs ceaselessly worked on the pedals, while the bicycle handle automatically turned in the direction that lead to my childhood days, as if some invisible force had hardwired my sub-conscious brain to ride through those nostalgic roads. As I approached the river, I parked my bicycle besides a tree and started to descend into the river.
Two kids were playing flying discus with their parents on the sands of the river bank. The girl who was elder than the boy, was playfully teaching her brother how to dig sand tunnels and make a temple out of the excavated earth. The brother, on the other hand, was clawing out small lumps of sand with his tiny hands and was giving it to his sister to make the temple. The parents were sitting on a small blanket on the sands and were enjoying the sight of their kids playing with the river sand. Sometimes, the father and son would play by throwing small stones and pebbles into the river at oblique angles, while the mother and sister would count how many times the pebble bounced on the water surface before going down the river bed.
As I shifted my focus to the flowing river momentarily and looked again, the family had disappeared into oblivion. I searched for pebbles, with a vague hope, that throwing it into the river would bring back the playful father and son before my eyes, but the pebbles were nowhere to be found. Knowing where they would have gone after disappearing from the river bank, I returned to my cycle and started pedaling again.
I was standing in front of Mar Thoma Church. There was a small house in front of the church. A Yamaha RX100 bike was parked and an Alsatian dog ferociously guarded the gates. As I opened the gates and went inside, I found the family once again. This time, the father and kids were playing crossword in a dimly lit house plagued with severe under-voltage, while the mother was cooking dinner for the entire family. The dog was doing rounds of the kitchen and backyard, eagerly awaiting its dinner as the mother was preparing rotis. In the afternoon, the kids often ran to the terrace and spent the entire noon plucking mulberries from the adjacent tree, till their hands and mouth tinged red with the mulberry juice.
Unable to bear the nostalgia, I resumed pedaling, only to find the kid holding his mother's hand and the mother-son duo having their usual morning walk near the radio station. As I continued further, I saw the father, patiently teaching the kid, the art of riding a bicycle. For a moment, I looked back, hoping the father has placed his hands on my bicycle and running alongside me, for he knew, his son was afraid of falling down.
When I returned to my house, I saw the family again. But times have changed. The father was sitting on his study table, while the mother was watching TV. The small kids were all grown up now. The elder sister got married a few years ago. The Alsatian dog was not the first, but perhaps the last dog the family ever had, for its death was a huge emotional setback. The younger brother has now returned from his trip down the memory lane, and has just completed the narration of his amazing childhood.
