Random thoughts keep wandering our mind. Sometime its flight of our imaginations and sometimes its fragment of memories combined with 'the flight'. Few days ago, I recalled some similar childhood memories. Strangely enough, they were clear as crystal & quite strong to be remembered. So I thought lets make them my first blog.
When we were young, we've discovered the elixir of life.
The 'We':
I've used 'we' and not 'I', so its clear that I was not alone in discover of this stream of elixir. It was me & my siblings. My elder brother, me and my younger sister. (It was at a later stage of life I understood that my elder brother and younger sister are my cousins. When we lived together, we all had 'badi ma, bade papa, choti ma and chote papa') So it was this trio I am talking about. There was also a fourth member of our consortium, my elder sister (who was later on understood to be not-a-cousin) but as far as I can remember, she did not use to accompany us on our 'adventures'. She was too girlish and would probably spend her time in better ways. My younger sister, on the other hand, would follow us and we two brothers knew that since she is younger, we can boss around her and also need to take care of her.
The 'Elixir':
So what was it ? Where did we find it ? How did we find it ? It was a stream of water. We called it 'Meetha paani'. Yes the sweet water. In last so many years when I remembered nothing about it, phrase 'meetha paani' would remind me only of water with sugar or some other beverages. However, now, its something else. Something different and difficult to describe in words. It reminds me of that childhood addiction of each other. That innocence. Those moments, where happiness was tangible. All around us, we could feel the touch of happiness. No matter how much I try to describe 'meetha paani' it is impossible for me to do so. Only way I can explain it is to ask you to recall something similar in your childhood. I am sure we all have similar memories. Just try to remember the feeling associated with those memories. If you recall something, that is what 'meetha paani' means to me now.
Details:
So now the details of meetha paani. It was a stream of water. Definitely, sweet in taste, pure and nature fresh. Deep inside lush green forest. All around it was nature, in its purest and undiluted form. At the bank of the stream was soft green grass. Always soften by dew on it. A little further to it were trees. Green and huge. Always full of life, lots of birds with sweet chatter. A light mist used to be in the air which looked beautiful when morning sun-rays comes in filtered from the trees. It was our own version of wonderland, not anything like Alice's wonderland. May be, it can be compared to Narnia. But we were never lost there. In fact we had a small hut of our own there. We could go there anytime and come back home for lunch. We can swim in Meetha pani stream, though none of us can swim at any other place. The stream gave us strength and power. I don't recall how or when did we first discovere it, but I clearly recall where did this stream flow. It use to flow under our bed! It was very easy for us to reach there. We just needed to hop below our bed. It was not a set of boxed beds. So there was a good amount of clearance from the ground. And, we were kids, or rather tiny-tots. Our bodies were so small that we could easily go below our bed. Swim on the floor, which use to turn into meetha paani. Once we cross the stream, we'd reach our hut on the bank of the stream. The stream never wetted us. Since it was deep inside forest, there were lots of animals around us. But no animal did ever harm us or tried to harm us, they were all friendly. We use to spend hours there. Me and Atul (my elder brother) use to wander alone or together to far off distances. However, Kirti (our younger sister) was not allowed to come out of hut alone. She was only allowed to roam around with two of us. This ban was because of the fact that not everything was good and friendly in that world and she was so young (afterall she is around 9 months younger to me). There were evil things also. A few monsters scattered over this vast land. During various episodes of our adventure, we fought with many of them. We were just ordinary people who do not stand any chance in front of monsters. However, meetha paani was always there. It was a source of immense power, which would enable us to ward and defeat all evil. With the presence of such a power source, we were always safe there. However, time keeps on running and so does life. Over the years, my father shifted out of the state and so we moved along. Now, we all would get together only once in many months for few days. We still used to go there when we came together. There all was still the same. The jungle was green and meetha paani was still all powerful. Since it was so much powerful source, nothing could possible happen to it. It would make us strong and would help us all through the life.
Drying of stream:
God has created everything with a definite time span. Something terrible happened and meetha paani, which used to make us invincible probably itself became week. We stopped visiting that place as its charm was lost. But what could have happened to it? Nothing. Yes nothing happened to it. That place would still be there with all its glory. Something had happened to us. We grew up. Comics, video games and TV took most of our time. Then came in our cycles and associated thrill, which latter gave way to other activities. Meetha paani slowly became history and got buried inside our mind with thick dust of time over it.
