I'm going to be 56 tomorrow. Most of the time the inner me doesn't remember that. But of course in the outer me there's no getting away from that!

----------------
Listening to: You're listening to Jazz from www.Batanga.com. The Best in Latin Music.
via FoxyTunes

There are so many wonderful memories of the time I spent in Kerala at that time, enough for a huge number of posts.
One of the memories is connected with one of the cows. There were a number of cows there. As I've always loved animals, I hung around, when they were being milked, when they were taken being untied to be led out to the fields and when they were led back to their shed. I loved the smell of the cows and the hay(which is dry rice stalks here).
One day one of the cows was being delivered of a calf. I remember her as a big black cow. Naturally I wanted to see. I was in time to watch the calf being wiped down and the cow standing up to lick her. Oh how cute the calf was. It stood up on it's wobbly legs and took a step towards me. I was thrilled. Just then my aunt called me. So I very merrily turned round to go back to the kitchen verandah. The calf--probably because I was the first living thing he/she had seen, started following me. The cow took one look and decided that her calf was being stolen. She charged after the both of us--calf and me, be mooing loudly. I ran for my life--5 yr old me--and cleared the verandah steps in one jump, by which time someone came and caught the cow! But I must confess that as the memory is dredged up, I remember being scared, but more excited by the thought that the calf followed me!

After my sister was born, maybe around 3 or 4 months later--I don't really remember, I was sent off to Kerala. I must have been there for around 2months at least. My time there was divided between staying with my mother's elder sister at a farm near Mavelikara, and my father's sister's house in Tiruvella. My mother told me later it was because that with two younger ones after me, she felt she couldn't give me enough attention and so sent me off. Besides, I was generally friendly and so didn't have too much of a hassle going to new places to stay.
Whatever the reason, I had a thoroughly enjoyable time staying with my aunts.
More on that later.

I remember the day my sister was born (or it may have been while my mother was in hospital with her). That was in Jan 1956. As my mother was in hospital, only my father was there to take us to hospital. I guess he must have got my little brother ready too. But what I remember was that after I had got my dress on, my dad combed my hair. Normally, I had a side parting (pic. in earlier post). My father just combed all my hair back and I remember protesting vigorously, telling him that girls did not have their hair combed that way. He told me that that's the only way he knew how to do it and that I could have my hair combed the way I wanted when my mum came back from the hospital!
As soon as we reached the hospital, I didn't even look at the baby, but ran straight to my mother and told her that Dad had no idea how to comb hair. I was so upset that my hair had been combed like a boy's :) How my mother laughed.
I was almost 4 1/2 then.

The Bandra house was situated opposite the tiny, quaint, St. Stephen's church on Mt. Mary Rd. The grounds of the house covered almost an acre. [Today there are 3 flats there :(]
Our neighbours who lived downstairs and we, were supposed to share the garden My mother had a gardener and laid out flower beds & I vaguely remember a lawn. I remember one time my mother even planted cassava(kappa) which she brought from Kerala.
It was certainly heavenly for us small children, there was so much place to play. The downstairs people had a boy around our age, who went to the same school too. So we were always playing, my younger brother, B from downstairs and me. My kid sister was just a baby after all. I can't find any pictures of the garden there, though I know there was one. You'll have to take my word for it I guess :)

This is a picture of the terrace outside the 'ballroom' of the Bandra home. The whole floor was decorated with an old-fashioned mosaic design, where the small pieces were all from broken pieces of china. I remember the pattern vaguely as white and a dark greeny blue. It was really pretty.

By the time I was 4, we moved to Bandra to Mount Mary Hill. Since we lived there for 5 years, the memories are very clear, apart from the fact that there were lots of pictures taken by my mother's younger sister.
It was a huge place. I remember going to see it on a dark evening, climbing up the wooden stairs and walking into this huge room, which was to serve as our company room. My mother was very pregnant at that time with my younger sister and had to waddle up the stairs. But she liked the place mainly because there was a huge ground and a lovely terrace for us children. It was actually one of those old Brit mansions. The actual sitting room and dining room and two bedrooms were downstairs. There was a side door out of that sitting room which lead up these wooden stairs to the ballroom, I kid you not! It was just like one imagined a ballroom to be from books I've read since. There were around 4 or 5 doors leading out onto the landing and 3 doors to the terrace. My mother told me fairly recently (before she died), that the landlord had wanted them to take the whole house. But she apparently said she was just not prepared to look after such a huge place. So we took only the top floor and somebody else took the ground floor.
So then we had this huge room which my mother had a hard time filling up, just 2 bedrooms and an enclosed verandah at the back, which we used as the dining room. That front room was so big my kid brother learned how to bicycle in that room!
Here is an edited picture from that time--
Those are just 2 of the four doors. You can get an idea of the place I think.
I'll post more pictures and more about the house in another post.