last day at Indore..walk down the memory lane and finally the "revenge of ..." 21012-02-25

 Our parent's old home from 1930's

 Residency ( built by the British) on the way to school

 Hanuman (Monkey  God) who helped us kids get through all sorts of troubles..

 Our Dad's clinic from 1945, now my brother and his son run it..

 Puppies(  getting love and warmth) on the way to the river

 A short cut ( may be 1000 ft ) from our home to the river and the temple

Not sure who they are but they seem to live on the street...

So I finally got sick on the last day....not sure what it was , may be the food at the wedding or the heat and water or combination of everything. So, trying to rest and not eat...
Went for the morning walk and yoga thinking it will make things better and may be it did . We went down the memory lane from the time i was born to when we moved to the present home in 1958 ( i think) . Our parents used to live in the house in PARSI MOHILA meaning colony of Persians. These are the Zorastrians , who migrated to India from Persia many generations ago. Most of them lived ( still do) in a closed knit community but somehow my parents decided to live in that neighborhood. By that time ( in late 30's) there were other people living there too, but we did have very close Parsi friends.( I talked about Shreen Irani in previous blogs). The house was a modest home for a family of six kids, parents and usually few cousins, but we have lots of fun memories. Shreen's mother and my mother were close friends and were the pioneers in women riding motorcycle around the town..:)  My mom was uneducated, young mother anda wife and Shreen's mom was Parsi..an outsider, but somehow they became buddies with an adventurous spirit. The Iranis were four siblings, we were six and along couple of Muslim kids ( kids of the famous Cricketer Mushtak Ali) , we had quite a gang of kids getting into all sorts of interesting stuff.
We used to take a "short cut" to go to river and the Temple which were hardly few hundred yards away ( but a big adventure for little kids). The idea used to be to play by the river and then to pray really hard at the temple to get  good grades without studying. The God, Hanuman at the Temple was very obliging to us all ( none of us were religious and Parsis or Muslims are not Hindus) in that we all managed to get good grades.  My sister in law and I went to that walk. What used to be all jungle , open fields and beautiful river full of running water  isnow a very run down slum. The river where we used to play every evening ( between school and dinner time) is full of filth and barely has any water. The Temple is still there but has lost all the flowers and greens  and is built up with more idols and concrete. Even so, when ever my siblings come from out of town, they always visit the Temple. They do it for religious reason but I know that in reality they go there to revive the old memories. The Temple is the only thing that is left behind...

We also walked down the path from our home to the school which was about a mile away.  Our gang of  ten to fifteen kids did that walk every morning and evening for many years. Short cut through the residency, on to the road lined with mango, dates , banyan  trees and flowering Plumeria, we played and made garlands for the teachers (just  in case we were late to school.), it took us an hour or more to do the mile.  There were "ghosts" in the banyan trees and police men with guns at the residency and many other hurdles that the older kids protected us younger ones from.
Now the residency is still there but all the flowers, banyan trees and  orchards of mangoes, dates and other flowering trees are all gone. The police man is still there but the place is opened to the public for walks and exercise and around there are built up colonies and concrete roads. The road where we learned to skate is a major commercial road always packed with trucks, cars and all other vehicles. We could not even walk along there.
I wonder what is the price for prosperity and what and who defines prosperity?  The kids growing up at the same place are bused to schools an hour or more away , attend evening coaching classes , may be watch TV serials or American shows and try to be successful by getting into one of the prestigious professional college.

May be it is true that the life has become more competitive in India and you have to follow along or get left behind but i wonder if there is another simpler way...

I have been writing this for a while , I guess as a summary of my Indore experience or because I am sick and just resting and blabbering...