18 April,2009 07:22 PM IST | | Amita Amin-Shinde
Shot a few movies, traveled abroad, signed autographs for a few lakh fans... but when they were younger still, about three feet tall, life was a greater adventure. And so, they explored. Amita Amin-Shinde jogged a few memories and delicious, mango-stained stories came tumbling out
One summer, I went to Switzerland for a skiing camp. My cousin was with me. It was too much fun. We did a lot of outdoor activities, skiied, shopped and ate at some great restaurants. It was three full weeks of dhamaal. One night, we even got lost. That evening, eight-10 of us went shopping. After that, we thought we'd get pizza and beer. By the time we started to return to the hotel, it was past midnight. We didn't have a vehicle and couldn't find any cabs. And it started snowing hard. We decided to walk back, but weren't sure where it the hotel was. That's when a mad man started chasing us. My cousin said: 'Don't worry, I have a knife'. I said, 'Don't even think about it'. And we started running for our lives. We were sh't scared. (Laughs) but we did made it back safely, and learnt our lesson.
Kairi churana that was our summer vocation. And we did it professionally. My twin brother Milind, another friend also called Milind and three-four others and I used to steal kairi from the neighbouring wadi on 16th Road Bandra. The owner was an aunty. Our modus operandi was to engage aunty in conversation while the rest of us stole the mangoes. We succeeded every time. And we never got caught.
We had a small aangan in front of the house, where all the kids played all kinds of sports. Our parents used to beat us because we broke glass panes all the time. But they also loved entertaining everyone who came by. People came and ate at our place. The main door of our house was always open.
We even went fishing at the nearby Bandra lake, and adopted street pups for the summer. We would bathe them under the tap behind the house, irrespective of whether we'd had a bath or not. (Laughs)
My cousins and I used to go to our aunt's bungalow in Marve for a month. We had petromax lanterns then. And local phone calls were like making long distance calls. The beach was pristine and there used to be a creek between the land and the beach then. There were also sand dunes. When I think back, I can make out the growth of Bombay through Marve beach. When I was 18, and went to America, I took some sand from this beach with me.
Anyway, a month at my aunt's was filled with joy. We even had a routine of sorts we would get up in the morning, have breakfast, and then go to the beach for a swim. During the day, we played monopoly or hide and seek, and evenings again meant a walk on the beach. We came back, washed our feet and had dinner. On weekends, when our parents came visiting, we would put up plays for the elders and charge them money to see it. Once, one of my cousins refused to act at the last minute and began to cry he was playing the monkey and we didn't know what to do. (Laughs)
We played sports the whole day on the grounds. While other kids went to Matheran and Mahabaleshwar, I was practicing football and athletics in the sun. I also remember eagerly waiting for mom to get the peti of four dozen alphonso mangoes. My mom grumbled year after year: 'The mangoes have become expensive'. (Laughs).
Those were the fun days. I was totally into sports unlike kids today who are stuck to their electronic gizmos all day long. They need to run free in open grounds, play physical sports the way I did. Recently, a kid told me he had fun playing a particular video game where the player has to move physically to tackle his opponent on screen. Now, if that's the form of physical activity a kid is restricted to these days, then it's sad. I believe in getting physical! (Laughs)
Most of my summer time was spent in Delhi, at my grandparent's house in Daryaganj, in old Delhi. We were 35-40 kids and every summer we would be out of the house forever, playing in the huge aangan. We played chor police and hide and seek. We went cycling; we had a cycle each, and everyone in the neighbourhood would know that the kids from Bombay have arrived.
Attending some of my cousins' weddings was also great fun. My mother has captured each moment on camera, which we've transferred on to DVDs. When I go to Delhi now, I make it a point to visit Daryaganj at least once, though most of my cousins have grown up and moved away. Another summer trip I remember is the one to Disneyland with my parents and sister. I was 14 years old. I must have been the happiest. I wanted to try each and every ride but my sister was scared. I fought with her because I wanted her to accompany me.
Since I studied at the Naval Public School in Kochi, we celebrated every festival and had far more holidays than other schools. My house was the hangout for my friends because I was an only child. I traveled all over India during summer holidays with my parents Delhi, Agra, Gujarat. But my best summer holidays were at our resort in Vagamon, Kerala. It's a hill station and we have a 25-acre property there with a lake and a dam. The architect Laurie Baker, who makes aesthetic houses with organic materials, owned this house and sold it to us under the condition that we not alter a thing.
It has a library, a den, wooden floors that creak and a circular room with a bench next to the fireplace. I used to love reading books by it. Back then, I used to paint, mostly the ducks. There were lots of animals there.
Snakes used to fall from the ceiling and just slither away. We'd go fishing and there was a forest across the lake that bears and tigers came to. I remember watching lightening hit the top of the hill across the lake. The resort is so beautiful and hidden that later, at the time of my first Tamil film M Kumaran Son Of Mahalakshmi, we shot a song there.u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0
I have several wonderful memories, like the time I went on a North Star camping trip to Patni Top at Kashmir. It was my first trip alone with my classmates of Standard VII. We had so much fun rock climbing, skydiving, and horse riding that for a whole month we were one with nature and away from television. Once, we girls dressed up as ghosts and scared the boys. They got back at us by throwing away our toothbrushes. The friends I made on that one trip ended up becoming friends for life.
Another memory is a trip I took with my parents to Jim Corbett Park. We drove there in dad's Jonga, the vehicle used for travelling by the Indian Army. Throughout our stay there, we didn't spot a single tiger! It was so disappointing. After a few days stay, we packed up and were on our way back to Ranikhet where my dad was posted. It was getting dark. All of a sudden, my dad stopped the Jonga in the middle of nowhere. I remember my mom asking him why he stopped the vehicle. He replied, "There's a leopard with her cubs on the road ahead."
He switched on the high power beam lights atop the jeep, and what a beautiful sight that was! The leopard was playing with her cubs and we sat there watching her, afraid that she may attack if we tried to shoo them.
The wait lasted four hours. And mom kept bickering why dad had to pack the camera in the luggage! (Laughs)u00a0
I spent summers in Shantiniketan, with my grandmother Amita Sen. I loved waking up to quarreling birds, monopolising Thamma's homemade mango ice-cream, catching fish in hankies in Kopai Nodi, hearing the ashram burst into song for Holi, watching potters churn their hypnotic wheel, swinging dizzily in wooden 'nagordollas' (now extinct), taking Thamma to Bachchan movies and Tagore plays...
I love how the red earth cakes and bleeds during Shantiniketan summers, how the grass smells of moisture before it rains so you know you'll be drenched in seconds. If I'm away from Shantiniketan for a while, I start dreaming of it vividly like I keep dreaming of Thamma since she left us three years ago.
Thamma abhorred cats and dogs, but she let me adopt all the mangy strays I picked up. She gave me my first bike in my twelfth summer (which I learnt to ride even in a sari), her heavy silver dancing anklets when I was thirteen, and my first tailored sari blouses the summer I turned fifteen u2013 in green, blue, maroon, yellow.
How about white? "You're too young for white," she vetoed. Grumpily I asked for a black one without sleeves.
"You're too old for sleeveless," she retorted with a twinkle, giving utterly non-negotiable directions to the tailor.
For so many summers, Thamma kept devising new lessons for me to become ladylike, lessons I'm still struggling to learn...u00a0 She didn't know that I would've needed several more summers with her, to ever be able to graduate.
