The Pulse of India

The summer has almost arrived and in a few days its going to be the time which all the children will be looking forward to: the summer vacation. Every year during these times I take a nostalgic trip to my school days and those summer vacations when our street used to be my second home and where I used to spend whole days in the mud playing with my marbles, tops, gulli danda, gully cricket, swimming in the canals of our sugarcane fields and when you get tired all you had to do is just to uproot a sugarcane and have your lunch, when our holidays were spent visiting our relatives or they visiting us and it used to be big festival where all the cousins meet, I can go on and on about it.

I have preserved my collection of marbles that I have won to this date and who can forget the days on our terraces spent with flying our kites made of newspapers and held together with cooked rice which acts like a glue.

Now when I look out of the window of my flat during these holidays the street is marked by the absence of children who are busy attending tuitions/coaching classes for the next term, whose spare time is spent in front of TV, or with the latest game consoles or if nothing else a trip to the local mall or even a select few may be preparing themselves for the reality shows on TV.
The times are changing maybe these children will have a collection of game’s DVDs instead of marbles and they also get nostalgic about their PS3s and Xboxes and I would trade everything that I have today for putting some water boats in the rain water poodle in the playground of my school.

Those were the days !!!