Of Lessons Learnt and Memories Made

The mere mention of Iraq brings to mind all kinds of things to us. Bush and his stance, troops abroad, talk of taxes and heated discussions about WMD. But to me, it brings to mind some of my sweetest and earliest childhood memories. Memories of each member of my family, of shared meals made with substitute ingredients, of masoon the best tasting bread in the whole world and of shopping trips to the local bazaar with ice-cream treats at the end, to be eaten later while watching Tom & Jerry or the 100th telecast of Robinson Crusoe. Each little event filled with shared emotions that have stayed put with surprising alacrity in my mind. Over there, in the city of Basra, my mother and father had common friends. They did not dash off on their own commitments, my brother did not disappear as often as he used to in India, to hang with his friends, my sister did not exclude me from her little crowd and when we made new friends, it was this whole other family we ALL made friends with. A new place and that too a foreign country can be instrumental in bringing a family closer than it has ever been before, when looking out for fellow members becomes more pronounced. Iraq also brings to mind memories of the kind of confidence only the very young can have. I had that at the time, in abundance. A confidence that was compounded by the fact that I went to a very small international school where it was very easy to be among the smartest in the class. I had that strut, and it wasn’t just in school but back at home too. See, we lived in a building that housed another 5 Indian families. Two of these families had little girls of their own who went where I went. And though they were my closest friends there, I remember being quite a pushy leader of that pack. It went without saying that I would decide all the important stuff as I was way better at Math and Science anyway, right? They were sweet and very compliant girls and I was a little bitch. *Pallavi if you are reading this, I hope that bullying did not scar you for life, I really think you a darling to have taken all that. Let’s just let bygones be bygones huh?*. Our neighbor was a Kashmiri spinster doctor who I adored. I would sit on her knee which was always covered in colored, polyester burkhas and play with her fine muslin dupatta lace late into the evenings, while my Mom caught up with her about this and that. She would tell us about her work and the people she had operated on and who was getting better and who was ready to go home. It was lovely, I loved the stories and the way they all ended with health and healing. She was like a real Aunt, more Auntie-like than any of my own sari-clad ones. She adored my Mom’s South Indian pickles and I adored her fresh smelling perfumes in their exotic bottles and her foul smelling refrigerator stocked with meat. So different from ours, but yet, so like ours it could be opened as and when we pleased to pick up a can of Pepsi or juice. And she was by far the most generous of all in that building; especially with the sweets she got from Kuwait every time she went visiting her folks.

Things would have been perfect if it weren’t for that smart new kid in my school. He was my classmate and he had these gray eyes and he knew ALL the answers to ALL the questions. And of course the mid-yearly exams that he was in time for (but which people predicted he could have NO WAY been fully prepared for), he aced without any apparent effort. I had my claws out for this guy. Bulbul my friend who was the only other one to get a 100 in Math besides me even asked to sit next to him during lunch, signifying impending loyalty-shifts. My wonderful sunny days started to get a little cloudy. How I hoped fate would kick in and set things right again! We couldn’t let the whole world and its gray-eyed brother join the 100-in-Math club at any rate. My energies were concentrated more on him not making that 100, than on me making it again. I clung on to Bulbul hoping she would realize that gray-eyes was a passing phase....

My Mom and Doctor Aunty were talking in unusually low voices and I scampered up to them to listen in. She let me climb on to her knee but I could sense things were not right with the world. And that they were not talking about what they had been talking about. “Do you know Naveen in your class?” asked Doctor Aunty. “Yes” I said with a scrunching of the nose. What...gray-eyes now was turning into Doctor Auntie’s favorite too? What else would be invaded of my world? “He won’t be coming to school any more sweetie” my Mom explained. It took me a long while, even after our teacher in school explained it in painstaking slowness, to grasp what had happened. My sister explained it with much needed conciseness. “His parents drank too much in a party. His Dad tried to jump a ditch, Naveen was thrown out of the van window, and he died on the spot.” My first brush with death. Fate had kicked in alright but not as I had imagined, I missed gray-eyes more than I expected. I felt guilty for weeks. I thought of him a lot and Bulbul and I held his Math book and kissed it too.

With Iraq in the news so much, I often think about those days. I think of Bulbul and Pallavi and Doctor Aunty. But never are those memories unaccompanied by those of Naveen and I wonder how his father ever lived with himself after that loss. How that 100-scoring gray-eyed boy would have made a fine young man now in his twenties and how that drunk driver taught himself the lesson of his lifetime by the loss of another....Dying seems less sad than having lived too little. Naveen, he did not even make it to the finals of his 2nd standard. If that’s not too little, then what is?

So, yes, Iraq brings a lot to mind, parts of which are common to many, as Rhyncus very correctly pointed out. Nestled in my childhood memories, are thoughts of death. Unnecessary and untimely deaths.