Knock Knock ... Nostalgia here ... 🌺🌿🌷🌹🌻💖

 WhatsApp par ek bahot puraaney dost ne photo bheji thi

Chaai ka cup haath meiN liye-liye hi maiN ne screen par click karaa , photo mere saamne khuli ... Aur uss ek pal meiN maiN barsoN piichhey chali gayi ... !!!

Like a cascade of goose bumpy moments , memories from another era , followed by an intense longing for those days , started streaming down incessantly filling my heart with love and eyes brimming with glimpses of flowers , grass , trees , breeze , smiles , dreams , saaris , bindis , jhumkas ... Cricket , tennis , badminton ... films , reading , singing ... Embroidery , stitching ... Picnics , outings , olives , wild berries , mountains , streams ... 

Collecting wild grass , dried flowers , twigs and stems while walking in the forest , and arranging them in the large old pickle jars that Mummy had brought from Daadi's store room in Shahjahanpur to our home in Tata's various residential Colonies 

My father's most memorable gift to me ... a transistor that he had given me when I came first in my class five exam ... !

My reading choices evolving unawares from comics to magazines to James Hadley Chase to Agatha Christie , Perry Mason , Robert Ludlum , Frederick Forsyth aur pataa nahi kaun kaun ... and then ... finding Mills & Boon ... jo aaye to phir forever aisey bass gaye ke aur kisi ke liye jagah hi nahi bachi ... !!!

Naram-garam-reshmi yaadoN ke ye silsiley chaley to chaltey hi gaye ... Aur meri Chaai thaNdi ho gayi yaar ... 😊!!!

As I got up to refill my cup , I could hear Mummy's fav sentence ringing clear and melodious in my ears ... 

"Chaai ho ... bahot ho ... aur garam ho"

Maa-Baap to chaley gaye 

Lekin apney jiiney ka andaaz chhod gaye 

Unn ki yaadeiN duaaeiN bann kar unn ki sabhi aaney waali nasloN par rehmat ka saaebaan bani raheiN ye hi dua hai 🙏💐💕💕💕

Sharing the photo that started it all 😍😍😍 ... 👇🏼

In the pic : 

My mother with her neighbours

The Gaikwad Family ... my parents' first neighbors at Khopoli Tata Colony ... This was my father's first posting after he joined Tata Electric Company ... And this pic was taken a couple of years before I was born

Introspect a bit

 I really am fed up of this notion of communities rejecting inclusiveness , and refusing to come out of their suffocating self-spun cocoon of customs 

Earlier generations lived in earlier times 

Their customs , habits , living conditions , life styles etc were in accordance with their time 

We can read about that , get nostalgic about our family histories , even be proud of our ancestors 

But let’s stop at that 

We have their genes and that is more than enough

With communication , conveyance , transport , technology etc that those times were capable of , obviously marrying among immediate or extended families and clans , or at the most one village / city to another was more a matter of compulsion , and not essentially a preferred choice 

But love has always had a way of its own 

In those times , and in the present too ... 

It breaks barriers , it seeps in through the cracks , it braves all the evils of time and class and looks past the tightest of veils ... and thankfully survives despite all the dos and don’ts ... 

So clans / tribes who were most often knitted in multi-layered intertwined love - hate relationships , headed by a patriarch who fiercely guarded the personal laws that each such tribe / clan had laid down , specially for its women , had to give way to the breeze of change 

My generation had more options and opportunities in choosing our stream of education , our life partner , our life style etc 

What we made of it certainly needs to be discussed at length too , because had my generation evolved as human beings , we wouldn’t be talking of , or worse still being silent onlookers of insane violation of human rights back in our time and at present too 

Khaair ye kahaani phir sahi ...

Meantime we can jhaaNko in our girebaans

But now with so many opportunities available for the youth to meet and interact , so many hundreds of people to choose from , isn’t it pathetic to still see parents ( my generation people ) playing match makers , making most jaahil demands like “ fair and beautiful “ , this caste , that religion through matrimonial columns / websites ... !!!

Instead of working towards making educational institutions and work places secure , providing a healthy and liberal atmosphere inside and outside homes , respecting the choices our children make , and being grateful for such opportunities , it is heart breaking to note that there are parents ... and even laws ... out there controlling lives and doing chowkidaari of our adult and mashaallah well brought up children ... !!!

Here’s an invaluable reminder ... 

" There were three large multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious entities after World War two : 

the USSR, Yugoslavia and India. 

Because of majoritarianism two are no more ...... "

~~~ Shama Zehra Zaidi 

( Screenplay writer, costume designer, art director, theatre person, art critic, and documentary film maker. )