My college mates

It’s so many years

Yet I can’t hold back my tears

Remembering my mates
My heart skips a few beats

First greetings to last meetings
Stealing loves to sharing meals

Cracking jokes to making faces

Spoken words to hushed silences

Someone please hand me a compass

For I want to journey back to campus

To those classrooms past the steps and gates
To walk hand in hand with my college mates

Today I am busy meeting deadlines
And those memories come as lifelines

Tell me who has a time machine?

No longer can I stand this separation

A memory of Onam that hasn’t wilted yet!

Not all memories are lucky to survive the test of time. Most of them wilt, fall and get trampled into oblivion. Some of them turn pale, colorless and become too insignificant to notice. There are a few that stay fresh and fragrant through the years.

There was a time when small things mattered. A time when we were little ones. Onam reminds me of such a time when simple things appeared exciting. To me, Onam was not a celebration of things new. I hardly remember wearing new clothes during Onam. Because no one gifted me anything new.

It’s in making Pookkalam that I found a kind of joy which words can’t describe. I used to make Pookkalam, along with my brother, on a platform prepared with a paste of cow dung and clay; right at the centre of our courtyard. Flowers were picked in mornings and evenings, before and after school, in a cone of leaves custom-made for the purpose. Sometimes poached from houses on the way back home.

We would get up well before sunrise. And shout “aarppo irroo irroo’’ at the top of our voices - loud enough to wake the mighty Kumbhakarnan from his sleep. Then a piece of paper, cut from yesterday’s news pape, was rolled out and Pookkalam design in it was meticulously copied onto the place marked for Pookkalam. Flowers from Thumba to Mukkutti filled in the designs with precision that would probably rival a diamond cutter.

Once it completed, a journey through the neighborhood homes would begin. If a better Pookkalam was found in any of the houses, we walked back – like warriors who had lost the war. A vow was taken to beat him the next morning.

But if our Pookkalam was the winner, we walked like heroes, head held high and hearts leaping in joy. A smile playing on our lips. The smile of the happiest beings on earth.

Gone are those days. The moments of unadultered happiness. Because Pookkalam is made with flowers now. Back then, it was made with ‘heart'. A lot of it.