A different time

I glance up to the ceiling, but I cannot see it properly. It is blurry. I faintly realize that I am under a mosquito net.

The wheezing fan rotates above me, trying to blow warm breeze this way. I look down at my 8 year old body, and realize that I have been changed into pajamas already. I wonder when that happened.

I wheel around and see my little sister. She sleeps peacefully. Beads of sweat mark her forehead. Yes, she’s feeling hot, but I think there is no any other place she’d rather be, at the moment.

I hear familiar sounds – the tinkling of rickshaw bells, distant shouts and calls of street mongers, and clinking of pots and pans from the kitchen. I get off the bed, because life is teeming. I get off the bed, because the world has already woken up…

The colorful patchwork of memories- that is my childhood in Chittagong, Bangladesh, remains treasured in my heart. Yet, holding on to them is like trying to hold onto sand in my palm, slipping away, little by little, as I try to reminisce…

Weekends spent in my grandparents’ house, a bungalow of sorts with a front yard boasting mango trees, wild plants and muddy terrains were a welcome relief to us, especially from our squeaky clean, routine bound weekdays. Here was a place we could ditch our freshly pressed school uniforms, our strict, nutritious diet, and run and play. Here was a home away from home, in Sadarghat road, so far away from modern hubs of Chittagong, so raw in its essence and teeming with life. Today, it shys away from the rest of the city – “tis nature’s jest to make old age look like a fool”, but in my mind’s eye, it will always be the colorful, full of life, packed home I remember it to be…