Scented Pages: Looking Back at Childhood

Shivani walks down the memory lane, growing up from child to tween to a teen. An exclusive for Different Truths.

From that one friend who always plays in mud with you to the sad goodbyes in changing schools. From the ‘Katti’, ‘abba’ arguments to the endless pillow fights. From wanting to dress up for the most awaited fancy dress competitions to random catwalks at home with friends, draping ourselves in our mother’s dupattas. From not being able to speak on stage to endless arguments about who stole the best apsara neon pencil. From playing in the air-filled plastic pools with plastic ducks to visiting beaches. From collecting coins to buy that one pink boomer to earning pocket money…

From the ‘Katti’, ‘abba’ arguments to the endless pillow fights. From wanting to dress up for the most awaited fancy dress competitions to random catwalks at home with friends, draping ourselves in our mother’s dupattas. From not being able to speak on stage to endless arguments about who stole the best apsara neon pencil. From playing in the air-filled plastic pools with plastic ducks to visiting beaches. From collecting coins to buy that one pink boomer to earning pocket money…

We all grew up, just laughing and playing around, when tuitions used to be the best time to make silly ‘Santa Banta’ jokes when playing board games used to be the most awaited moment, when having to blow that one candle with the claps in the backroad hooting and screaming happy birthday was the best time of our lives, when sliding down the biggest slide in the water park was a big deal to us, it is all the past. And all we have is the memory of it still stuffed inside our busy heads and when we think of that one thing which might seem stupid to us, we cherish and smile and think of the good old days. Here is a snippet into my childhood diaries, when I barely knew what anything was, when I would get excited to write with a blue pen, not even being able to hold it, here is how I put these memories down to remember my past, to remember my good old days.

They are not thick diaries, filled with fancy pages. They are not neat ones either, they smell of old crayons and messy chalk, like dried apricots and plums, like over layered oil paint, like rains and breezes, the smell of those tiny palms trying to hold the giant pens, they smell of the little thumb paintings, they smell of the memories of learning past ‘do’, they look like the old classics dropped in coffee thrice, they have my first flight tickets peeping out, they have various pages of endless doodles and filled with words like, ‘trip’, ‘flip’, ‘closer’, knowing which, was a big deal back then. They are filled with the old dried flowers and lime grass that I used to collect during family outings and the brownish-black rose petals, which I would pick up from my family weddings. They smell of dried cranberries and soft innocent air. Some words are smudged because I probably spilt water on the pages, once or twice, they have my very first annual function pictures and fancy dress competitions too. Most of the pages have five to six worded notes written to my diary which sound something like, ‘Dear diary, today did a great day’, not knowing fluent English or even phrases back then. They smell of the various bags I used to carry them in, they look messy and clumsy with crayon marks starting from the cover page to the last. They contain the smell of all the excitement that I felt when I would learn how to draw a new flower. They are everything that I was back then when I was unaware and innocent. When everything was alright under the shadow of home, when all problems never reached to us being guarded by our parents, when the whole day went in going to parks and calling friends over to dance to that one Doraemon song, when the smartest person seemed to be the one who had memorised the multiplication tables from two to five, when things were golden, shaping us into what we are now, pasting all those moments onto our growth, making us remember how we started.

These are my scented pages, a glimpse of the childhood that I lived onto these pages, onto my first lines, I will always remember these pages because they are the ones reflecting how  I have grown. And growth is yet to come but I will always cherish these efforts that I made to create the scent of these pages, remembering how I started my life and how these memories are something I can never let go of

These are my scented pages, a glimpse of the childhood that I lived onto these pages, onto my first lines, I will always remember these pages because they are the ones reflecting how  I have grown. And growth is yet to come but I will always cherish these efforts that I made to create the scent of these pages, remembering how I started my life and how these memories are something I can never let go of, we all say we want to grow up fast but sometimes when I look back into these mirrors reflecting my innocence back then, I wish to build a time machine to take me to the age where everything was a moment to laugh along with, where everything seemed so new and unseen, unheard, where every sight outside the home would light up our eyes with the curiosity and where every moment was lived to the fullest, where the world hadn’t caught us yet, where the world had not seen us yet, where ‘good nights’ were said at ten pm and mornings were all about the excitement of the giant puzzle at playschool, where our stuff toys were the ones protecting us from witches and wizards in our dreams, where every single minute was filled with joys and surprises.

From these pages never written to yet always expressed in us, we all grew up, from wish we could turn back time to make the most of the moment, from the realisations of growing up with each passing year and increasing responsibilities day by day, we all know that we tend to entrap these moments somewhere, they all lie here, words and emotions sleeping on those lines, these are my diaries, my mind is all my diaries painted with emotions, I am the past, I lie here in these pages as a younger self.

Photo from the Internet