The balloon seller was a fixture each evening. He peddled his wares at the park and stopped by the neighboring houses. He walked around with a vertical-prop...the tops of which bulged with balloons- balloons of all shapes, sizes and colors! Children hung around him and followed him as if he were Pied-Piper! Such was his pull. Occasionally, parents yielded to the child's whims and bought may be... one balloon. Mostly, they took a different route out of the park so that the balloon-seller's bait wouldn't tempt the child and result in an evening of uncontrollable tantrums. It was not only balloons he sold. He carried bows and arrows gilded in gold and even a miniature TV. The TV had a little knob. Twirl it...and your favorite movie-stars appeared on screen- now Amitabh, now Rajesh Khanna, now Hema Malini. You get it? The gadget was delicate. It worked a few times all right. But if the child gave a little more pressure to the knob, it cracked. You were now stuck with a non-functional TV which wouldn't scroll anymore. Parents threw a fit for wasting money on this silly purchase. No worries! You sliced the TV belly...pulled out the picture-scroll and glanced at your favorite-stars...all at once!
Another favorite was the "magic-window" contraption- a red-colored paper with a glass at the center. Depending on how you folded the paper...once, twice...thrice...a different picture appeared on the glass! It was magic- enough to keep the child busy for at least that evening!
Sometimes, a different balloon seller came by...with a cylinder in toe. Out of the cylinder...hung balloons...taut...and straight. They were "gas" balloons- helium balloons. He didn't appear to have much success. Parents kept their children away as if he were a child-snatcher. Rumors were rife...that the gas balloons had so much "power"...that one child actually got airlifted...and was carried away into the clouds!!
It was not easy to get cotton-candy. We looked for him each day during the summer holidays. It was a delight when the candy-floss-wala came to the neighborhood. He carried a huge glass-cube. Neatly piled inside the cube...were candy-floss balls- pink in color and fluffy. No- you never got a full candy-floss ball. The candy-floss wala was a sculptor with magic in his fingers. He would pull out an "umbrella" mold and press the cotton-candy against it. What came out was a cotton-candy umbrella. He added a little crown, a stick to prop up the umbrella and with a flourish, handed it over to the child! If you paid a rupee more, he made a cotton-candy bird...with beak and crown, feathers and tail! His creations were limited...it was either the umbrella or the bird. For a child, it meant the whole world...as it dug into the cotton-candy with relish...and had its entire face...cheeks, jaws, ears...all smeared a deep pink!
The quiet of lazy, summer afternoons was broken with a twang. The sound was unmistakable. It went twang-twang-twang continuously. Part the curtains...and you a saw a strange man carrying a strange weapon....which looked like an oversized AK-47. (No AK-47s existed then, the comparison is for the current generation!) The rest of the afternoon had a familiar ring. Out of every home emerged old bedding rolls- bedding rolls which had become limp and thin since the cotton wasn't fluffy anymore. The AK-47 fluffed up the cotton....and gave these bedding rolls a new lease of life! As for swaccha-bharat, it didn't matter. The whole neighborhood was filled with a haze which hung for the rest of the day...wisps of cotton flying all over and an odious smell which went with it!
Entertainment was often on the footpath. It came looking for you, when you lost interest in life. One afternoon, the magician took over the entire footpath. It was not the old-Indian rope trick, but something similar. He had a boy step into a basket and in full public view, had him disappear into thin-air! The trick took time. The magician was a master story-teller, and stretched his trick for a whole hour. It served multiple purposes- there was a gradual build-up to the excitement and the eventual denouement. Also, he waited till the audience swelled and spilt onto the road. Once you were a spectator, you were simply hooked. You had to wait till the boy disappeared and miraculously re-appeared to collect the entertainment-fee from a dumb-founded audience! It was an afternoon well spent; there was anyway nothing better to do.
Where have all these people gone? Where is the knife-sharpener-wala with his cycle-wheel which ejected sparks, where is that "bhaji-wala" who knocked each door with his grocery basket? Where is that monkey-man....who entertained us with his monkeys? Where is that cow which answered all our questions about the future with a nod of its head...so that we knew exactly how the future is going to pan out? Where is that man who led this cow....and created a racket with that drum which went boom-boom-boom? Where is that fiddle-wala who sold those coconut-shell fiddles which produced music in his hands and the moment he transferred it to us, the same fiddle croaked like a crow with sore-throat? Where is that man who sat by the roadside working on his toothpick...whose only occupation was to give elaborate directions to anyone who lost his way? "Somanathapura? Turn rightu…turn leftu…turn rightu…adhey!" Why did he lose his job...lose his job...to...GoogleMaps of all things?
Where have all these folks gone? Like the Neanderthal man, they have become extinct, rendered irrelevant with the passage of time. It was inevitable. But they live on...in our memories...memories of childhood.
I can feel it now...getting under the hood of the bioscope-wala…the black cloth draped over my head. As I strain my eyes...and get used to the darkness...I can see the characters slowly coming to life. It is a whole new world...fairy-tale-like and most beautiful, with song and dance and mindless revelry! I am there! Don't bring me back!
Another favorite was the "magic-window" contraption- a red-colored paper with a glass at the center. Depending on how you folded the paper...once, twice...thrice...a different picture appeared on the glass! It was magic- enough to keep the child busy for at least that evening!
Sometimes, a different balloon seller came by...with a cylinder in toe. Out of the cylinder...hung balloons...taut...and straight. They were "gas" balloons- helium balloons. He didn't appear to have much success. Parents kept their children away as if he were a child-snatcher. Rumors were rife...that the gas balloons had so much "power"...that one child actually got airlifted...and was carried away into the clouds!!
It was not easy to get cotton-candy. We looked for him each day during the summer holidays. It was a delight when the candy-floss-wala came to the neighborhood. He carried a huge glass-cube. Neatly piled inside the cube...were candy-floss balls- pink in color and fluffy. No- you never got a full candy-floss ball. The candy-floss wala was a sculptor with magic in his fingers. He would pull out an "umbrella" mold and press the cotton-candy against it. What came out was a cotton-candy umbrella. He added a little crown, a stick to prop up the umbrella and with a flourish, handed it over to the child! If you paid a rupee more, he made a cotton-candy bird...with beak and crown, feathers and tail! His creations were limited...it was either the umbrella or the bird. For a child, it meant the whole world...as it dug into the cotton-candy with relish...and had its entire face...cheeks, jaws, ears...all smeared a deep pink!
The quiet of lazy, summer afternoons was broken with a twang. The sound was unmistakable. It went twang-twang-twang continuously. Part the curtains...and you a saw a strange man carrying a strange weapon....which looked like an oversized AK-47. (No AK-47s existed then, the comparison is for the current generation!) The rest of the afternoon had a familiar ring. Out of every home emerged old bedding rolls- bedding rolls which had become limp and thin since the cotton wasn't fluffy anymore. The AK-47 fluffed up the cotton....and gave these bedding rolls a new lease of life! As for swaccha-bharat, it didn't matter. The whole neighborhood was filled with a haze which hung for the rest of the day...wisps of cotton flying all over and an odious smell which went with it!
Entertainment was often on the footpath. It came looking for you, when you lost interest in life. One afternoon, the magician took over the entire footpath. It was not the old-Indian rope trick, but something similar. He had a boy step into a basket and in full public view, had him disappear into thin-air! The trick took time. The magician was a master story-teller, and stretched his trick for a whole hour. It served multiple purposes- there was a gradual build-up to the excitement and the eventual denouement. Also, he waited till the audience swelled and spilt onto the road. Once you were a spectator, you were simply hooked. You had to wait till the boy disappeared and miraculously re-appeared to collect the entertainment-fee from a dumb-founded audience! It was an afternoon well spent; there was anyway nothing better to do.
Where have all these people gone? Where is the knife-sharpener-wala with his cycle-wheel which ejected sparks, where is that "bhaji-wala" who knocked each door with his grocery basket? Where is that monkey-man....who entertained us with his monkeys? Where is that cow which answered all our questions about the future with a nod of its head...so that we knew exactly how the future is going to pan out? Where is that man who led this cow....and created a racket with that drum which went boom-boom-boom? Where is that fiddle-wala who sold those coconut-shell fiddles which produced music in his hands and the moment he transferred it to us, the same fiddle croaked like a crow with sore-throat? Where is that man who sat by the roadside working on his toothpick...whose only occupation was to give elaborate directions to anyone who lost his way? "Somanathapura? Turn rightu…turn leftu…turn rightu…adhey!" Why did he lose his job...lose his job...to...GoogleMaps of all things?
Where have all these folks gone? Like the Neanderthal man, they have become extinct, rendered irrelevant with the passage of time. It was inevitable. But they live on...in our memories...memories of childhood.
I can feel it now...getting under the hood of the bioscope-wala…the black cloth draped over my head. As I strain my eyes...and get used to the darkness...I can see the characters slowly coming to life. It is a whole new world...fairy-tale-like and most beautiful, with song and dance and mindless revelry! I am there! Don't bring me back!
