Bitter Sweet Chocolates

Chocolates always make every child’s day. Like the icing on a cake, like hope sprinkled on despair, like mushrooms sprouting on wet expectant days, like reds that border white sarees, like mother’s love, like the top layer of richness on milk.

What were chocolates to Rimpy? In the early amorphous years when memory was just born Rimpy didn’t know what chocolates were. So, whenever papa bought Cadbury’s Dairy Milk or Amul Chocolate she surrendered her bar to Simi after one bitter bite. When papa came to realise this, he started getting only one chocolate bar, for Simi and for Rimpy he bought toffees.

Things suddenly stopped being profitable, that extra bit, that second helping which was given unasked for suddenly came to halt. This prompted action. Some nice sisterly gyan. Nice sisterly gyan.

Says the propagator of small knowledge and the queen of gore:

“Its only fair that Papa gets a Cadbury for you too. Ask for it. If you have only toffees slimy green worms will wriggle in you’re a*^%$”

Ask for it.
And the Cadbury was asked. And the Cadbury was given. And a bitter bite was taken. And once again it was surrendered willingly. No slimy green yellow worms wriggling in the a&%$#

Later in school, when birthdays consisted of floral butterfly printed frocks and distribution of orange chocolates worth 20 paisa to classmates, life was spent waiting for this special day. The days on which there was someone’s B’ Day in the class were a close second best. There was something to look forward to.

20 paisa orange chocolates graduated to 50 paisa mango bites, coffee bites and éclairs. Rimpy wore her favourite frock with socks and pumps and accompanied Mama to Paanbazar. She half-ran half-walked with the pointy black stilettos which pulled her through crowded pot holes, rickshaws juggling with the potholes and Maruti Suzukis all thrown together at a place called market. Eyes went round, darting above at the jars containing the stars, the gems of every childhood. And mouth started salivating, seeing the treasures as the black stilettos and vanity bag bargained for the best deal.

There was yet another day when chocolates were very important in Rimpy’s life. That was the result day. Simi and Rimpy were in the same school, so results were also on the same day. That’s where the similarity ended; there was much difference as far as the marks were concerned. Papa always accompanied them to the school on the day of the result and afterwards there was a big prize- a Cadbury’s bar. Now it so happened he always bought a bigger Cadbury for Simi and a smaller one for Rimpy.

Rimpy was confused why her chocolate was smaller than Simi’s. Every year she thought aloud why is my chocolate smaller than her's?

A warm voice said “Because you are younger than her”

But somehow the Satan had his way of reaching you. Out came the reply from the giver of great wisdom and pincher of little balloons of happiness.
Little balloons of happiness. Gone Phish! Phish!

“I got better rank than you buddhu, so the bigger chocolate”

And suddenly chocolates were not so sweet.
They were bitter.
Cadbury’s is bitter.

Ella Bella

Rimpy must have been 3 or 4 years old. Living in a huge govt. quarter in Ghilamara, a small sleepy town near Lakhimpur, Assam. In this introvert, shy of modernization and materialism deciduous town with a dearth of artificial amusements people found their own sweet ways of amusement.

Every evening Rimpy’s sisters, Monju, the maid and a neighbour gathered to play. Mom had made it a condition that they could play only if they took Rimpy to play.

Only if Rimpy too went to play.

Hide and Seek.
Seek and Hide.

It was their favourite game. Hide and seek had the strange habit of beginning everywhere, out of the blue.
Everywhere. In the huge circles of flowers, in the sheds, in the huge echoing empty rooms, in the dark room (where the kerosene generator was kept), under the huge bogori ‘berry’ tree and of course in the big boulders of the adjacent fields.
While everyone was busy ‘I-Spying’ and ‘Dhappaing’ Rimpy had a very special role to play. Rimpy was ‘Ella Bella’ or not counted.

Ella Bella a unique concept, to get nuisance out of the way and still make the person feel great about it. Whoever was Ella Bella in a game had a special privilege of never getting caught or rather no one caught an Ella Bella.


Never out.
Never lost.
Never won.

Rimpy hid in one particular spot for hours. Be it a boulder or a flower bed. She heard the excited voices of the players, like a single twitching ear of a dog. The gushing nervousness of being caught, the exasperation of not being able to find anyone, hearing the unwanted ‘I-Spy’, the eagerness, relief of a Dhappa creeping from behind a bush. Those were the great pressures of the game.

Once in a while, as Rimpy sat with her frock raised, so that it didn’t touch the red, black, brown, ochre earth and she had bored of watching the crumpled grass, she stood up to see what was happening in the world above, i.e. outside the boulder. The moment her head popped out from the boulder she found her exasperated sister, Simi telling her to go back to her hiding place or Monju winking at her to hide. Thus went some more hours.

Never out.
Never lost.
Never won.

Rimpy, the Ella Bella.

Welcome

The pure, the bright, the beautiful,
That stirred our hearts in childhood,
The impulse to awordless prayer,
The dreams of love and truth;
The longings after something lost,
the spirit's yearning cry,
The strivings after better hopes..

These things can never die.

-Ruskin Bond