Soft Sunlight negotiating the barriers of the tinted glass and the grill of my window has formed a ladder on my table. As I type over my laptop, I feel the soothing kiss of the morning sun on my exposed hands. I do not know why the winter mornings often stir a deep nostalgia in me. I time travel to my childhood days, into those December days, when in the school holidays we used to visit the village home of my mother, accompanied by my maternal grandparents. The house was like a Pandora’s Box to me, a sheath of endless mysteries. Especially, a room, always kept under locks, packed with big cavernous copper cooking pots and saucepans stashed on a huge wood carved cot, big ebony cases with brass bolts, all around the body, a deep black Almirah with a mirror fitted to one of its doors. A peek through the old day’s wooden shutter would straight lead my eyes to that stained mirror, used to run a cold current through my spines, as it would always appear to me, a decrepit old woman with snow-white hair and pristine white saree would come out of that mirror. It always killed my enormous temptation of carrying out an exploratory expedition into the treasure of that locked room. MY uncles could discover my fear and often used to tame my childish demands by intimidating me of locking into that mysterious room. These were the priceless booties my mother’s grandfathers, both maternal and paternal, collected from their trips across the ports of India. Both of them were Masters who used to sail steamers across eastern coast of India. They were cousins and decided to strengthen their by marriage of their son and daughter. My grandmother was only nine, when she was married to my sixteen years old grandfather, still a student of class ten. Both the sea faring man in their early forties, died abroad. One was buried in Karim Ganj, Assam and the other one in Calcutta. They, were two adventurous persons, who took the challenge of freedom, and disengaged themselves from the age-old agrarian lifestyle. They travelled and discovered the essence of life through their arduous profession. However, outside that old building it was altogether a different world. Sunny days, uncountable number of bare bodied dark skinned village kids, always inviting me to go fishing in the canal, which used to have tides everyday twice bringing in abundance to fishes from the sea, and plucking small thorny aubergines and sour green tomatoes from the fields across the canal. Those fields felt so far away to travel in those days with my tiny legs, now that I visit the village sometimes, I find it is hardly few hundred meters from the home. Those boys, many of them without a father or mother, always used to charm me with their omnipotent masteries. Their jumps into the ponds from the hanging branches of trees, catching a stinging fish blindly placing the hands into the canal water, swimming into the middle of the pond and bringing a handful of mud right dipping into the deep heart of the pool, or even walking through the dark bushy bamboo groves in the night to reach home. Everything was so charming and brave that always made me feel so incompetent before their world wining tricks. In the morning, the breakfast session used to be another interesting episode. There was this make shift cookhouse outside the main kitchen. Inside the kitchen, there was a foot-press rice grinder, which over night produced enough rice flour for the thin crispy and perforated flat breads. We used to sit round the fire of the earthen oven, ran on dried date-tree branches. My grandmother with her delicate and efficacious hand moves used to put the almost liquid batter into the hot flat bed of the earthen cooking pan, especially made for only this purpose, quickly spread the batter by holding the pan on its shoulder and there was those perforations on it. Within a minute, it was ready and needed to be scraped out cautiously, without having torn even a tiny portion. To me, the preparation was more interesting than eating it. It was as if a chef-d'oeuvre placed on a plate before my eyes. Now dip it in the semi solid date-jaggery or hot spicy and thin fish stew. I still devour that taste in my dreams. There was another very special addition to the breakfast session. The porridge of coarse brown rice cooked in the fresh date-juice, just brought down in the earthen pots, from the oozing trees that filled it over night. This thick pudding like substance with grated coconut, strips of bay leaves and seldom with raisin would taste heavenly. The smell beside the fire, the sound of burning dried branches, the smoky foods, everything formed the components of a masterpiece. My grandmother was the artist, we the charmed audience, hungry to swallow each and every bit of the arts produce before our eyes. ….