Where Did You Grow Up?

Roshni Mohapatra

Contrary to  the popular perception of me, I’m a small town girl.

From a very,very small town in the Aravallis, which is the oldest zinc mine in the world; where they used retorts upside down and fired it from the top to extract the zinc from ore. A town so small, you wouldn’t know which kid was eating at whose house, and it wouldn’t matter, because you’d just walk somewhere and invite yourself for lunch. So small, that standing on the window sill and shouting was the best way of wireless communication. So small, that the cool area under the water tank was our picnic spot. So small, one dad in the area was assigned the task of teaching everyone’s child how to ride a bicycle.

In short, everyone was everyone’s child. Everyone was everyone’s bhaiyya or didi and aunty or uncle. Save for the parochial bongs who went into dada, kaku and mesho mode.