Nostalgia

        "   Yesterday  , All my troubles seem so  far away  ...... Music group Beatles   "          

                  

           Whenever i am in my maternal ancestral home being the eldest of the cousins   i think about the past  about  my childhood which i spent there  at  alleppey the venice of the east  .  And each day at every corner memories come back .  Be it the mango tree (its still there ) which was the abode of the little monkey (thats me ) or the big well which was used for a freshwater bath  with my cousins  those were the days  .  Not that like many pessimists who say that the good old days were best and nowadays is very bad . Because as a blogger and facebook and mobile user i cannot honestly say that only those days were good .  

But definitely there were many things at that period which i miss very much . My younger cousins (representing the younger generation ) cannot  vibe with me in this  because they havent seen the full glory of the ancestral home and that era  . For how can they believe the eldest cousin who hates the morning sun (i am a  night person an owl technically )  who once woke up at 5 am  in his childhood without any problem .  

>That was to see a cow giving birth  . I still remember over a course of a few hours the young calf struggling to get up and unlike a human baby walking within a few hours to feed at its mothers teats .  No biology text can teach these better  and even its more thrilling than the discovery channel of nowadays  .  Then what about the tortoises whom we caught when the big pond was cleaned every year and i still remember them going back walking in a line to their cleaned pond after a week  and the biggest one was near a foot big and smallest one was size of my palm (a childs palm ,, i was 7 years then ) .

My younger cousins these days ask me how we used to live in that "ancient "era with no facebook and mobile . The paradox is we were less bored than they are mainly because the house was always full of people and backyard was full of animals .  How can you feel bored when you sleep with three cousins on one side , Moms two sisters on another side and a cat in the middle and with all the associated pillow fights and chatter  .  And in the daytime while fresh seafood is being in the big kitchen  one of the game is " kuttichoru  " where a small  cooking is done in the backyard by Moms sisters with all the cousins watching eagerly  .  I think that was our first cookery class  .

Maybe i am biased or ignorant  but definitely human relationships were more intense  in the good old days  .I used to call my Moms sister also Amma because she was in actions equivalent to my mother . Imagine having more than one mother  ( its a privilege hardly a modern kid gets )  .

Just two days back one random grandfather (not our family but a family friend )  came and during his talk he was telling that his grandson in gulf he met first after two years of his birth  . And he was sarcastically acting out  the "hello grandfather , Mommy told you are my grandpa but i dont really know you  "  .  Then  i was rewinding my memory where i used to hide behind my grandfather when i used to get chased for doing some naughtiness in childhood and also my grandmother whose traditional belt with metallic beads was used as "train  "  by  we kids  ...

Is this called nostalgia  ... Is there anyway our modern kids can be given at least a part of this in their childhood so that they learn to love other people  (rather than themselves alone)  and animals more  ...