Meenakshi

Not so long ago, there lived a girl called Meenakshi. Each morning she woke up at 5.30., wash her face, brushed her teeth and went for a walk in the fresh morning breeze to the nearby temple. She plucked flowers from the garden in the temple’s backyard-marigold, hibiscus, jasmine and lotuses from the temple’s pond. Most of it she gave to the temple priest who would be just coming out of the bath. The rest of the flowers she took home for her mother who offered them to the deity during worship.

Returning from the morning walk, she headed straight to the toilet for you know what. Freshly scrubbed clean, combed and powdered she would drink a glass of cow’s whole milk and sit down to do her lessons. She would practice Math-her favorite subject and Sanskrit. After study, she joined her grandmother in her puja. She would chant the slokas and read a few pages from the Bhagwad Gita for her granny. Then she took her meal of a cup of hot, steaming rice, pulses, vegetables and a small cup of curd. After enjoying her lunch, she packed her books in the school sack, went to the kitchen to fetch her tiffin box and water bottle from her mother and then went to her grand father who would be reading the newspaper. He gave Meenu three rupees every school day. After receiving her daily allowance and kissing her beloved grandpa goodbye she went to school. On the way she would pick up Rashmi, her best friend, and both of them would happily walk away to school, laughing and joking all the time.

Once at school, they straightaway headed to their classroom where they deposited their schoolbags and water bottles in their sitting places and then go to the assembly ground.Meenu being the head girl would go up the dais and recite the prayer while other students followed her. She attended a hectic day at school from 10.30 am till 4.30 pm consisting of eight periods and one hour tiffin break.Meenu’s favorite period was the Math period. Her Math teacher, a venerable gentleman, impeccably dressed in a white shirt and white trousers was very fond of her.Meenu, however detested the geography class which always happened to be just before the tiffin break. It can be easily guessed that Meenu would have been equally disinterested in any other class before the tiffin bell for by that time small rumblings in her tummy succeeded in shifting her attention from books to food. With the tolling of the tiffin- break bell, Meenu and her friends gave out small shrieks of delight at finally being able to grab a bite and go out to play. The whole class would turn up for a share of Meenu’s tiffin-mouth watering alu parathas splattered with clarified butter and mango pickle, while she loved to eat the delicious pancakes made by Rashmi’s mother. After quickly emptying their lunch boxes all the girls would jump-off to the school playground where they played a round of hopscotch, rumal chori or some other funny game. Once in a week they had an additional games period just after the recess and on such days their sports teacher made them play kabadi or khoko.Meenu loved to play kabadi and aimed to be in the kabadi team once she reached high school.

After having a relatively exhausting day at school, Meenu returned home. On the way she never forgot to stop at the ice-cream vendor where she and Rashmi had an ice cream each .Sometimes they had creamy coconut ice-cream and at other times, the orange flavored one. On some days, rather than having ice-cream they had chenchur or else peanuts. On such days, Rashmi would bring home some chenachur for her granny as well, who loved having these tidbits. Meenu took 30 minutes to come home for the usual 10 minute distance, spending time with school pals discussing about the days events or planning which game to play when they got home. At times when she would be more late than usual, her elder brother Ajit, who studied in high school, would come looking for her.However, once home, she didn’t like to waste any more time. She quickly washed her face, hands and feet, changed into regular clothes and off she went to Rashmi’s house to play another round of hopscotch or kabadi.Sometimes she would take some fruit or baked sweet potato with her to share with her friends.

Before sunset, Meenu returned home, washed herself thoroughly to remove any dirt that might have accumulated during play, and then she lighted the wick in front of the deity and said the evening prayers. She watched television while her mother prepared dinner. At times she would help her mother in the kitchen. When her father who worked as a station master returned from work, she served him tea and pancakes. Her father insisted on having tea prepared by Meenu, to which she gladly obliged.

At precisely 7.30 in the evening, the whole family-Grandpa, Granny, Father, Mother, Ajit and Meenu sat down to have dinner. It was this time in the whole day when all the family came together, and obviously there would be a lot of talking. It would get really hot as ideas and thoughts would exchange freely. The topics would be anything between mundane family matters to important national issues. It was mostly her father, Ajit and grandpa who did the talking while Meenu preferred to listen to them. The supper that Meenu’s family had was simple-chapattis and vegetables along with a few chunks of radish or cucumber all washed down by cumin spiked buttermilk. Sometimes her father brought jalebi or sandesh from the local sweet shop on his way back from work, which they relished at supper. On special occasions there would also be kheer and other condiments but mostly the supper was quite low-key.

After the meal, Meenu went to her study desk to do homework. There would be comprehension to be done, essays to be written, grammar to be practiced and so on.Meenu’s grandfather who was a retired school headmaster often coached her in doing homework.Meenu studied till 10.30 after which she would be already terribly sleepy. On days when she had more homework to do than usual, she struggled to stay awake, but beyond 10.30 was always a difficult job. While the rest of the family went to bed, her granny would always remain awake till Meenu completed her studies. She helped Meenu and Ajit stay alert by making them cups of tea. For Ajit, who had the habit of studying late into the night, she would store the tea in a thermo flask so that he could have it whenever he wished.Meenu, however was not the kind who would burn the midnight’s oil. Rather than staying awake late into the night, she woke up early in the morning for extra study if need be.

Thus after a hard day’s work,Meenu would toss up to bed. She would cuddle up close to her granny and coax her to tell a story. But, before granny would even finished narrating the starting lines, Meenu would already be snoring contently.

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This is how Meenu or Meenakshi spent each day of her life – an enchanted blissful existence filled with family love, in a small town of Godhra till the gruesome riots of 2002 broke out and in one fell swoop, all was lost…