The Two Worlds of My Childhood
I was born in the late eighties in Chennai.
My days were filled with the hum of buses, the rush of people, school bells, homework, and the comfort of an upper-middle-class life. Our home had modern conveniences, clean floors, neatly arranged furniture, and meals that arrived on steel plates. Life was fast, predictable, and busy.
And rarely, we would travel to my dad's birthplace - a small village called Supparayapuram, in the Tuticorin district.
The moment we entered the village, everything changed.
The air smelled of wet soil and fresh leaves. The roads were narrow and dusty. And standing proudly at the entrance of the village was my grandfather’s house — a large ancestral home with a wide courtyard in the center, open to the sky.
It was not just a house.
It was a universe.
There was a garden where my grandmother grew almost everything we ate — tomatoes glowing red in the sun, brinjals hanging shyly from plants, curry leaves that scented the breeze, lemon trees heavy with fruit, coconut trees standing tall like guardians.
Behind the house was a cowshed, and beside it a small poultry space where hens clucked from morning till night.
Further away was my grandfather’s farm.
There, mango trees spread their branches generously, tamarind trees stood strong through seasons, and vegetables like pumpkin, watermelon, bitter gourd, snake gourd, and bottle gourd grew in rhythm with nature.
Whenever we visited, most of our meals came straight from the soil.
My grandmother would pluck vegetables fresh every morning, make pickles that lasted months, and serve food lovingly on banana leaves taken from our own farm.
Nothing tasted like those meals.
In Chennai, food filled our stomachs.
In Supparayapuram, food filled our souls.
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