The girl with the painted nails

I felt an overwhelming need to lift the white shroud and check if her nails were painted!

Summer vacations meant a two month stay in Karibettu, a house my great grandfather built. It literally means black hillock. 

It was built abutting a hill, basically as far high up as was possible so that water overflowing from the swollen Netravati would not enter the house. Our stay was interspersed with treks across the paddy fields to Badila, our ancestral home, which was probably a kilometer away as the crow flies. 

Almost everyone considered Karibettu home-whether they were direct grandchildren or they were great nieces/nephews of my grandmother. We were all left to our own devices and not one adult knew what we were up to. It suited us just fine. 

I remember the time I announced to my cousins, "Dodda has asked us to catch a hen." 

After some time I started believing in my own story and like mercenaries on a war mission, all of us chased the poor hapless hens and triumphantly presented one to my grandmother who promptly set it free.

We spent blissful summer days climbing the hillock behind the house, erecting makeshift swings on trees, with ropes and pillows. We would wield the 'donté' to try and get more mangoes down because obviously the big basket of mangoes ripening in 'ajja's' room was not enough of an adventure. No one bothered cutting the fruits, we just bit off the top and sucked our way through, till nothing remained of it except the bare seeds.

Our tongues would always be a lovely shade of purple as we plucked and ate 'kuntal parnd' which is a fruit, like a small jamun, but which grows on bushes. 

My grandmother would sit at the 'jaal' with a 'mutadane', a wooden seat with a sharp curved iron cutting blade, and would cut jackfruit for us. I wasn't too fond of it then but when there were so many of us waiting around her, it didn't matter. You just extended your oil smeared hand and ate because, hello! Otherwise the other cousins would have gotten more.

I remember the long wait outside the 'bendrete' with our undergarments hidden like dirty secrets inside towels, along with a change of clothes. We had a queue system which was flouted all the time by our caregivers who cited their prior birth and hence, for some reason, a superiority due to which waiting would have been out of all realm of possibility. 

Not that we cared. Millipedes and centipedes gave us company while crickets would chirp as evening defiantly marched towards dusk.

The boys didn't bother to wait, they just drew water from the well and had a bath outside. Meanwhile, anyone who took too long inside was threatened with a peep show for which there were conveniently placed view points. Oh! The evilness of it all.

Mornings and afternoons were spent in hockey, cricket, kabaddi, lagori, hide and seek etc. My mama who was as yet unmarried and not used to the joys of unruly kids would get supremely annoyed at the racket we made. One dose of shouting from him, and we would depart 'retired' but 'not out' to our ready pack of cards. The swiveling table fan was our best friend as we positioned ourselves strategically around it, using it as an excuse when caught in our attempts to take a sneak peek at someone else's hand.

The same, now dear and departed, uncle would routinely wake us up at 6:30- 7:00

And why shouldn't he? We were targets all lined up on mattresses too irresistible for him to ignore. But the joke was on him, once we were up, we were impossible to stop.

Now Karibettu is locked, it's only inhabitants possibly snakes and rats, and the first of my many dear cousins has left us. 

She was the willing butt of many jokes and gave as good as she got- A firebrand, she famously told her father who complained about the lack of salt in food that she had made, that, that particular dish was always prepared thus.

Always immaculately dressed, I would admire her feet with their painted nails.

As we waited beside her body, gone too soon, I felt bereft, robbed off a childhood companion. 

She was older by a year and we shared secrets and gosipped ceaselessly. Even after we grew up, we spent a lot of time together and remained friends as well as cousins.

Our collective memories will endure and while any of us is alive Karibettu endures and so does Anupama!