I do not need Dumbledore’s pensieve to revisit the high jinks of those bygone treasured days of my childhood. They are fresh in my head, like it all happened yesterday.
Co- partners in all the summer vacation adventures were my best friends in the whole wide world, G and V. We were neighbors-turned-friends, residing in the sector II of the jungles of Jwalagiri which rested on the hilltop of Ambalamugal, the colony of the ‘Refinians’ in the lovely land of the Queen of the Arabian Sea, where I grew up. The Refinians were the families of the workers at the Kochi Refineries Oil Refinery. The colony was a partly fenced community of the Refinians, who settled at Jwalagiri after clearing the forests. Where the houses ended, thick canopy of voluminous tall trees began, that concealed all the dangers that lay beyond. To go beyond sector II was strictly forbidden.
We explored every accessible nook and cranny of the colony that was spread across few acres, riding on our ladybirds taking care not to stray too much into the forest. We spent a great deal of our evenings on the terraces of the new blocks which were still under construction; we would lay watching the sky till the light blue turned dark and the vastness of it filled with tiny twinkling dots. When it became too dark for us to see, we would come down, say our goodbyes and walk back to our homes slowly, planning for the next day’s trek. This was our daily routine every summer.
There was one particular episode which I recall very vividly. It starts off with the discovery of the perfect ‘picnic spot’. To anybody else, it was an abandoned wasteland; to us it was the most beautiful place on earth. I don’t think any of our parents would have been happy to see us playing around in that over-grown, old park with its intimidating rusted swings and broken slides. But what thrilled us the most was the huge moss-covered towering structure with its paint peeling away that stood at the centre of the eerie looking park — THE WATER TANK. I guess it must have been the influence of the books we read those days. We would not read anything less than a thrilling adventure by the Famous Five or the Secret Seven, and those days Nancy Drew was not in our league because she had a boyfriend! This target of ours was about three to four storey high with a steep rusty ladder running up its length to the very top which opened to a circular opening such that the whole structure looked like a giant funnel. The tank was fenced with barbed wire and on the fence hung a red board sign of the skull and two bones. But looking past the danger, we noted that the fence was coming off loose on one side and there was a gap small enough for an 11-year old girl to squeeze by. We packed some lunch mainly consisting of homemade mango pickles, G is a Brahmin and her mom makes the best pickles. As we crossed over to the other side of the fence, filled with this growing excitement, we were welcomed with a sprinkle of water from a leaky pipe We instinctively cupped our hands and drank the water and decided it was the ‘best’ water we had ever tasted in our entire lives. This leaky pipe and the small runny puddle it created we compared to the occasional stream, or ‘babbling brooks’ the famous five ran into in each of their adventures.
We looked up at the task at hand; and slowly started on the ladder, rusty, raggedy ladder. After taking “God promise” from my friends that they would not look up as I climbed, I went first, followed by V, as G chose to stand guard. We climbed cautiously, and every time the ladder creaked or shook dangerously, we would squeal partly with fear, but common-sense was a less-developed department in us those days, so we climbed up, up, up. We had gone so far up that all we could see was tree tops, not a single house in sight. The trees were so dense; that it looked like we were above green clouds, like the kids that went up the wishing tree into lands unknown in Enid Blyton’s ‘Enchanted woods’ series. We could see miles around us. We felt top of the world. Still climbing, we reached the topmost part of the tank, now here the ladder was extra creaky, just a few steps more and we could see what was at the top of the tank. I pictured the top to be filled with water to the brim. But we never knew what the top of the tank looked like, because exactly then the ladder started shaking vigorously and V started to scream. We started climbing down, faster than we came up. Safely back in the ground, pleased with our close achievement, we quickly washed ourselves clean at our stream and headed back to our homes.
We never mentioned our adventures to our parents and I guess that’s why we kept having them more often, no one told us how dangerous it was. Today I recall this particular adventure with a chill down my spine.The dangers involved in each of our antics; guess God kept a constant check on us, in case we got too naughty.
