Khwaabgaah
Ch. 1
Bachpanna — a panna outta my bachpan!
T’was a blessing in disguise to have spent a major chunk of early childhood sans the comfort and convenience of electricity. A shack in a slum. Poverty inc. alum! Seemed a li`l glum. Yet. Life was abundant and blissfully lush without the maddening existential rush. Baking clay dessert. Off the dirt. Playing Ghar-Ghar with bhaiyas and didis. Holding twigs. Pretending to smoke bidis. Chor Police and a game of hush. Trudging (and losing a slipper) in the monsoon slush. Even in the blistering heat, it was playtime with the fleet. Bruised knees on murram roads. Stridulating crickets and croaking toads. Chasing Grasshoppers and Dragonfly choppers! Vermicelli and not Maggi. Chaklis and Kurmures and not Kurkure and Lays! #ThoseWhereTheDays!
Neighbour’s TV was a rare pleasure. Not much of movies except for the occasional open air projector. Cinemas (of Bachhan’s or Devgn’s or the Devlok’s) for the entire mohalla. Sponsored by generous chandaa.
Cartoons? Barely a handful of ’em. I vividly remember catching a fleeting glimpse of Superman in the early nineties. In glorious B&W of-course! That was my first tryst with a superhero. I knew Mickey Mouse and Mowgli by the flashy stickers on someone’s notebook cover. Radium cut Charlie Chaplin was all the raze.
Rows of pop desi comics in just about any shops or the scraggly stacks of second hand ones at an acquaintance would intrigue me the most. Occasionally bumping into Chacha Chaudhary and Saboo’s peppy dose of homely humor, the (mis)adventures of Doga, Dhruva, Tiranga, Toofan, Nagraj and the likes. But even these were a rarity.
What fascinated me the most, even at that tender age was the noir macabre pulp comics of chudails, chandaals, cannibals and the malevolent monsters lurking in the dark. There’s always been a rush in getting (jump)scared by the sinister.
In the 9th grade someone gifted their old glitchy monochrome of a BPL with DD1 as the sole source of entertainment. Reruns of Tarang, Vartaman, Meena Pappu (charmingly created and sponsored by UNICEF and Hanna Barbera), Timba Roocha etc. were some of the better children’s shows. Wish I had bumped into Courage the Cowardly Dog then :-/ Koi na!
Shaktimaan and Junior G had captivated the collective imagination of us desi kids. Meena-Pappu had a rustic charm. Vartmaan was a tad too gloomy yet the most succinct animated shorts on moralism. Wrapped up abruptly though! Hindi versions of Reader’s Digest and kids section in the dailies and the Phantom comic strip in hindi would keep me enthralled. There was some visual solace too of the colorful BCI comics of David, Elijah and Exodus that made Sunday-school lessons come alive! The Hindi version of The Pilgrim’s Progress was (and is) the only classic I’ve (re)read as young. A rudimentary LOTR for all it’s religious allegory. It was John Banyan’s khwaabgaah in the dingy Bedford Gaol.
A shy kid I wouldn’t socialize (much). Stuck to meself, I had the whole universe to fiddle with. On a slate with some chalk sticks. Enacting kings and queens and fairies and fawns and demons even at the dead of the dawn! Doodling till late! Superheroes and vicious villains on the slate. It wasn’t just a therapeutic solace but a portal to a wondrous world where I would dive in and relish the ever evolving expanse of my creative imagination.
Late evenings with padosi kids would be a gruesome ghost story sesh. In hot pursuit of some vagabond Daaku’s loot or running away from a spooky Bhoot. Mom used to tell rather silly tales during dinner by the flickering mitti-tel-ka-diya. Amma mia! Every day the same ones! T’was fun though!
What my child-me reminisces is a plethora of these characters and troupes recurring in dreams. Some of ’em haunted me. Other’s led me on bizarre quests. What has lingered in me is the tenacity and courage of few protagonists who were rather timid and diffident before their character arc went blissfully berserk. The child-me would fervently wish the Hero/ine wasn’t dead or decapitated under the debris rather (about to) pounce with the flip of a page. And when it did. Oh boy! What joy! The character traits that the child-me fancied (and prolly still does) are all the superpowers, all the magic, all the spells and all the charm the virtuous, valorous and victorious vigilantes wielded for the greater good. Not wavering in the face of adversaries and adversities. And some lighthearted humor (too).
It all spiralled down when puberty rolled. Childhood; briefly withhold! (or so I was told.)
The kidult-me now fancy being Chihiro, accompanied by Totoro in a Narnian khwaabgaah. Oh how fun would it be to stay at Mr Tumnus’ house in the winters and vacay at Kiki’s during summers. Bake some loaf. Brew some stew. A besom flight. With Kuttu, Curry and Jiji on a moonlit night. Neverending meadows. And never ending picnics. No venture. No quest. Just some quiet. Some blissful rest.
