Nostalgia unlimited :)

Recognize this? I'm pretty sure my mom will be able to name it immediately ;-). I don't know whether this plant grows in places other than Karnataka. But its everywhere in Karnataka. It doesn't even need to be grown. Like a weed its found in empty fields and grows in your garden if you don't take care. Well, I have stretched it enough. The plant is called hulisoppu (meaning sour-leaves) in Kannada. People use it in cooking too. Imagine my surprise and delight when I found it, yup, here in Lexington, in my apartment lawn!!

I went crazy. Immediately plucked a leaf and put it in my mouth. Just like that, at that very moment, I was back. Back in my childhood. Back in the place where I'd use these leaves as a vegetable in my cooking games. Back in the time when I'd pick its tiny ladies-finger-like fruits, divide them equally, eat one half and stuff the rest into Darsh's mouth ;-). If I'd find more than 4 fruits then mom and dad also would get a share :).

Recently when we had been for a trek, I also found a small plant which grows with the grass. When I was about 10 years old, I remember, me and my friends would pluck its tiny pink flowers, put it in the folds of our white uniforms and press. The flower would leave a purple colour mark in that fold. We'd be proud that we had died the uniform a purple colur and mom would always wonder why my unifrom had these marks :-D. She probably thought those were the results of my ink pen ;-). So what do I, the so-called grown up, do when I see this plant here? Yup, I did pluck a pink flower, I did put it in the folds of my shirt, pressed it and was totally delighted at the purple mark it left :-D.

When I was in college studying pre-university, whenever we had free time, we would sit in the lawns at the college. There used to be a type of grass that would grow there. We'd pick the very young shoots of the grass, make a brush with about 10-20 of them and rub it against our cheeks. They'd be so soft and they'd feel wonderful against our cheeks :). Yup, you guessed it, I saw the same grass some weeks ago on a field. Yup, you guessed it again, I couldn't resist picking the young shoots again :).

Its so strange that such small plants have the power to bring back so many memories. But even more strange is the fact that the same plants are available half-way around the world!! I always had this idea that the vegetation here would be totally different. But I found as soon as I came here that the idea was a myth. I found sampige (champaka) trees, bougainvillea plants and many other flowering plants/trees that are found in Bangalore. And yes, they succeeded in taking me back to a world, a world I thought was impossible to go back to, a world I thought was out of my reach. The beautiful world of Childhood :).