Toy joy

I keep revisiting my childhood every now and then. My classmates tell me I should’ve been in the kindergarten. Not that they think I am that dumb, I hope. Frankly, I myself would prefer a kindergarten class. But my school won’t take me back. The principal thinks I am too pervert and could elope with the class teacher who was apparently my junior in school!

I had toys of many kinds. No no, not those white candle-like things lined up on the stalls at Flora Fountain market! I speak of real toys as in the khilauna from the film khilauna. Real toys that people play with…when they are kids of course! Ya so, I had these Lego blocks with which one can build all kinds of things and even the ‘bunglow’ that the cover talks about. It has a story behind it, connected to it. It seems I was down with measles and was coming back from a shot in my buttocks when I pointed at this thing in the glass case of a toyshop and my dad got it for me, not wanting to deny the wishes of his ill son probably because I got almost all of the stuff I played with when I fell ill!

Many of those tiny building bricks, I chewed away into oblivion. The remnant, debris I would like to call it, were given away to a charity cum nursery school in the neighbourhood. But as luck would have it, we feel in the sudden need for the blocks again and the school having grown rich with donation funds and other moneys, I was left nowhere, marooned alone in a heartless land where no one could lend me their building blocks even for a day! Boo hoo!

So there I was, looking up the shelves of toyshops and asking them if they have that kind of games in stock anymore. May be advanced versions, costlier of course, but the same kind. I had this mental picture of them thanks to my taste buds.

Two shops were utter disappointments. I asked to see an apple, they got me a watermelon! Bah! But I wouldn’t let go of it that easily. I just had to have it. My building blocks.

The third shop. I tell them what I want. They go inside, turn shelves like those goons do in Don, the older one and get an armful of game sets coated with a thin cake of dusty. As he reaches me, the guy plunks a heavy duster onto the topmost set sending me rubbing my eyes and sneezing like I had just sniffed some snuff.

When my head was back onto my shoulders, I looked through the pile. No, this one I saw there. Damn. Ok, not this. Oh…naah, too much for this little. And then…there it was!

My building blocks! The cove said, Baby Play Town- For creative and imaginative building play. Thinking of ginger, I reached out to touch it. It wasn’t born out of wishful thinking. It really was there!

I lifted the lid. There they were. Chintu. All small. All coloured, multi-coloured. Three set of wheel, a few doors and windows. I called out to mom to come and see my blocks. Amma…I said. Ew, would I cry? Did I cry? I don’t know. But I paid, got out and walked back home happier, much happier than I had left home for it. I got my building blocks. I was happy. Perhaps happier than a kid would be to have those tiny little building blocks.