My Family...My World....

My family was, my dad, my mom, my one-year elder bro and me. Oh ! It was the bestest family ever. I probably had the best childhood in the world. There was great bonding between my mom and dad and thus we were an almost-always happy family. 

My dad was an aircraft engineer and he loved taking us out on trips....long and short. We grew up in Bhubaneshwar and our trips included long seven day car journeys from Bhubaneshwar to Cochin during the summer holidays..WOW ! They were simply amazing journeys. I have loads to share but here I shall pen down some wonderful moments of that long journey.

There was the time when our Hindusthan 14 car horn got stuck and wouldn't work. Dad was at the wheel and the highway traffic had plenty of trucks. So he bought us an air horn..we were around nine and ten then. Dad instructed us to honk the airhorn when he gve the signal. Whenever there were huge trucks in front dad would ask us to blow and me and my bro would pump away with our full strength. The air horn was SO loud that the truck would immediately make way for us, only to find a tiny Hindusthan 14 overtake it and come in front. The drivers would be really red with anger. To irritate them further my Bro and me would make faces at them, sticking out our tongues from the back windows... Oh! It was such fun.

Since it was summer, as we passed through Rajamundhry in Andhra, we came across plenty of mangroves full of ripe yummy mangoes. Dad would stop the car in some isolated shade for a drink of water and to wash his face since he was the only driver and didn't want to get too tired. We would stealthily go across the road, jump the fence and quickly pluck several ripe mangoes and rush back to the car. By the time the guard dog and the owner came running we would already be on our way, waving to them. Then Mom would slice the mangos and all of us would have them.

My Mom believed that since my Dad had to do all the driving, he should get adequate rest in the evenings and nights. So whichever big town we reached at around six, we would check into a hotel and spend the night there. At night we would have food and all of us would cuddle up around Dad and he would read aloud the adventures of Tintin. He had a commanding voice and he would put in the right intonation to the words especially Captain Haddocks swear words. ...Mom, Bro and me enjoyed listening to it as much as Dad loved reading it.

After the seven or eight days journey when we reached my Grandpas place at Cochin, we would have plenty of adventure stories to regale them with.

My Dad left this world four years back and I am a mother of three now but even now my eyes fill when I relive these memories.