Memories of the Kuwait War~Chapter 3~ A walk in the ‘battle field'

As the ‘war’ set in, things started getting tense for the adults. On the contrary, and quite naturally, we, as kids were actually carefree to a major extent. People stopped going to work. My dad would make trips to the ATM to see if his salary for the previous month had come. It didn’t, apparently, and he was starting to panic, I could see. Our locality had mostly Malayali tenants and Kerala achayan, chettan and ikka run shops. One evening, Acha said, “come, let’s go out for a walk.” 

‘Seriously?!! Has he lost it completely?? We are in a war and he wants to go for a walk? That too on the road the soldier walked, right in front of our eyes?!’ I couldn’t help wondering what had gotten into him. ‘Well, he is a grown up “boy” too, does he want to go look for tanks as well, maybe?’, I thought as gave a side glance to my brother who was sitting there playing ‘race’ with his ‘Die-cast metal' collection. I made my signature navarasam face, that resembled an old aluminum vessel at which a rotten coconut had been thrown, sporting a permanent dent. “Ya, let’s go!”, he immediately jumped up. 

As I stood there thinking, ok, the men can go. I don’t want to be in the front when a shootout opens, “Ready!”, came ringing my mother’s voice. I turn around to see her standing there with my sister on her hip, resembling some ‘Karthiyayini chedathi' with a ‘kudam' aka pot, waiting in line for the water tanker lorry!  So....It looks like everybody in this household is brave and ready to take bullets straight into their chests!! I don’t have any chance of survival without them anyway, so I too, put my slippers on. I didn’t bother to change, as I was already presentably dressed.

We chose to walk on the road on the side of our building, the one that ran perpendicular to the one across our flat from where we could see the supermarket. The street was long and one that was lined with residential buildings on either side, like most roads in our locality. Small baqalas(grocery stores), a photo studio, a clothes shop, a shoe shop and an Arab boulangerie, were seen at intervals one after the other, punctuating the residences. Almost all buildings had flats on the ground floor, towards the rear end. The front end of the ground floor was a parking lot. This was the case for 90% of the buildings. 

To my surprise, the street was crowded. I had never seen a busy street like that except in the ‘souq' (market) area. The residents were all out. Some of them, actually most of them, spread a mat or a cloth on the floor and sat there, below their respective buildings, with things from their homes. I saw many things like vases, cups and saucers, crockery, towels, toys, night lamps, colouring books, pressure cookers and decorative items. They were selling everything so they could to make money. The ‘vendors’ were calling out to the passers-by, even offering discounts if they took more than 1 item.

That was a first!! And I learnt a new word that day. “ചന്ത”. My father was saying, “This is truly a ‘chantha’”.Amma was explaining to us that this is how the market looks in Kerala where people bring things from their farms and sell to others. “The word ‘chantha’ means market, just like the ‘souq’ here.” “But our souqs have AC, no Amma?” my brother asked. “Yes, the souq we have visited is in a big building and there is AC. But there are other souqs also where it is more in the open like this. In India, it’s more like this”, she explained. When I go to India I want to see the souq in Mavelikara, I thought.

We headed back after one trip to and fro down this street. We saw some new sights that day, learnt a new word and I started getting a grip of people’s helplessness and lack of money. “Are we going to join the ‘chantha’ from tomorrow? What are we going to sell? I wonder how Amma is going to part with her precious collections!”, we reached home as I kept playing these thoughts in my head. It was only once we reached home that I realized, “We didn’t see even one soldier, and there wasn’t any shoot-out like I imagined. Just helpless people everywhere.”

Picture courtesy: Google

~priya~