Sometime after I turned three my father got posted to a hilly place in Malabar- it couldn't be called a town at that time, nevertheless it was a district headquarter. The terrain was made of many small hillocks though it wasn't really a high altitude place. Our rented house in that place was also on a small hillock- one had to climb down to go to school and the like.
From the house, I could get a view of other taller hills and the valleys in between. On the side where we had to go down to the town, there was a huge playground and some Malabar Special Police barracks bordering it. I haven't got a clue how this got into my head, but over the years somehow I got to associate that playground with the map of India. Perhaps because both are rectangular, or maybe I got to see the tricolor hoisted there on special occasions. Our house was on the southwest, so where I sat was Kerala for me, and the other end of the western border became Kashmir. However I had placed Delhi mistakenly on the northeast side then, at a point where Kolkota should be.
Funny, the image of that rectangular piece of land and the MSP barracks still play on my mind when I think of India...
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