Civil Station

My first memory of the place is of a sunny late afternoon. I was all of seven by then but strangely I don't remember travelling to the new place of my father's posting or how life started there. The white cottage was spacious and well ventilated- or maybe the place looked spacious because it was sparsely furnished. It was one among parallel rows of quarters. I liked the contemporary feel of the civil station; it was hugely different from the atmosphere of my ancestral home where dark fears lurked around everywhere. From the adjacent quarter a small boy baby talked to me. The ground in the backyard was covered with crushed, no longer edible black jamuns. During sundown loudspeakers from a temple five minutes away poured out devotional songs- the distance made the volume comfortable, even likable. One evening soon after coming to the new house I spotted a wild little girl in the quarter opposite us. She was younger to me but I discovered she had two elder sisters, the middle one being my age and classmate. She wasn't there when I reached, but came back from her ancestral home summer holidays when school reopened. She was to be my classmate and friend, it so turned out.