My sister was born in Jhansi. I was too young at the time to remember much about the city, but I have flashes of memories that have survived the tides of time.
I especially remember the steep, downhill road right outside our house where I accidentally risked my sibling's life after standing on her pram and speeding downhill when no adult was around. I remember the busy market nearby where a cow ate the top of my vanilla soft serve with one swift move of the tongue, and no one believed me; and the time I was tricked into believing that Cadbury gems were 'seeds' that could sprout into a chocolate-bearing tree.
When we moved from Jhansi to Amritsar, I insisted on hanging around the horse-riding centre nearby. Too much of an overthinker to actually take any lessons, I was content feeding the five Australian-origin horses who rocked Indian names, like Trishul, who was a magnificent black stallion. This didn't mean that I didn't occasionally imagine myself riding the stallion with the wind in my hair.
As time passed, my visits to Trishul and his friends became rarer and rarer. But somehow, the image of a girl riding a horse never quite left me. It took me many years to register that even though I had left Jhansi behind, the dusty statue of Lakshmibai on her horse in that busy market-the one with the ice-cream-stealing cow-was a more significant part of my memories than I gave it credit for.
My family moved to many other cities after that, and I was privileged to have ample access to libraries almost everywhere we lived. However, across cities and times, there was a distinct lack of stories to which I could directly relate. I think this is why my early reading history is dotted with Nancy Drew books. This series about the young girl who worked as a detective had quite an impact on me. How else can I explain why, summer after summer, no matter where I was, I would look for clues to follow and cases to solve in places where there were neither clues nor cases worth an amateur detective's attention.
But Nancy Drew and I came from different worlds. I clung to her world as I could not find anything in my own that I could identify with. Make-believe adventures aside, hers was a white, American world. Mine was not.
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