Everyday when grandma went out to buy groceries , she would lock us in the house and leave . And when she returned , the house would be in total mess. One would have my aunt's face cream and make up smudged all over her face . Other would be playing in plain flour and other would have messed up all the clothes from the cupboard to fetch a nice saree for playing. Grandma would come running looking for all the 8 of us and give us good thrashing . I now sympathsize with my grandma , how much pain she would have taken for those 2 months ! how could she have cooked when we 8 monkeys were let loose out of our cages! how much food did she have to cook to suffice our hunger during meals and snacking between our meals !
One evening we girl cousins decided to have a fashion show in the house and the boy cousins were to be our judge. We were 5 girls and 3 boys. The judges sat in one of the room holding a book and pen (which they used to draw and scribble during the event). We girls got dressed in the other room and cat walked to this room like we were on a ramp. The boys were hopeless judges , they did not give points and were very biased . They choose the winner (I can not recall who it was).
Another game we often played was "akri khwaish" ; meaning last wish . We had seen so many bollywood movies were the the father or mother or the heroine would die and while dying they would tell the hero their last wish and the hero would go to any extent to fulfil their wish. Similarly one of us (usualluy myself) would pretend to die and my brother would come running and hold me and ask me " what's your last wish sister?" I would say something impossible and win the game . The winner was the one whose wish would be something impossible or the one who would fulfil the impossible wish.
At night I would pray to god that movie channel on TV would play Akshay Kumar's movie. And my worship to god would be writing on a red oxide wall with a chalk " I want Akshay Kumar's movie". When they played some other movie without Akshay Kumar , I would be disappointed and tears would roll down my cheeks. In any case we could not have watched the full movie. By interval , we all would be fast asleep.
During one of these holidays , my fifth cousin practised boxing inside the house. He would hit the curtain hung between a bedroom and the sitting room and when it retreated he would hit it again. Our grandma warned him about the curtain pole breaking and dropping down , but he gave a deaf ear and went on hitting . As granny predicted , the curtain pole creaked and fell to the the ground. Granny rushed to the scene and saw my cousin standing without any injury , she had him thrashed properly . We 7 of us stood watching the entire scene and at the end of the act we were all giggling and smiling and thinking that he deserved those thrashes (if not for the curtain then for his behaviour towards us).
The fifth cousin was the cutest among all of us and for this reason he was very arrogant and stupid. He kept bullying other cousins (especially younger than him) . I was just few months younger than him and so we always competed between each other in every game and activity. One such day he was bullying one of the cousin. My patience was completely saturated with his behaviour and finally I gave into my anger that evening. I took hold of a stick ( long one) , held it like a trident with spear end down ( like the Goddess kali ) and chased him into the house and on the streets. I stopped chasing him after a while and warned him that if he were to return to the house , he would not be spared. My poor 5th cousin was so intimidated by my behaviour that he returned back to the house sweating , frightened like a mouse entering a tigress den.
After the end of 2 months of vacations , our mothers would come and pick us up. We would still be fighting instead of bidding goodbyes we threatened each other saying " I will look after you during the next vacation". When all of us returned , grandma would feel so lonely and empty that she would wish for the next vacation to come quickly. On our way back home each one would have loads of complaints of each other which we recited to our mother. My mother would threaten us that if we continued with this behaviour then she would not take us to grandma's place the next vacations. And so like always we promised her of our good behaviour and break it during our next vacations.
