When the weather is pleasant and balmy, like today, I make it a habit to go sit on a bench in the park next to the Uni Mensa and read a book. It is quite a nice place to sit and read. There is the vague murmur of people talking as they walk on the avenue behind me. There are the dappled shadows that the sunlight makes as the clouds rush to cover him in their wispy embrace. But, most importantly, there is the sound that the wind makes as it wanders through the trees and leaves above and all around me. More than anything it has the power to transport me to another time and another place.

A time when I’d climb up to the very top of my grandparents’ house after breakfast or in the evening to catch the horizon. Their house, being the tallest in the village, offered an unrivaled view of the village and the surrounding countryside, the distant green fields interrupted here and there by haystacks and huts of farmhands, the gopuram of the temple and the pond beside it stretching away to the horizon, its waters forming a huge silver mirror under the summer sunlight. And there was the same sound of the wind there too. The tall coconut trees swaying as the wind interrogated their many fronds. The rustling of the leaves of the pomegranate trees formed an interesting counterpoint to the quiet whispers of the banana fronds. The wind would sweep through the huge banyan tree two houses down and make a sound so smooth that it would instantly soothe my soul.

I’d usually be alone there, either reading a book about freedom fighters-the only English books the village library stocked were thin biographies of various freedom fighters-or one of the assorted Telugu books my grandfather had accumulated. They ranged from a biography of Adolf Hitler to old farmer almanacs.

At particular times of the day the bus from Nellore would wind its way through the village raising clouds of dust when the road was unpaved or bouncing on the potholes once the road had been paved and subsequently transformed into a minefield of shallow holes. I could track its progress from the point when it turned onto the temple road for its first stop and then continued down the road past the society house and stopped beside the long stone bench and then continued on its way until it exited the village beyond the Shiva temple to continue onto the next village.

It was peaceful to stand alone at the top. People would shrink in size and perspective took on a different meaning as I surveyed all that my eyes could see.

To the side of the house, in the courtyard of a neighbor’s were trees that were the home of a pandemonium of parrots. Every morning I’d awaken to the cackling of those parrots as they seemingly argued among themselves about who had the greenest feathers.

Memories like these have a clinging quality that cloaks you in a chiaroscuro of sound, sight and smell.