Gooseberry alais nellikkai

The very word Gooseberry alais "nellikkai " in tamil kindled all my childhood memories not to be mentioned rather sweet ones.
The other day i was teachin my pre-school kid all the fruits both orally as well visually through CD ROM of fruit rhymes. Rather i should say i was educating myself all the english acronyms of the fruits which i hadn't heard of.
Fine, now back to our topic. We moved to our new house which is surrounded by whole bunch of trees which includes mango, gooseberry , guava, plantain and not to leave behind cocunut.
My kid was asking the name of the trees and i was very ashamed to tell him those rather lettin him to discover on his own. Then, there aroused my memories of how independent i was and playful which is very much not at all provided to this generation kids.

I grew up in the locality of independent houses where the apartments were not so much heard of though in the heart of the city that too near the shopping paradise of T.Nagar. We, the children would never be at home in the evenings and should i mention anything about the holidays? There was one this house a not so huge one but well surrounded by trees of which the nellikkai maram would occupy considerable space. The inmates of the house were so sweet that they would never close their gate and would never mind us play there. We would climb the trees and would have the nellikkai and play all sort of games over there which are not at all heard now-a-days.
We would sit on the tree and chat for hours together and u bet we wud get the salt and chilli mixture from the aunty of the house itself. All the boys and girls together would be around 10 and we would play ; paandi, dog and the bone , Nondi, help, lock and key, Thayam, pallankuzhi . All these games we would play with loud screams and laughter, and not even once that aunty had ever scolded us. She would also give us water to drink though our houses were the opposite ones.
I dont remember her face or name but we would address her as uthra aunty since there was a baby called uthra there.

Imagine now for putting my boy to sleep, i close all the windows, doors, and switch off my mobile and lower the volume of telephone.

HAS TIME CHANGED OR WE PEOPLE HAVE CHANGED.

Wish i would try being like uthra aunty.