Garage Find

Before starting i would like to mention that the title "Garage Find" is picked from one of my friend's blog, she had an illustration made with same title, that illustration made me remember this true incident. Thanks Malvika!!

It was in 1992 when me and my family used to live on rent in Dehradoon, that home had a large open space (a garden) and a small garage in the corner. That dusty old garage had gardening equipments and tools, some old rags, torn soft toys, a broken window, two old bicycles and lots of spiders and lizards that used to scare me at times, but apart from those spidies and lizzies that place was heaven for me. I used to spend maximum time in the garage.

Once, while I was going through the stuff in the garage I found a tin can that had around forty Chikoo seeds in it. I took almost handful of them and came out in the garden to play. Pintu, our landlord’s son was sitting in the verandah. He suggested that we should plant these seeds, we decided on that and starting waiting for gardener to come. When the gardener came we asked him to plant the seeds, he first refused saying that the soil and place is not good enough for the seeds but when we kept on insisting he finally planted a few seeds in the garden.

Same year my dad changed his job and we shifted to Udaipur, Rajasthan. Our landlord too shifted to mumbai a month later. Till the last time I remember none of the seeds transformed into a seedling.

In these vacations, after second semester examinations my family planned a trip to Haridwar and Rishkesh. The four day trip was fun, we did river rafting and that too twice. On our way back, dad decided to visit some of his old friends in Dehradoon.

So here I was, standing in Patel Nagar in Dehradoon asking for an address. I paid a visit to our patel nagar house where I spent the best years of my childhood. I was standing on the gate almost after 14 years, the house is now totally ruined. Only a chowkidar lives there with his wife in the part of the house where we use to live.

The garden has vanished, only a chikoo tree stands there covering the whole place. The tree brought a smile to my face. I felt like that 6 year old kid who kept on insisting the maali to plant the seeds, I felt like dance, shouting and screaming with joy. One of the seeds managed to break into a seedling and turned into a fruit giving tree that might have fed people, birds, insects and other small animals around it. This chikoo tree was my garage find, a garage find of a then 6 year old kid that brought happiness to a now 21 year old.