The Wonder years

I was driving to work today and owing to really bad traffic in Airport Road, I was forced to take a detour through Cambridge lay-out.
Now for the uninitiated, I grew up in that neighborhood. And today as I was driving past what used to be my house, I saw my old neighbor auntie who still lives in the ground floor of the building. Now, this auntie popularly referred to as Susheela Auntie, mostly because Susheela is her name and auntie because she is too old to be called anything else, I never really liked. She was a kind of mean woman who would actually tell me things like "Oh! I see you haven’t taken bath as yet. It’s all because unlike me who wants to spend time with my kids, you mother cares most about her work." Now I know this seems shockingly scarring but really for me it was like water off a duck’s back.
Anyway so I started thinking about how it was growing up. Fortunately unlike Kevin from Wonder Years I didn’t grow up and then rape a girl at 16 but really which event in our childhood made us the people we are. Looking back now, the age band between 0-15 seemed to have zipped across in a heartbeat. One day I was drawing a train on our compound wall with crayons, the next day Sharath was eating a whole onion to win a bet, the third day I was screaming "Sharath loves Saveen" for no conceivable reason across the road, and then I was getting a birthday card with potential love cues from Susheela auntie’s son.
Looking back, you remember cycles you’ve ridden, fights that you’ve had(I’ve been beaten to pulp by a boy who pushed me off my cycle) and clothes that you’ve worn and while some part of your memory might be sketchy, it always fits in the larger context. The truth is when you're a little kid you're a bit of everything; Scientist, Philosopher, Artist, Pilot, Teacher. The potential always remains about what it is that you can do. Sometimes it seems like growing up is giving these things one at time.
I not really making a point about anything but I will end now with a quote from Kevin in Wonder Year "Things never turn out exactly the way you planned. I know they didn't with me. Still, like my father used to say, 'Traffic's traffic, you go where life takes you.' I remember a house like a lot of houses, a yard like a lot of yards, on a street like a lot of other streets. I remember how hard it was growing up among people and places I loved. Most of all, I remember how hard it was to leave. And the thing is, after all these years I still look back in wonder."