Treasures In The Backyard

The brown chest?

The three started searching for the chest, frantically.

Its location, vivid.

There! Look there!

Buried in the backyard, under the shadow of the mango trees, last rows, in an ancestral home in a village, near the Ganga River, now polluted.

Three top professionals from different corners of the world, hunting for the secrets of a happy childhood, kept in an old trunk, in the right-hand corner, now overgrown with some wild grass

and flowers…and junk.

They dig the earth---and some memories there: screaming from the swing; eating raw mangoes and the guava; the lazy afternoons, building temporary shelters of sheets between branches of the friendly trees.

Racing against the wind. Swimming in the clear waters of the river eternal. Grandma’s stories of the demons and demi-gods and demons on the open roof, buffeted by the hot winds of long summers.

It was pure bliss---the re-unions, the joy, and the laughter. The fights and tears---and re-conciliation among the feuding cousins.

The chest is still there---rusted.

And few dolls, utensils, faded caps, feathers, snails, conches and three pictures---their collective treasure, undervalued by their own high-tech kids!

For the moist-eyed adults, their only bridge to a time, harmony and bonding, lost forever, in the swirling mists.