When I was a young girl, most of my clothes were tailored at
home by my mother and an enthusiastic set of aunts. If one aunt got me fancy
fabric, the other aunt offered to embroider it, the third one offered to paint
it and my mother presided over all, to finally decide what it would look like.
Almost plotting and planning over it like it was the project
of the year, I’d be kept at arm’s length and called in only for some
measurements off and on. It was exciting. But I was never part of it, till a
loosely stitched garment was gingerly slipped over my head for a trial.
However once in a way, I was consulted. And asked what I
would like in my next new dress. I have no idea why I was not vain like other
little girls (Ok, ok... go ahead and say it, I was always ‘different’). But all
I wanted in my next new dress was pockets!!! Not lace, not frills, not flowers.
Nothing fancy, just pockets. One or two or more.
Pockets held for me a lovely charm. You could carry
virtually anything in your pocket. Two of my all-time favourite toys – a white
kitten and a teddy bear were pocket-sized. (Okay, you needed large pockets but
so what.) You could carry loose change in pockets. Pencils. Erasers. Sometimes
a crumpled piece of paper. Movie tickets. Train tickets. Bus tickets. Sometimes,
someone else’s bus ticket with the lucky number 9 at the end. Pockets were your
friends. The kind of friends that kept and almost treasured your secrets.
Coming back to my dress. One with pockets. Since this was
the nth time I’d told my mother this, she relented. But with a wicked sense of
humour (remember, she was MY mother), she made me a dress with a lot of
pockets! Not one. Not two. But sixteen!
What joy! I was ecstatic. Over the moon. It was almost
magical. All possible colours. Checked and floral and dotted patches on my one
dress. Front and back. Sides. I went on
counting my pockets and discovered unadulterated joy.
With 16 pockets you could discover a whole new world! You
put your hand in one pocket and out came a used eraser with your initial on it.
The one you were saving lest your letter get erased away! That little red
pencil. The piece of green chalk. Sometimes a forgotten sweet. Sticky but still
a sweet. Sometimes simply a sweet wrapper that you had painstakingly fashioned
into a doll. (Remember those?!) All those pockets. All that little tidbits of
joy. A small little sunshiny part of my childhood.
Cut back to reality. Cut back to the present.
Of late with the ups and downs of circumstances, I’ve been
thinking of my dress with those pockets. And while there has been one challenge
after another, I’ve found time to spend wonderful moments with friends and
family. Found time for sunshine and laughter. Jokes and the lighter side. Found time to dig into a pocketful of smiles.
A friend’s surprise birthday getaway. An evening that
reunited me with ‘my boys’ in the agency. An enthralling musical interlude in
an amphitheatre. A quiet dinner with a visiting friend. An afternoon shopping and
chatting with another. An evening out with my daughter. Another old buddies’
reunion.
Little pockets of joy. Little pockets of sunshine. Little
smiles that light up my life. And then I think, this is what life’s about, isn’t it? A
dress with sixteen pockets.
So where’s your pocket
of sunshine? Have you found it today?
