“Hey, I’m going to the storeroom, I finally got the key”, my brother said with twinkling eyes, “Would you like to join in?” “Oh you bet!” said I. It is strange how much I loved exploring our storeroom. It fascinated me ever since I came to our house at six years of age. I always felt like Sherlock Holmes or any other fancy detective when I’m in there. Like every other storeroom, ours was dusty and dark, it had a distinct, unpleasant smell to which, by now I was quite immune. We were especially charmed by that room because it held a chest we never saw open. We would feel its patterns and grooves, imagine what was held prisoner inside it and try to pull it open in vain, what can I tell you we were stupid kids. Ugh! That big, rude lock enraged us! We begged our parents to give us the key to it but they would either played dumb and act like they had no clue what we were talking about or just bluntly say no. Today was special, my brother finally convinced our parents. By a lot of promises of keeping the room clean, studying more hours and of not losing the key, he wore our parents down. “Open it fast, Preet!” I could hardly control my excitement. Just two kids truly feeling alive over the smallest things. Even while I was living the moment, I knew I would remember the day forever. “Oh look at this heap!” my brother almost screamed with joy. I looked at all the odds and ends. They were familiar; they were our childhood belongings, some from when my brother was a baby… The things which we adored when we were toddlers but soon forgot about as we grew older. With nostalgia melting our hearts, we found ourselves brushing the dust from our old comic books. We looked at the brightly coloured pages and laughed aloud at the witty punch lines. I played a little with my very first softball… So I was right, the chest really did contain treasures. Later, at dinner, I reminded my brother of our old adventures, how we used to climb the walls in our corridors, sneak out of the house to buy a pack of chips. Once, when I was about eight years old, my younger cousin Shiva visited us. Shiva and I were very much influenced by the

Backyard Science

episodes ( a show which demonstrated scientific phenomenon using fun experiments) and so on our get-together we really wanted to invent something, and invent we did; a shampoo. We sneaked into my mother’s room and stole a shampoo bottle named Vatika.  We mixed Vatika with hair gel, crushed rose petals and tulsi leaves. Thus, “Tulka” emerged from our odd mixture, named so because tulsi and Vatika played an important role in the making of our shampoo. It actually did work. We used it and it really smoothened our hair, or maybe, just maybe, Vatika is just a good shampoo, I’d like to however believe the former that we improved the formula. I won’t talk much about how angry our parents were for destroying their beloved plants and contaminating the hair gel and the shampoo because I think you get the gist. Another favourite incident of mine was when we finished our third grade and fifth grade final examinations. My brother and I celebrated our Independence Day with Shiva. We had three bottles of talcum powder with which we played our Holi. We pretended to be soldiers of different nations fighting each other to be the absolute super power. How innocently and naively we compared sprinkled talcum powder to showering bullets…The days of ignorant bliss. By the end of the day all three of us looked more like polar bears than humans. As I remember those old incidents, I really go back in time. So many things have changed, my favourite shows, my friends, my way of thinking, my attitude, in short, I have changed. Maybe that is what life is- a series of changes. With so many things replaced or gone, my family’s love for me never lessened. Good people are on your side when you are right but only the ones who love you foolishly are there with you when you are embarrassingly wrong and alone, and those people are reason I smile whenever I think of treasures or treasure chests. Samyukta Nath Jorhat Engineering College