Summer Holidays in Gwalior!

Sketch of the House by Mumma!

Me, Durva & a Cow on the gate!

Once upon a time when the month of May used to be summer vacations, we used to visit Gwalior, a city, a district, a historically important place, and more than that my birth place. It was quite simple, the first ten summer vacations of my life were just going to Gwalior, there was no stress of packing clothes,books, shoes, sunglasses, everything was taken care of by Mumma. It was so exciting to catch a train and enjoy it for 19 hours to travel 1220 kms. 

I started writing this blog once before this and ended up writing all about the train journey only and felt like the train journey to Gwalior is in itself a topic for a blog which I will write some time later. For now I want to relive my summer vacations in Gwalior through this blog, and I hope you too recall and reminisce about your childhood summer vacations after reading this one. 

So it always began with searching for Patil Baba (Blog link: https://sidthisside.blogspot.com/2023/11/patil-baba.html ) on the Gwalior station who used to come to pick us up from the station. Our maternal grandparent’s home was a huge bungalow, with a small iron gate and an aisle with bushes properly trimmed on both sides that led to the little tiled/ verandah sitting area before the main door where all the mornings were spent with tea and newspaper for elders and toys and bournvita milk for kids. On the left was a mud area surrounded by the bushes on one side and some flowering plants on the other side. This is where our elder brother used to guide us and we used to make some architectural wonders under his guidance until we enjoyed and then abandon it halfway through when we lost interest and it was all muddy. On the right there was a huge cemented area where one could cycle, but we mostly ran across it, at the end were potted plants and beside the cemented area there was again a long muddy area with tall trees and bushes around that area. I have seen so many squirrels run up and down that tall tree. At the end of this garden was a water storage tank which was a well before, and later converted to a tank.

In front of the main door.

The house had multiple rooms, starting with a drawing room on the right. It had 4 doors, one was the entrance, one led to the dining room, one to the master bedroom and one into a study room. The drawing room had big windows and a high ceiling fan. It had shelves in the wall, where decoration items were kept, I still remember a wooden mirror and a photo frame of me, Siddhant (his head on Dada’s shoulder) and Viraj dada on the backdrop of Taj Mahal was framed for years in that house that housed our childhood summer vacation and it’s memories. The dining room again had 3 doors. One of which led to the kitchen which always smelled of our favourite delicacies . Behind the kitchen was a verandah which had a huge gate which was the back entrance of the house that was mostly closed, but it smelled of spicy kebabs in the evening as there was a famous kebab place across the street. Kebabs that can make you cry, sneeze and are impossible to eat, yet you would still have just one more bite to enjoy the moment before drinking a litre of water. 

The photo frame  of (L-R: me, Viraj Dada & Siddhant)

On the left side of the kitchen was the devghar (house temple), where I recall sitting with my grandmother while she did pooja everyday.  It was so therapeutic watching her perform the pooja, say the mantras and aartis. What excited me the most was her box of wicks dipped in home made desi ghee that smelled like heaven, I loved every breath I took after she opened the steel container, picked the wicks and placed them in the diya and light it and then the box was closed, and I waited for it to be opened the next day so I could smell my favourite fragrance. And then the reward used to be the sugar crystals that were the sweetest!  

The house does not end here, as this was just the right side of the house, the left side had a corridor with  paintings and artwork on the wall made during the wedding of Mumma (https://sidthisside.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-one-where-mumma-turns-50.html ) and Pappa (https://sidthisside.blogspot.com/2025/01/dear-pappa.html ) . Then there was a huge (almost as big as an entire 2 BHK in Mumbai) hall/bedroom, where we all slept at night in the cool air of an old rusted cooler that Patil Baba used to fill with water everyday. That room also had 3 doors, one of them opened in the backyard that housed the old cooler and a lemon tree, whose lemonade we drank every summer. There always used to be lemons on the ground and that was another backyard, now when I look back at all these images in my memories I find it to be one of the most aesthetic spots in the house. The other door of that bedroom opened into another drawing room with sofas and seating arrangements for Patil Baba’s friends. This again opened into the tiled area where the mornings in Gwalior began. 

Gwalior and gastronomy go hand in hand. Let's start with the homemade food that was curated by my dearest grandmother who made the best meals all along our stay. She made the best daal baati churma and rice kheer .Once she fed me a jackfruit gravy in the name of chicken and I was convinced. The cook at the house that is Kamla Mausi used to make delicious aloo pulao and her aloo tamatar sabzi was one of a kind! Roohafza was a staple with lemon and pudina added to it, almost like today’s mojitos. In fact many times we used to accompany my Mom and my Aunt to their acquaintances just to taste the various sharbets, every house had a different lemon sherbet, Roohafza, and their permutation and combinations. The first and last and even in between our stay one of the staple breakfast was samosa, kachori with their potato gravy and imli ki chutney and jalebi by S.S Kachoriwala and gulab jamun that melted in mouth and motichoor laddoo that just dissolved by Bahadurra. They have set my bar of expectations so high that I haven't had anything better than that till today. It's been almost 15 years now and yet that taste is on my tongue and etched in my gastronomical memories forever! Also I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I say that, the first time I ever went to a cafe it was in Gwalior. Mumma always took us to a cafe whose name I am not able to recall, but I remember having pizzas and pineapple pastry there every time we visited. Then there was the street food, especially chat and to be more specific the aloo tikki chaat at Bada after shopping half the market. 

There is so much more that I want to write but I feel this blog deserves a part 2 that I will write in the time to come. While writing this blog I literally felt like I took a train back to Gwalior, my birth place and more than that a place where I spent my childhood summer holidays. After all these years my memory has images vivid and clear of some while blur and hazy of others. Yet some smells and fragrances have stayed even after so many years, like that smell of desi ghee wicks, the aloo pulao, the spicy kebabs and some tastes of the chaat, samosa, kachori, gulab jamun. My mouth is already watering. But I fear forgetting them with time, though I read in a book that said it is not because of time that we forget old memories, it is actually because of the new memories that take up the brain space that makes us forget the old ones. But I feel some memories live rent free, and this is one of them, but if you also have a similar fear, then for your self write down your favourite memories of childhood until they are still fresh in your mind, as once you write, the fear of forgetting reduces and the memories get documented to be read by you when you are old and for the future generations who will be surprised to know there was no smartphone in summer vacations, but it was little things that kept us busy and mattered the most!

PS: This house was constructed by my great grandfather Mr. Yashwantrao Patil who was an executive civil engineer in the government. He has contributed in the foundation of dams like Khadakwasala Dam, Gandhisagar Dam and many more. But this was his dream house that he built for his family, which embraced them for generations to come.

Happy Reading,

-सिddhi Bhosale.

(R-L: Siddhant, Patil Baba, Maa Aaji & me!)