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My paternal grandfather had plenty of free time and conjured up many fictional characters. Two that used to thrill me the most were Cunning Jackal and Crafty Wolf.

Initially, I thought they were real and assumed that he was referring to the forests of JNU near my house. Later he told me, ‘You were so excited. I couldn’t bear to see disappointment in your eyes by telling you the truth.’

When they went to visit my aunt in Bombay, my grandfather would periodically write (no e-mails then!) and send the stories by post. And, I would be read them avidly and eagerly wait for the next instalment.

Fiction wasn’t my paternal grandmother’s forte. But mythology was. I owe my knowledge of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana to her. She also loved recalling anecdotes from her youth. One favourite was about a bull that escaped from the cart in which she was travelling with her children and how they were stranded in the middle of a village road.

We visited my maternal grandparents in Chennai, then Madras, in the summer. My grandmother was a great cook. She would not miss any cookery programmes on television and would prepare what was shown on TV the next day. She had her own recipes too, collected over the years from various sources.

Her house had a huge mango tree. I would ask her to leave some for me to pluck in mid-May. Standing on a stool with a long axe in my hand, I would pluck the fruit with my grandmother watching anxiously. Most of her stories revolved around the mango tree and its fruits.

Of my four grandparents, the only one who wasn’t comfortable with stories was my maternal grandfather. Work was a passion for him. (It still is. He is a septuagenarian and still works.)

But, he loved to watch cricket and I would pray for the matches to be on Sunday so that I could enjoy watching it with him. Sometimes, in a lighter mood, he would reminisce on his childhood — how they used to milk the neighbour’s goat and drink up the milk, their cricket matches on the maidan … I used to wait for such titbits, a very rare occurrence.

I was really lucky to have a childhood with four of them for company. I still try to recreate the past whenever possible, especially during holidays. Believe me, it’s still fun. A pity we can’t travel back in time!

Anirudh Govind Rajan, IIIrd year B.Tech, Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras