Nostalgia Strike

I am spending the 9 day vacation/holiday during the Diwali/Ramzan in Chennai. A week into my 9 day vacation, the time seems to have flied. I got a new Nokia 6630 cellphone. Also had been going around the city checking out car showrooms. I am looking for a mid-sized car and it is really tough to decide which one. I have to test drive a few more cars before I can make a decision.
Today is Ramzan, and every Ramzan we go to one of our ex-neighbour, Ayesha akka's house for lunch. She had called to invite us and thats when nostalgia hit me. We lived in a small house in Egmore during most of my early schooling, till 7th or 8th Standard. Now that I look back those were really memorable days. Let me remember some moments from the past.
Our house then was one among the 7 houses in the building. The place is sort of complexly build as the owners built it in stages. We lived in the first house. Just thinking of those days brings so much memories to me, those weekends watching rented movies, those diwalis, those card games... I will never be able to capture all them in writing, but it is not to be written it is to be felt.
The home next to ours was occupied by my uncle and aunt. I usually played with their kid, Deepak, before I left for school. The other houses in the groundfloor were occupied by Shiny akka and Ayesha akka. Just above our house was our owner's house. Some of the most memorable afternoons as a school kid was spent on the balcony of their house. I used to play cards and Business (Monopoly) with Prema akka, Venkatesh anna (owner's children, and much older than me :)) and many others from their house. I drag them on to play with me. I was (am?) such a stubborn kid and once I got 4 As, 4 Kings and 4 Queens and still wanted them to play the same game of Ace (Donkey).
I had a few my age group friends as well. Kamesh lived in the opposite house, Gnanasekhar also in another opposite house and Vicky in the house next door. I also played with Ganesh anna, who lived next door as well. During Diwali crackers were so much fun then. I used to be very calculative in using the extra cracker allowance given to me and plan to get crackers which would give us the most amount of time bursting them to the once which cause the biggest noise. Omar, my classmate, will join us during Diwali and he, Vicky, me spend a lot of time enjoying those great sounds.
Well the memories seem to be countless, let me drown in them. I will find another time to give another sample. Looking back I see how active, life filled my life has been, though now it is only filled with work and slumber. Hope I can counter it and have a more lively life soon :).

Bye,

Palani.