WHAT ALL'S FOR FREE

Why? Do you do that early in the morning, leaving me at the mercy of the notorious invaders? I said, slapping the mosquitoes that charged through the open doors and windows.

I want you to see the early morning skies and natural light and feel the fresh air. It is so beautiful outside in the garden.

Many good things are for free. Enjoy them as they are, quipped my mom.

Yes, I nodded in agreement.

Everything is so expensive these days. This tectonic shift in inflation made me yearn for all I could get for peanuts, if not free.

I remembered reading an article written by my mother's maternal uncle published in an old magazine, Saptahik Hindustan wherein he had compared the expenses incurred at his mother's wedding (which had been documented by his grandfather in his account books) to the present times.

That was not a solitary incident. A  father narrated how his father-in-law gave him money to arrange his wedding when they migrated to India just before the partition. He carried a thousand rupees in his pocket and bought gold jewelry worth a hundred rupees for the bride-to-be.

In yet another incidence, a mother delved into the price of the land in which their massive house stood, costing a mere six rupees a gaj(one gaj being almost 9 square feet).

Today, as I wrote on my laptop, I remembered my slate cost two rupees fifty paise and my Apsara black HB lead pencil a fifty paise only. Peanuts.

It just took me a minute to remind my mother that nostalgia is also free.