Memory no.1: 1983?

Since the travel bug is in me now I might as well make most of it - and spew some wasted thoughts on cyber space!

If I think really hard, long long back in time, maybe I was 4, in a pink dress (why are memories always so gender conforming!), by the pavement in a little town in Kerala. I won't claim that I remember the face of the artist, but I swear I can still see snapshots of the charcoal portrait he drew of me (on the pavement?)... The same trip, some aunty's roof. Pia and I were throwing bricks down a chimney (I don't know why we were being so Calvin-ish). I am not sure we got yelled at but there was some kind of moral lecturing involved.

Mmmmmm and wasn't it the same place where we were in this fancy hotel with uniformed waiters who only knew how to speak in English? Pia the smarter one (I was at that stage when I pretended to know no language except when I wanted to sing songs to random foreigners) was rehearsing lines in english before calling Room service! Why had Ma baba abandoned a 4 and a 6 year old in the middle of Kerala and a balcony full of monkeys I have no clue....?