‘A time invested in relationships’
Feisal Alkazi, theatre director

I used to stay in Mumbai during my childhood. Summer holidays were spent either in Mahabaleshwar or Panchgani. My maternal grandmother used to rent a house for a month in summers in either of the two places. All of us, my cousins, uncles, aunts their kids would go there for a one-month vacation. My grand mother would arrange for the entire setup, including a cook. We would spend entire one month in that house. We were a party of say around 20 people and all were interested in theatre. So we would all enact some play.

Once a house was set up, getting involved in the household jobs was also fun like laying the table, stacking dishes, just going to market to purchase. An aunt of mine was very enterprising. She always used to plan out a structured game. We also played tennis and badminton. Going for a long walk, boating or climbing trees were some of our outdoor activities. I also used to do a lot of art work like ink painting, paper craft, leaf painting and even collecting leaves.

Sometime we would just get up in the midnight and picnic the whole night, tell stories or simply play pranks on each other. When we were stuck up inside the house on rainy days we would play scrabble and other games. Time was always at our disposal. Some days we would play cards the whole day.

Those days spent together were very fundamental years of our lives. It was a time spent and invested in relationships. Now all that parental structure is gone but since we all spent some quality time together all the cousins are close to each other.