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Water Garden (Jacob Kurien, Sep 23rd, 2007) |
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The gardens were about 30 minutes by foot from our home on Sheikh Hamad Road and we would trek the path starting off as a single group. As weariness started to take toll, the group would break into smaller units with the youngest ones trailing. It resembled a lion family lumbering to a water hole. As the entrance to the park neared, the matriarch and patriarch would pause to let the units coalesce again. This was the closest I would get to Disneyworld in a long time.
We usually initiated our time in the park with a walk around the twin pools which were enormous water bodies that were artificially landlocked. If you looked with careful observance, the tiny fish in the water would be visible through the algae that abounded below the murky waters. On rare occasions our family would get adventurous enough to embark on one of the muscle driven boats. The more leg power you had, the faster it would get propelled.
With fatigued limbs, we'd climb out of the boats and then start making fervent appeals to head towards the swings and slides. I loved these because competition for them was limited or non-existent. It was a quiet satisfaction to feel the air rush past as you oscillated to the whims of gravity or came squealing down a slide chute.
To appease the request to have more variety, the park authorities brought in Konkorde Castle - an inflated monstrosity shaped like a castle for kids to jump in. Once inside, you had to make sure that you didn't get in the way of unruly youngsters attempting to emulate The Six-Million dollar Man or just staking monopoly on their corner which would be up for rotation when their parents screeched at them to come out. I remember that trauma only too well when my neighbour's son cracked his collar bone when someone crashed unceremoniously into him.
By now the draining of energy would make us feel ravenously hungry and we'd quickly head to the area that sold packaged food near the entrance. Usually, my younger sister and I would be tugging at our dad to get us a cotton candy. And when the demand was consented to and met, our faces would be veiled behind huge mounds of pink fluff that would gradually shrink bare thanks to our voracious gnawing. We loved the burgers sold there for about half a dinar each. For a change, we once decided to try Dairy Queen outside the park. Nineteen dinars later, we knew that it would be the first and last time we ate there.
Couple of the items we regularly would buy were Planter potato chips and Cheese puffs. And a sudden pretence reminder out of the blue, would have us kids begging our parents if we could visit the ducks. Needless to say, about half of the cheese puffs would invariably end up tossed into the water for the ducks to gorge on. I wonder if they ever connected the dots between us wanting cheese puffs and the instantaneous affinity to the birds. The synchronicity or organized coinciding of these two activities was probably a known chuckling point between them.
During early years, the posterior of the park had quiet walking areas which were only frequented by a few folks who knew of its existence. It was an escape of sorts to remain there late into the evenings with a feeling of happy desolation surrounding us. With expansion later though, this area was encroached on by advancing park amenities including a mini zoo of sorts stocked with overfed chickens and other fowl.
The early nightfall in Bahrain meant that the lights lining the streets and in the park were timed to come on. Following that, swarms of insects would envelope the illumination, like thick clouds that seemed to go nowhere.
Exhaustion is the No. 1 anti-aphrodisiac for hyperactivity and the pleas from us beleaguered toddlers would signal that it was time to return home. When we finally made it home, I would just be ready to crash into bed except for the threatening yells from my parents to shower before that. But that was a tiny price to pay for a fantastic time overall.
One time, I dragged my dad to go to the park to see the famous old-time wrestler Tony Garea who was in Bahrain to promote Anchor dairy products. It was advertised that he would be answering health related questions. But when we got there, we found that a multitude of kids and wrestling-obsessed Malus surrounded him ...asking questions like - where his tag team partner Rick Martel had disappeared to. I was all for de-stigmatizing Malus of the perceived notion that they only owned a TV to watch wrestling....and this wasn't helping. One wide-eyed kid shook hands with him which caught on like fever and triggered a flurry of hand shaking with about a gazillion more tiny hands...one of them being mine.
I did finally get the privilege of visiting Disneyworld at Orlando, Florida, twice after I came to the US. It was incredible and breathtaking. The rides were staggering. The euphoria is to be seen to be believed. But despite all the mind-boggling mass of concrete and steel, my heart was still reminded of the twin water bodies of the island gardens. Verily, home is where the heart is.
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