Saturdays and the sound of squirrel

Until reading Keith’s post on ‘my favorite sound on earth’ I didn't had much thought about sounds that are my favorite. Just before started to write this post (on Saturday afternoon), I was hearing the shrill of squirrel somewhere from the nearby trees and this sound always set my mood somewhere into the past. I could recollect a couple of moments as series from past which has relationship between Saturday and squirrel. Both were a phases took place in my childhood and age less than 12.

My father, holding great devotion toward gods, usually takes us to the Pillaiyar Kovil and Anantha Padmanabha Swami Temple near Adyar junction in the neighborhood. And just about a km from home, he used to take us in his bike or sometime walkabout. It used to be our first outing on weekends being Saturday morning; the priests in the Pillaiyar temple were so familiar with us since father never misses visiting their temple then on Saturdays. (The stories where different after shifting home to another area (Thiruvanmyuir) seven years before)

Even he occasionally visits the Adyar Pillaiyar temple, he never miss going to temple on Saturdays still.  Thankfully there’s a Pillaiyar temple at our street end, so he doesn’t needed to traveling 4km to worship his favorite god always. Unlike the Adyar Pillaiyar temple that stood on the middle of the road by splitting a lane, and got disturbed by both sides of passing vehicles; the Padmanabha Swami Temple lies quiet few meters away from there.

I always enjoyed visiting Padmanabha Swami temple, since it has a spacious corridor and courtyard and very less people visited then, we take it as advantage to experience our liberty.  I really liked placing the lord’s headgear (which is a practice in all Perumal temples, to place or make touch our head with a silver headgear, similar to the one on god’s head); even they keep it only for a second, I look for one more time and I don’t know why but I liked it then. I also like having the holy water they drop on the extended palm which taste delicious.

In this temple the lord was seen on a lying position.  Behind the main shrine and on the corridor, there’s an Almond tree and it is where I used to hear the squirrel squeaking and they even run across the corridor leaving their calls behind. To my knowledge it is where I first saw squirrels, to be chased by me. Another place I used to hear the squirrel calling was where I studied tuition, a street away from us.  And she’s was an Anglo-Indian women who took tuition for me and another girl on her own interest and I need to acknowledge, only because of her my English improved much better.

I attended tuition for my fourth and fifth standards to her and she lived in the first floor of an apartment on a dead end street. Almost isolated from noise disturbance, she lived alone with a servant maid aid and occasionally her uncle or aunt visits her. Unlike the weekdays where I usually go to her house in evening, after coming from school, on Saturdays I visit her in morning the time close to our present at temple. Here I hear only the shrill of squirrels rather seeing them in action inside the temple premises. Every time I hear the sound of squirrel I couldn’t avoid touching those memories in mind.