Mushy time!

I was, I think, about five. I know I hadn't started going to school yet. We lived in a little apartment on the first floor of a rather large building and I could look right down into a little temple that was in the middle of the street (lots of those on old streets in Pune).

One day I watched some ceremony taking place in the temple - a lot of singing and playing of indigenous instruments - and there was this guy clinking two tiny little cymbals together.

That was it. I wanted a ching-ching.

When dad came home from work that evening, I said, "dada, I want a ching-ching." He patiently sat and listened while I explained what a "ching-ching" was. Then he nodded gravely and went about his business.

A few days later, I woke up to a strange smell. It was a pungent smell, one I had never experienced before. I saw my dad at the kitchen table, working hard at something. Experience had taught me never to disturb him when he had that look of concentration on his face.

About an hour later (or whatever, heck, I was FIVE), my dada handed me a shiny pair of ching-chings, all attached to each other with thick cord and all.

It was only when I grew up that I realised my father had scoured the stalls in the second-hand market to find a pair of those cymbals, then had painstakingly sat and polished them with brasso (the reason for the smell) so he could give me my ching-ching. New brass cymbals would have been way out of his budget (he was supporting us, his mother and his younger brother then).

When I get time, I polish just about any brass object I can find in the house, including the venerable Godrej lock we use for our front door.

I do it so I can smell the brasso and thank my dad for my ching-ching.

Next month it will be ten years since he passed away.

Deepak