Today as I walked back home from office, I came across this recently opened toy store  in my already overcrowded, bursting at the seams neighbourhood. Usually the infamous Bangalore traffic is averse to the nickle and dime  pedestrian and a slight negligence (even if it means trying to window shop)  has harsh consequences. Despite all these lurking dangers from speeding, screeching vehicles, I happened to glance at the shining display window which had captured the attention of a bunch of young girls who couldn’t stop exclaiming over a  row of pretty Barbie dolls and fluffy stuffed animals, while their parents got impatient.

I smiled to myself and was just beginning to walk past the happy noise when this rather nondescript rag doll caught my attention. Now, just to set the record straight, I am not someone who would stand on a footpath and reminisce about a long forgotten childhood, but somehow the sight of that doll triggered not one but an avalanche of memories in my head.

The story basically dates back to a time when I too was a young girl. We lived in a pretty cantonment  nestled between hills which were almost always topped with snow. The apartments all looked the same and there was a comforting familiarity that wrapped itself around the inhabitants of the cantonment like a warm snuggly blanket on a winter night. This was also a period when I enjoyed the status of being a single child and the focal point of my parents’ love and attention. Being a very sociable kid, I always had a whole gang of  pals whom I would have fun with. One event which would always inject a crazy quantity of excitement in me was the much awaited arrival of my cousin G. She visited us once every couple of years with her parents from the Middle East. We were roughly the same age and got along like a house on fire.

But this year things were a little different. As it turned out later, this year’s visit was to bring immense sadistic pleasure to one and an equal amount of distress to the other. The excitement was though acute especially because it had been three years since we last met.

The first thing that I noticed when G walked in through the front door was this limp rag doll hanging on her arm. The doll was about two feet long and had an over-sized face with buttons sewn in as eyes and a couple of stitches with black wool serving as a crooked smile. The rest of the body was made of stuffed old socks which contributed to its pitiful appearance. Unlike my own set of precious dolls all of which had a crown of shiny blond or dark hair, this specimen which claimed to be a doll had a head full of Medusa like tresses which were bits of wool of varying colours sewn onto her head. All in all, this was the ugliest inanimate object that I had ever set my eyes upon.

It is hard to believe but kids too have a very strong sense of comparison and one-upmanship and even though we might prefer it otherwise, these traits aren’t reserved for the more conniving and worldly wise adults. I smirked at G’s new acquisition and was satisfied with the thought that my doll collection would kick her sad little doll’s butt without a fight.

As the days passed by, things turned out to be quite contrary to what I had believed in the beginning. G’s doll was not just a mere doll, it was an obsession. G carried the thing everywhere -from the ice cream shop to the park to our outing to the zoo. Even though the doll was named ‘Kachroo’ which literally meant trash, she was a permanent fixture in G’s life. This thing which started out to be an annoying nuisance was slowly turning into an enigma. A mystery which I desperately wanted to unravel and this could happen only if and when I had a chance to lay my hands on the damned thing.

But alas, G was violently possessive about Kachroo and the most devious of my plans failed to pry out the doll from G’s clutches. I fought, threw tantrums, tried to poison G with dairy products (I had overheard my parents discussing G’s lactose intolerance. Yes yes, go ahead judge me…I was quite an evil witch then), whined and finally gave up on ever being able to own the world’s most unattainable doll.

As always, days flew by and now it was time to bid farewell to G and Kachroo. The previous night I had cried myself to sleep at the thought of never being able to see Kachroo again and I woke up with red rimmed eyes and a very irritable disposition. Such was my grief that I refused to come out and see G off. After her departure, I spent the whole day moping around (my mother rarely gave in to my tantrums and so I received no sympathy from her). Finally I decided to retreat to my favourite place – under the bed-where I could hide and mope a little more with my thumb firmly stuck in my mouth (I didn’t dare reveal this nasty habit in public lest I become the butt of all jokes). As I crawled into the little space, I saw a strange pile already occupying my zone.

I reached out and turned it over only to realize that this was nothing but the coveted Kachroo which had been mistakenly left behind. In the next few minutes my overjoyed brain concluded that this meant that Kachroo would be mine for the next two years till G returned for her next visit.

“Mummmyyyyyy! Kachroo !”

Yes, I screamed unabashedly and there was joy in the world again, birds started to chirp and flowers blossomed like they never had before. My day was made and I was later told that G fought, threw tantrums, whined and tried to poison herself all the way back home.

Preeti Sharma is an MBA from Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies and dabbles with creative writing. As she stepped into the hectic and mundane routine of corporate life, her writing became her  stress buster.