Earliest recollections of my life [?]

The faintest recollection of my earliest days which I can still remember is of the two neighboring families on both sides of our house. Though one family still lives here, the other moved to another place long back.

I just remember calling them uncle & aunty or tina ki mummy/papa. In those times, in our neighborhood, you just dont call people by their names. You dont call them - Mr. Negi or Mrs. Sheela.. you just call them 'the gharwali family' or bhaisahab/ behenji/ ajju ke papa etc.. and that is why I only remember the 3 kids' names- tina, ajju and gunnu with whom I used to play hide and seek when I was really small. However, I do remember that whenever my mom used to go out, she used to drop me at their house which i liked better than mine. Aunty used to cook good food for us, let us play in the sun, with dirt and never complained to my mother. Tina's papa was very funny. Quite opposite to my own dad. He used to make fun of my dad's eyes as they were really small.

I remember that once tina's uncle came to their house and he brought a new thing- chewing gum. He blew a big bubble in his mouth and showed us. However, when we asked him to let us also try, he warned us to never try it as it contains the meat of a cat and can be dangerous to children. I did believe that for a very long time.

Their family was a good friend of ours and a good support but sadly, they moved and the other one stayed on. I have no idea how and why our families started fighting but I know that we used to be friends long back when I was a really small baby, when my parents had just started their lives in this place we live, when there were very few houses in the colony, when we had the only hand pump in the neighborhood and they had the only TV.

Apart from these, I also recollect that my mom shaved my head in class 2nd which was very embarrassing, to say the least. One of my classmate made fun of my name, which made me cry and plead to my mom to change my name to 'meenu'. I thank her and god that she didn't. I also remember that I had a group of friends who used to share their lunch boxes and I used to cry in my heart when I had to share my gaajar ka halwa.