Flea market melee

I seem to be a cathartic blogger and will therefore follow this trend because , well it's what I do best really . As previously mentioned , I harbor a special affection for my maternal grandparents who took care ( and still do ) of my little sister and I , I feel that this is a result of the plethora of memories they created with me especially . I've mentioned my Appa before , but his wife (and my dear grandmother ) Ma has not been as present in these stories . 

Her hands have always been the hardest working and the softest to hold , they fed and nurtured my infant wiles and threatened to tell my mother ( but seldom did ) if we misbehaved . She is a seamstress and her hands created many dresses that mark milestones in my life . From the dress at my christening that draped  my newborn skin to the playsuits that were muddied . And most recently an exquisite dress for my sixteenth ... Something only she would know how to make because she's one of the few people who understand me . They all mark little stitches in my life , and her presence there . 

So , Ma used to sew lots of dresses and sell them at a Flea market on Sundays , a common anecdote of my father's is that on the day I was born ( my uncle who manned the stall that day ) they had never sold as much before . It is usually followed by jokes of my adventures in this flea market . For as long as I remember , I would wake up in the early hours of morning to go with my grandparents and watch the empty lot slowly rise into a little metropolis of tents and gazebos . I think memories of this time are most firmly illustrated by food , of the steam rising and filling the already humid air with a whirlwind of aroma . The chewy corn sprinkled with masala that always gave me a slight tummy ache but was a welcome treat , of the hot slap chips ( my father often jokes that I was bluffed by the chips to wake up so early) smothered in cheap ( but often the tastiest ) tomato sauce that was presented in a paper packet almost transparent with oil . And funnily enough , the umbrella shaped ice cream made by a lady who died long before I began to appreciate the delicate flavours  presented in her icy cones . It was a lime and strawberry that was my favorite , and I sometimes long for that old sensation . 

It was in flea markets where I first fell in love  with books . Appa used to buy me Archie comic books and copies of second hand books . My copy of Black Beauty was ( and for some reason I remember this with precise clarity )  purchased on the same day I was bought a baby doll who had a lemon knitted dress ( who you could feed and she peed water ) from an old flame-haired woman who had no front teeth . That and many books and Garfield comic books were bought from this woman and I still have them lurking in the shelves .  My love of books has extended throughout my life and in many ways I must thank those stalls with piles of books with yellowed pages . 

The reason I was reminded of these events was that today , I went to a craft flea market and saw all these things , almost unchanged ( just a different time and place ) . We need to revisit things more , the tiny things that could revive old joys ( and yes I do acknowledge that I've previously regretted losing some old joys but things like this always live on for me ) . To see the colours and hear the vendors offering you a good deal and the omnipresent music from a stall that stocks CD's no one listens to  . These are all the ingredients that make me smile . And they remind me of how special my Ma is to me , for taking me to the flea market .