It would start with collecting cashew-nuts early in the morning. Being there I could never catch sleep. I would be up before 6, a coffee and follow granny to the fields to graze the cattle. We would tie the cattle in the filed and be back. Now I would go roaming to collect cashew nuts from the farm. I liked roaming alone. Not because I liked liked to be left alone, but because I liked to be without supervision. I would feel like a grown up. We had 8 trees in all. I liked the fruit as well. If the fruit was good I would take back fruits also. I liked eating the fruit with salt. The nuts would be put for drying. Granny's farm had two types of fruits, one yellow and the other red. Yellow fruits tasted good, but I liked the red ones because they were rare in our farm and the color was very attractive, though they did not taste as good as the yellow ones.
Then the letter would come, a letter telling I am supposed to come back to B'lore. The last week of May would be for returning to Bangalore, back to school, back to books, and back to everything I disliked. In the last week of May granny would make a fire pit and we would throw cashew-nuts we collected in the two months into the fire. This was followed by the aroma of burning cashew. Granny always knew when to put the fire off, and the right time in which the nuts would be fried. Then we would put sand to douse the fire. This was followed by another batch of nuts, and another, till we were out of cashew nuts.
Then we would take some light weight and crack open the nuts. Some were packed into bottles for me to take it to Bangalore. It was fun having cashew this way. Now a days I go to a shop and buy haldirams salted cashew. But this doesn't taste any good. No where near the cashews I collected and granny burnt for me. My hands used to be very dirty after cracking those nuts due to the oil, but the fun was priceless. The more cashews I collected the more I could get to eat in the end.
A week back when I was traveling in Moodabirdi, the smell of burning cashew brought back these memories. Missing the place where I grew up, missing granny at that place. Now she has shifted to Kasargod town.
PS: Sorry about the subject line. Could not find a better one.