Golden school days with the scent of jhalmuri.

While walking home after the intense afternoon sun or tiring office hours, a familiar scene suddenly comes to mind. A jhalmuri seller standing with a van under a colorful umbrella on the side of the road is surrounded by school students. As soon as I see this familiar scene, my mind takes a time machine and goes back to that golden school life left in the distant past.

The jhalmuri seller's van standing outside the gate after school was not an ordinary shop for us, but rather it was a center of attraction. The joy of buying this jhalmuri with the money saved from tiffin or with the small coins I got from home as pocket money was different. The taste of that jhalmuri, made with a mixture of muri, chanachur, onion, green chili, mustard oil and special spices, seemed like nectar. Those moments of standing together and eating jhalmuri with friends are still etched in the heart.

In today's busy life, we have come a long way. In the rush of growing up, the joy and carefree days of that childhood have been lost. But when you see a school student buying jhalmuri on the side of the road, you sigh. It seems that if you could get that childhood back, maybe you would leave all your busyness and go to that school gate again. This aroma of jhalmuri is not just the scent of a food, it is a piece of golden childhood stored in the pages of memory that takes us back to the past in the blink of an eye.