A recent conversation with a close friend I haven't talked to in more than six months prompted this journey down memory lane. The stage is south Madras and its lovely tree-lined streets but the memories are ubiquitous, yours and mine to color with the intricate details of a past fondly remembered.

Back in those days when Twitter wasn't around and Netscape was a synonym for browser, there were still "kids these days". And naturally there was the arduous task of filling those kids' free time, whether it was the weekends (still manageable) or the much-dreaded summer vacation. I use that descriptor with full knowledge of the dread that it evoked in parents, kids cooped up at home for three whole months with nothing but mischief on their minds and able bodies to support it. Most resourceful parents planned in advance on the scale of Y2K, and come summer there was Art Class where you could tout freshly purchased "oil paints", Karate Class with  fresh white outfits and Flute Class which prompted a mandatory visit to Sapthaswara Musicals.

(It was a different matter that when school re-opened for the next year, the paints would be dry with yellow a strange shade of black; the karate uniform would still be white but so would the accompanying belt; and the flute - well, the flute still had that green sticker with the store's phone number.)

I digress. Many parents were thus resourceful, but some knew better. Those were the days when we'd just about graduated to two-wheeled bicycles and couldn't wait for the new school year to start so we could ride those monsters to school as a symbol of emancipation. Also as a right of passage because we'd seen our seniors do it the year before, but woe betide anyone who should suggest that peer pressure had anything to do with it!

So there we were, close friend and I - him riding his purple Dynamix with a horizontal bar so high I could barely reach the pedals, me on my maroon BSA Trailblazer with the slanted bar and the stylish race-bike style handlebars. How long ago was this? Long enough that "gear cycles" were only just making a mark in India (Top Gear anyone?) and anyone who possessed said bike was accorded a place in the pantheon of those who brought Maggi for lunch to school and owned Staedtler stationery. There we were, with these new bikes, an infinite reserve of time, and most important - a list of addresses that included every single student in our year. People have probably said a lot of uncharitable things about my alma mater (I have very few complaints but there's hardly any objectivity there) but this list was quite possibly one of the single best things they did.

It doesn't seem like much of a big deal, does it? Allow me to explain. To a couple of boys who'd just hit the teens, got their first independent mode of transport, and been given three months of time to kill, this was no ordinary list - it was a commandment from above to stake out every single location on that list, so we'd be one up on the rest of the class - nay, all four classes. Heck, even the teachers didn't know where every single student lived!

And thus we began. I'd start out right after breakfast, wind my way through the backlanes - past the barber's saloon, the favored stationery shop; the local church, the bakery that sold the best milk buns in that part of town; post office crowded with people doing anything but posting letters, vegetable-market teeming with life right next door; the local one way, the inevitable tempo traveling in the opposite direction, the bus stand with a small temple right opposite - until I finally reached the friend's place. Here we'd sit down and plan our "targets" for the day - lucky for us, most of the addresses spanned perhaps four zipcodes at the most, yet there was no point exhausting all of it in one day.

This done, we'd set out on our bikes. The main roads we avoided as far as possible, given the twin strains that they had to support - public transport worthy of a world-class city, yet also the most vibrant small-business community in the entire city. No - more enjoyable were the side lanes that each had something to gawk at in wonder. Some were all residential, stately houses occuping their perches since the turn of the century, old and rusted street signs telling of eras gone by. Others were much more brash, a mixture of brand new apartment blocks with menacing "outside vehicles not allowed" boards contesting every available inch of space with the few hold-outs and their ornate gates sporting "beware of dog" signs in answer.

And then suddenly we'd be at a major road that signalled entry into another locality - here we'd remember our original target for the day, and commence the search for the relevant streets. These were the days before Messrs. Brin and Page started their impressive ranking of pages, before satellite and street views, or even the advent of the GPS-phone. No sir, never once did we ask for directions - it was all trial and error, and we were much the happier for it - for suddenly we'd discover a juice shop whose existence we'd never known, or a bungalow that was "rumored" to be Mani Ratnam's ancestral home (never did figure that one out). Only much later did Naviga come out with their book of city maps, and even this book is something of a standing joke to this day between the friend and I. Initially procured for laughs alone, it was a pretty handy guide - and would've been infinitely more helpful had we not laid bare most of the neighborhoods that it so arduously described. Till today, the one that has the least number of "houses" on count gets to keep the book - and I'm glad to report that I haven't seen it in more than ten years.

When we started out, we thought "exploring" was just a means of eradicating boredom, but it soon grew into a passion that pulled in more days, more people; stakeouts for sightings of new crushes at school, tentative forays to identify where that much-feared teacher lived. A passion that drove me to impulse bus rides from Churchgate to Ghatkopar and back on the central line via a stop at the Matunga Mess; and set the friend up to exploring townships near Hosur in Tamil Nadu and Bhuj in Gujarat. And for each one of those streets and the curves and oddities that I remember, I am thankful - for these are the things that remind one that however nomadic the life, home is but in the mind, and the pages of its memory.