India, Aug. 8 -- Every monsoon, I'm reminded of my childhood when we lived in a rented accommodation in the late '80s. Our house had a garden where all the rainwater from the terrace and the courtyard used to collect. Being an only child of working parents, the bricks of our home, the garden, with a tall mulberry tree in the corner, and the sights and sounds of nature's spectacles, including the rain, were my only friends. I remember the water cascading down the stairs because the terrace didn't have drainage. I would spend hours just watching the sight. This was my home's Kempty Falls! I used to find the sound of the waterfall absolutely mesmerising. I had learnt the skill of making paper boats of different colours and sizes as well as a paper ship from my classmates. I would love to watch my boats and ships float slowly across the courtyard in the "river" formed by the relatively low-lying part of the floor and find their way to the garden that would transform into a lake. I would imagine riding in one of the ships on the "hard sea" trying to make the successful "voyage" to the far corner of the garden, which I called the Port Moresby. I had picked up the name from my other interest, that of looking up faraway places in the atlas. Most of the "voyages" would fail because the paper that made the ship would get soggy or the ship would get trapped in a tall weed! I called it a "shipwreck" akin to the ones described in EM Ballantyne's The Coral Island or Johann David Wyss' Swiss Family Robinson. A shipwreck called for a rescue mission. So, I'd put on my father's oversized raincoat with the headgear and gum boots and venture out to the "sea". The ship would be rescued and made to float towards a nearby "island" made of bricks lining a flower bed. I would make my way back to the room, promptly hanging my father's raincoat under the fan, fervently hoping that it dried up before either of my parents returned. I was rebuked once because I forgot to get the gum boots to dry up. "Yeh ladka pata nahin kya karta rehta hai. Bimaar ho jaoge phir pata chalega (Wonder what this boy is up to. You'll get to know when you catch a fever)." This was the dialogue most often directed at me. I wondered why no one understood my brave efforts at rescuing a sinking "ship" in the "rough sea". Four long decades and many monsoons have passed. Yet, the joy and thrill of those "voyages" are still alive in an innocuous corner of my memories. Indeed, "Kaagaz ki kashti" and "Baarish ka paani" hold a special place in my childhood....