Can’t wait till the last kernel pops …

The place I call home being situated on an uphill slope, I had the privilege of getting to see things being moved by road from above. Bunches of unripe or half-ripe bananas, and burlap bags of tightly packed copra, were a few among them, getting transported on the rooftop carriers of the passenger buses from my hometown to the district central market. Unlike today's kids, we didn’t have many things to pay attention to. So we were naturally growing closer to nature, smelling its seasonal smells, feeling its changes, listening to its own ambient music, and enjoying thekaleidoscopic changes in colorful leaves and flowers. 

 The occasional call of vendors selling popcorn, cotton candy, ice cream, or milky or grape-topped ice bars really made us super-excited. We were never sure if our wish to have some would be granted, though. It all depended upon the unpredictable moods of our parents. Sometimes they were easy to persuade, but more often an emphatic “no” would be the only response.

I can still hear the popcorn vendor walking the roads, shouting at the top of his voice, "Cholaporiyei…" (Oh popcorn …).  Even the sound of him was a mouthwatering or salivating stimulus in terms of educational psychology. The Russian psychologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlova's dogs salivated as they heard the bell after a few days of being fed meat while at the same time being made to listen to the sounding of a bell. Classical conditioning worked equally well on us as we heard the bell sounds of the popcorn vendor, who was carrying a large plastic bag on his back, holding its twisted neck by both hands over his shoulder. That twisting – I’m not sure now if it was clockwise or anti-clockwise - was a kind of flavor lock for the polythene bag. But we were kids, so what did we care. We simply craved popcorn, especially during the evenings.

By the way, we did not have many options to choose from. It was all one paper cone of fine, crispy cream-colored popcorn called "chollpory". No preservatives, no artificial flavors, no additives like butter, coffee, caramel, vanilla etc. We didn’t know back then that such variants even existed elsewhere. We each finished our treat off in no time, not caring about kernels that were not yet fully popped. American cartoonist Charles M Schulz, nicknamed Sparky, may have been right when he said, “Love is sharing your popcorn” - but we hadn’t heard from him either, and it wouldn’t have made any difference if we had.