The courtyard full of warmth

I was driving on the old highway that once connected our town to the nearby hills. Slowing down at a turn, I caught a faint whiff of smoke — the kind that rises from wood damp with dew. For a moment, I could not place it. Then memory unlocked itself like a forgotten drawer: it was the smell of the small earthen chulha in my grandmother’s courtyard.

Every morning, she would squat on a low stool, blowing through a hollow bamboo to keep the fire alive. The flame would lick the base of the brass pot, and the whole courtyard would fill with that mingled scent of wood, ash and boiling milk. I stood beside her, clutching a piece of jagged sugarcane, watching sunlight pour in from the gap in the roof. The pigeons cooed, the buffalo snorted and life moved with a slow, unhurried rhythm that no one questioned.

Those were not extraordinary days, but they had a stillness that has become extraordinary now. There were no alarms, no traffic horns, only the faint rhythm of pestles pounding grain and women gossiping over the walls. Grandmother would pour the hot milk into a steel tumbler, cool it by pouring it back and forth and hand it to me with a smile. Even now, when I heat milk and the cream gathers on top, I can almost hear her laugh — soft, toothless and filled with mischief.

Then there was the scent of monsoon — the first rain striking the baked courtyard. We would run barefoot, letting the puddles splash against our knees, while my grandfather dragged the charpoy under the eaves and shouted mock complaints. The wet earth had a perfume no bottled fragrance has ever matched: half wild, half tender, like the soil breathing again after a long sleep.

Sometimes, when my mother roasted corn on the fire, the smoky sweetness would spread across the lane, drawing every child like a signal. We would sit in a circle, rubbing salt and lemon on the golden kernels, watching the sky darken into a violet dusk. Someone would start singing an old film song, and the tune would travel into the night like a secret.

Today, that courtyard lies locked behind a rusted gate. The chulha is gone; a small gas stove stands in its place, silent and efficient. The buffalo shed has turned into a store for broken furniture and the peepal tree outside has been cut down to make space for a concrete wall. Yet whenever I catch that faint woody smoke, perhaps from a roadside dhaba or a villager burning dry leaves, something in me pauses — as if time itself has let me take a peek.

The world I knew was not perfect. It had its dust, its quarrels, its long summer power cuts. But it had warmth — the kind that came from shared stories and slow evenings. In those small courtyards, people learned to live close to one another and close to the earth.

So, the fragrance of those years is still around, in the folds of memory, in the evening wind and in the first drops of rain. The smoke may have thinned, and the courtyard may have changed, but the warmth is still there — unseen, lasting and full of love.