Every year, Dada would start constructing a fort a day before Vasu Baras, the first day of Diwali. The wall of the landlord’s house extended a little outside and formed a corner by the side of the wall. There was no free space in front of any resident’s house in our chawl.  So, the fort construction took place at this corner. Besides, the fort would get support from walls on both sides.

The construction of a mound for the hill was easy once the space between the two walls had been filled with stone and soil. Dada would come up with a different design every year. Throughout the year, he would look at photographs of different forts and discuss them with us so as to decide which fort he should take up next. His chief adviser in the fort-making activity was our grandmother, Aaji, and I was his assistant. Gumles’ Ramesh was of my Dada’s age. But we were at loggerheads with the Gumles. In fact, Ramesh was mean and we had to keep an eye on him so that he didn’t create any problems. We had seen how mean he could be the year we had quarrelled for the first time. Ramesh had built his own fort. But once he realized our fort was better, he demolished ours. No one had seen his vandalism but our Aaji. Dada would not break Ramesh’s fort even though he smashed ours. When we were discussing Ramesh’s act at home, our mother told us not to touch his fort because we hadn’t actually seen him breaking our fort. But Aaji was uncompromising. She stormed off and kicked Ramesh’s fort and demolished it. She also chided the Gumles loudly.

‘Don’t you dare touch my grandson’s fort ever again! I am not a coward like you to break the fort in the darkness of the night. Remember, you will have to face me if you do such a thing again.’

Gumle uncle stared at Aaji. She said to him, ‘Mr Gumle, discipline him well. I’ll break his leg if he is caught again, and you will find that this will cost him dearly for his behaviour.’

As Aaji’s outraged tones pierced the chawl, the neighbours peered through their windows and doors. Ramesh didn’t dare to touch our fort again. Eventually, we all grew up. There were no other kids in the chawl. Pintya in Mokashi’s house was very young. Dashputre kaka’s Raju was in college. Raju would respond ‘all good’ to anything we said.  I was the only company for Dada.

Dada got into the habit of building a fort because of our grandmother. She was from Pune district, and it was tradition there to build a fort in the courtyard. Our mother never discouraged us from building a fort. But she didn’t encourage us either. She was self-contained and happy with herself. Aaji enjoyed all such activities. When she was in excellent health and Dada was very young, she would collect stones and soil herself. Her fort used to look rough. Later, as Dada grew older, she took to instructing him while sitting on the steps of the house. We would tease her and say that she wanted to build the fort, but an old woman like her could never do it. At this, she would dust off her palms and say, ‘Believe what you want! But just build a fort.’

Building a fort means collecting bricks and stones to feed into the fort’s stomach. We would start the work with the previous year’s stones. Our landlord Shevade was very grumpy. He would ask us to remove all the bricks and stones immediately after Diwali and the Tulsi marriage. Usually, the bricks would slowly disappear as children would remove them so they could play cricket there. Later, we reduced the use of bricks and stones as Dada got the idea of using sackcloth. But still, stones were required to fill in the main portion of the fort. Dada would collect the stones throughout the year. The big stones were not useful. We would collect the stones in a basket or a box and bring them to the fort construction site on a cycle carrier. Dada got his first cycle when he was in the eighth standard. He would walk with the cycle and I would follow him while holding the box of stones on the carrier.

It was easy to get bricks and stones. The main challenge was to get soil. We had an open courtyard in front of our chawl but digging there for the soil was not possible. The road in front of our house was tarred and it was always full of potholes. There were always stones lying by the roadside. Once Dada saw heaps of soil left there by the municipal corporation. We collected that soil and brought it home on our cycle carrier. In later years, we started approaching soil vendors. We would get half a sack of soil from them and carry it on a cycle.

Dada would start building the fort by looking at a picture. But the real forts looked different. He had Rajgad, Pratapgad, Sinhgad, or Panhala-like real forts in front of his eyes. These forts are long, broad, and extend across the land. How could we build such forts on our tiny piece of land in front of our house? Also, it would be difficult to build a small-sized fort as we had to carefully work on the mound. So though the photo would be of some big fort,  we would come up with something that would be possible to make. Once Dada wanted to build the Sindhudurg Fort of Malvan surrounded by water. But the challenge was to have a moat around the fort. He had seen that type of fort at Adarsh Tarun Mandal. The mandal had built it by constructing walls with cement and bricks. Besides, they used blue tiles on the floor. Dada collected such tiles but he dropped the idea later, as he realized that such construction was not possible. But Aaji saw no problem there. She would say that Shivaji had built a number of forts, and we were constructing only one.

A mound for the fort could be in any form. But a fort had to have certain features——steps, an arched gate, a bastion, and a cave. The first three things were according to Aaji’s science and the fourth was Dada’s specialty. After soil was daubed on the neatly arranged stones and soil, the next step was to construct the steps. Initially, Dada would fill a matchbox with mud and form the square bricks for the steps. But this was slow going as he had to first make bricks and then arrange them into steps. Later, he started placing matchboxes on the mound and daubing them with mud. We needed several matchboxes for this, and I was the one who had to collect them a month before Dada started the work. The steps looked big as they were moulded on the empty matchboxes. It were, in Aaji’s words, ‘A pearl heavier than the nose.’ As I said so, Aaji said, ‘Let it be!’ Once Dada suggested that we construct a road instead of steps. To this, she responded, ‘Then, it would just be a hill. Shouldn’t there be steps if it is going to be a fort? Would Shivaji merely walk on the road? He is the king, and the king should walk like a king.’

After the steps and the gate, building the bastions was our next task. There had to be a minimum of two bastions. There again, Aaji’s science: there had to be a bastion on the fort. We call it a fort because there is a bastion. Otherwise, it would only be a hill. Dada would build the bastion at the top of the hill. His usual trick was to put empty paint tins upside down and daub them with mud. We wouldn’t get these tins every year. That’s why we would scrape the mud off the tins and keep them in our toy box. Also, Dada had an idea of pasting a piece of paper on the tins instead of daubing them with mud in order to build a fort wall. He would colour the paper grey and use white to draw the lines. The rest of the hill would be red, but the bastion would look like seasoned stone. This trick made Aaji very happy.

While Dada built the fort, Aaji would continue her chatter, sitting on the steps. Once when Dada was building the Raigad Fort, she made him build a Hirkani bastion—named by Shivaji after a woman who scaled down the walls of the Raigad Fort—on it. Though we knew the story of Hirkani, Aaji narrated it again. After telling the story, she said, ‘Shivaji was great, but Hirkani was greater. Because of her, he learnt to build the bastion. If Hirkani had not climbed down the fort, would he have built one?’

There was no cave in Aaji’s science of forts. But Dada would always make a cave. No one knew from where he got that idea. He would start thinking about the cave while planning for a fort. He would design a furrow with stones and dab soil on it so that the cave would be visible. If possible, he would make more than one cave. If there was space outside the caves, he would plaster them with mud and arrange small stones to sit on. Once Aaji told him to have Tukaram Bua sit inside. That year, he got the Tukaram Bua toy. I had also told him to keep a tiger inside the cave. We had a toy tiger. But Dada wouldn’t do that. Sometimes, he would construct a tunnel-like opening for the cave from both sides. 

Dada was fond of creating a river, which Aaji always supported. She would say that as all the forts of Shivaji were in hilly areas, there had to be a river and it should flow by the hillside. The question was: how to bring water into the river after it’s made? For that, Dada would plunge a tin into the rear end of the fort and pierce a hole under it to hide a water tube. As we poured water into the tin, it would flow down like a river. Of course, it wouldn’t be enough to flow like a river. Nevertheless, the patch would be wet. Before someone could ask us why there was no water in the river, Aaji would volunteer that the river has dried up, but that it would flood in the monsoon.

After all the soil was smeared on the fort, our first job was to sow garden cress seeds in it. Aaji would insist on doing this as early as possible because they took a couple of days to sprout. She would say that since the fort is on the hill, it has to be forested. Shivaji could fight all the wars because they happened in the woods. Aaji liked the fort looking green. We would fling garden cress seeds all over the fort. So they would sprout everywhere. Even around Shivaji’s throne. Shivaji Maharaj wouldn’t be visible when covered with the greenery of the sprouts. But Aaji didn’t care.

Once the fort was finally ready, Aaji would arrange toys on it. The toys would be from previous years. A few new toys would be bought from the potters in the neighbourhood. If the toys were carefully wrapped in paper and stored, we could use them the next year. But the colour of some of the toys would fade and the noses of some others would wear away. Every year we had to discard a few such toys.

The mavale toys were not proportion to the fort. The colourful mavale toys would look funny on the grassy and red-black fort. One mavala toy was as big as an arched gate. Shivaji’s idol on the throne would occupy the entire top portion of the fort. But no one worried about that. We had to place the toys there, that was all. Of course, the mavale toys were not the only ones we included. Later, the potter-artisans in the neighbourhood started making different sorts of toys. For example, a grocer woman, a fruit-seller woman, a woman carrying a pot and a jar, a farmer carrying her child, a woman washing clothes or pots, a coolie pulling his cart, men playing the drum and pipani, and whatnot. I would love a mavala toy with a real sword. In his arm would be a small slot for the sword and on his face a luxurious moustache. 

Actually, plastic soldiers were also available and Dada liked them more than the earthen ones. There were two types of plastic soldiers. One type was very small, made of celluloid. They would not even be visible on the fort. But those toys were more fitting for our fort. The other type were solid plastic ones. They were moulded and had their own base. Such soldiers were either in the sitting or prone positions. They were available in two colours: brown and green. So Dada always wanted to depict the war between India and Pakistan. But it never materialized. Aaji would say, ‘Ours is Shivaji’s fort. Where does this India-Pakistan thing come in? Arrange your plastic soldiers down there and not on the fort!’

Our fort would look beautiful with the toys arranged in the tall grass. Somewhere Dada had seen painted hills and blue skies at the background of a fort. Our fort also had the walls to support such an undertaking. But our landlord wouldn’t allow us to paint the walls. Dada brought the used engineering drawing sheets from Raju, painted a blue sky on them and pasted them as the background of the fort. He drew a sun too.

‘See how Shivaji’s flag is fluttering in the blue sky,’ said Aaji.

‘Aaji, why do you address him as Shivaji all the time? Why don’t you address him as “Shivaji Maharaj”?’

For a moment, she didn’t understand my question.

She then asked, ‘How do you address Ganapati?’

‘Ganapati bappa!’

‘And me?’

‘You? Aaji.’

‘Aai?’

‘Aai.’

‘Why?’

‘Why means? That’s how it has to be.’

‘It has to be the same for the king,’ said Aaji. ‘The person who is close to you and is our own has to be called that way. The king is also our own, therefore, we address him that way. “O king, get up. Take care of your people. See, it hasn’t rained, dig a lake.” We have to tell him like this. Understood?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

That year, Aaji hadn’t been feeling well since Anant Chaturdashi. She was finding it difficult to breathe. The doctor had kept a machine in the house and she was on oxygen. She stopped walking about the house. She would remain in bed all the while. Gradually she stopped eating. She asked us to build the fort as Diwali was approaching. She would sit in a chair on the steps with a tube in her nose. That Diwali, she saw the completion of the fort; content, she passed away on Tulsi Marriage day.

After Aaji died, Dada never built a fort again.