We had a few houses we rented out, and in one of them lived a newly married couple. Both tall, both a little chubby, both so cool. They were the cool couple.

Anna was a software engineer at some company, and Akka looked after the house. They weren’t Tamil, so with them, I spoke only English.

We played everything together. Ludo, carrom, Monopoly, the business game. Board game after board game.

I had a really thick connection with the two of them. I can’t explain it any better than that. I just loved being at their place.

Akka loved teaching, and her English was very good. Some days I went over to learn from her, and sometimes I just took my homework there.

With them, it was English or nothing. I was a kid, so I wasn’t embarrassed to get it wrong. Slowly, English became natural to me, and it has helped me all my life since.

Anna had a phone, an Asus, that could play proper high-quality games. Back then, that felt unbelievable.

It was his personal phone, but he lent it to me anyway. I played FIFA on it, football that looked real. I played for hours, literally hours, right there in their house.

One day in 2015, I came back from school and they told me they had tickets for “I”, Vikram’s new movie. It was in Tamil, which they didn’t even speak.

They asked if I wanted to come with them. I did. But I was a shy kid, and I didn’t say yes.

So Akka took me straight to my house and asked Amma herself. Could he come with us?

Akka was close with Amma, with all of us, and Amma could never say no to her. She said yes. I was so happy.

There was one condition: homework first. Anna would be home around six, and it was already three or four. I had two hours.

Some English, some social. There wasn’t much that day, and I had never finished my homework so fast. I hurried the whole time, because this was really going to happen.

Then I got ready. I loved layering back then, so I wore simple pants, a shirt, and a hoodie over it. Powder on my face, of course.

And javadhu, ஜவ்வாது: a fragrance that comes as a powder, and you pinch a little and rub it on. I can still smell it. I had never been to a proper cinema, let alone one inside a mall, and I wanted to be ready.

Anna had a Bajaj Avenger. They sat me in front, right on the petrol tank, and off we went. I felt very, very cool.

The whole way, I kept trying to picture it. A cinema inside a mall. What would it even look like?

Before the theatre, they stopped and we all had pani puri. I had never done anything like this before.

I ate six or seven of them. With my small tummy, I don’t know how. Everything was so new, and I was so happy.

Then we went in, the lights went down, and the movie started.

For a little kid, it was terrifying. A virus, a man whose body twists out of shape. None of it would scare me now, but that night I was really afraid. Somehow, I sat there and watched it all.

At the interval, we went out to the counter. Popcorn, and drinks I had never seen before.

They asked what I wanted, and I pointed at a tin can. None of us knew what it was. It was a Red Bull.

Back in our seats, I drank it all by myself, a whole 250 ml can. It tasted like a chemical, like some kind of tonic.

But they had bought it for me, so I finished it. And popcorn. So much popcorn.

The movie ended around eleven. It was a long one, and I was getting sleepy. They called home to say we’d be back in twenty or thirty minutes, and took me to the McDonald’s right there.

I had never been to a McDonald’s. I didn’t even know what it was. They got me a Happy Meal, and I ate my first ever burger, the whole thing, by myself. Inside the box was a toy: one Ninja Turtle.

They took pictures of me too. One was with the McDonald’s clown, sitting on his bench. They sat me right beside him.

Back then, Amma had a phone, but not a smartphone. So even having my picture taken like that was new. Everything about that night was.

On the way back I sat on the tank again, with the Coca-Cola from my meal. I couldn’t finish it; it was mostly ice. I just kept sipping it all the way home.

We got home around 11:40. “He’s eaten well,” they told Amma. “Nothing to worry about.”

Amma put me to sleep. And then the nightmares came: the man from the movie, coming to our house to hunt us, to hunt my whole family.

I kept waking up and calling out to her, holding on to her, falling asleep again. The movie, a whole can of Red Bull, and one small kid. It was a lot.

Honestly, it got a bit messed up at the end. But it was all worth it. It’s still one of the coolest memories I have.

They moved out a while later, and slowly, we lost touch. If there’s ever a way, I would love to find them again.

That one day, they must have spent around ₹1,000, just on me. But it was never about the money.

It was the care. I wasn’t their child, but they looked after me as if I were, and I was completely at home with them.

That, I think, is life. Treating someone else’s child as your own. Seeing other people as your own family: your brothers and sisters, even your parents.

This is joy. This is life.