My Nani used to make the best pickle in the world and my Dadi would tell me the best stories. Together, they made my world, when I was a kid. When you are kid, you create this big universe inside your head. The rules of this world were created by you, and you could change them as and when you please. This universe inside our tiny childhood head is immune to the real world problems and the rules adults created for it. And it is in this universe we make stories where you live a thousand different lifes. One day you would be a mighty hero on a great adventure in your own little neighbourhood and the next day, a hundred foot tall monster destroying the city. As we grow older, we forget what it was like to climb trees, play at our will and make up stories. The ideas that we build as kids, the dreams, the things that made us smile, the way we were curious about life, the way we explored anything that came our way; these ideas, dreams, little things, these smiles, these objects get stashed too deep inside our brain as time passes. They become like a pickle that have been preserved and forgotten for too long. And just like how fungus creeps up on the pickle, our memories get foggy and we slowly lose them. And as we lose them to the processes of time and decay, we realize that we are getting older. About an year ago, one fine November evening I was standing in front of a white board with a black marker in my hand. The marker almost touching the board. I stood there for a while. Thinking. I started writing words around it.Words from my childhood universe, characters and rules from my childhood universe. There were zombie, cyborgs, mummies etc. Suddenly, I had the urge to draw a pickle at the center of the board . Be it the memories of my nani or the stories of my dadi, or the cartoons from my childhood, whatever triggered it, the pickle at the center of that childhood universe has stayed by my side. This is the story of how I never gave up on my pickle. Preserving it. Till it reached saturation.