Four boys. One old house. A childhood that refused to disappear.

In Manna, Kannur, an old family home becomes a world of its own.

Every summer, four cousins—Sheeshan, Sukki, Shobhit and Sangi—return to a house filled with the smell of firewood smoke, old books and rain. Their days begin with warm *kaada mutta* from Achamma’s hands and quickly turn into a mixture of fights, games, dangerous ideas and adventures that no responsible adult would have officially approved.

They climb jackfruit trees, shoot Cerelac tins with an air gun, catch fireflies during power cuts, build tents from bedsheets and floor fans, follow railway tracks farther than they should, hunt crabs using bicycle spokes and listen to stories about the strange things that may—or may not—move through the house at night.

Watching over them are the adults who quietly shape their world: Achachan and Achamma, whose care is expressed through routines and small gestures; parents, aunts and uncles who allow the boys enough freedom to make mistakes; and Jyothi Mama, whose humour, confidence and belief in learning through experience leave a lasting mark on the family.

But summers do not announce when they are ending.

The boys grow older. Studies, jobs and distance begin pulling them apart. Familiar rooms become quieter. People disappear from the family gatherings. Eventually, even the house itself is gone.

Years later, when the four cousins meet again as adults, they must discover whether the bond created during those summers survived everything that came after.

**Please Get Some Scratches** is a warm, funny and deeply personal memoir about cousins who became brothers, the adults who gave them room to grow, and the ordinary days that only reveal their magic once they are over.

It is a story about childhood freedom, family, grief, memory and the invisible inheritance passed from one generation to the next.

For anyone who remembers a grandparent’s house, a cousin who felt like a sibling, a summer that seemed endless, or a place that continues to exist long after its walls are gone.

Because the best childhoods are not always the safest or the most carefully planned.

Sometimes, they are the ones that leave you with a few stories, a few scars—and just enough scratches.