Life’s Journeys- A story.
I had to go. I had to go and visit my beginnings. It was decades since I had seen the town, nestling in the foothills of the Sahyadri mountain range. I remembered very fondly, the small tank full of water which was also the meeting place of the womenfolk of the town. The steps of the tank leading down to the water would be full of women with their copper and brass pitchers. Some would be washing the vessels in one corner with a handful of ash from the woodstoves in their kitchens and also a bit of tamarind to give the vessels a shine. After washing the vessels they would go to the other end of the steps and fill the pitchers with water, hoist them on their waists and walk back to their houses in small groups. The Brahmin Street was about half a kilometer away. The younger women would be talking about their mothers in law, or laughing at some bawdy joke which some one had made or their plans for the next festival, be it sankranti or ugadi or Ganesh puja. That picture of groups of women walking with their sari pallus getting wet by the wet clothes they were carrying on their shoulders had remained in my mind for decades. That memory was haunting me all these years wherever I had gone, whatever I had done.
It was really a very small town. There was a High school, a Local fund hospital with a doctor who had to come from somewhere else and could never fit into the town’s life. The Headmaster of the High School was perhaps the most educated person like the Tehsildar and the School Inspector. They were all outsiders and had their own group. Their high point of the day was to go to the small railway station at one end of the city and watch the arrival of the train from Bangalore. They would know if any high official would be traveling on the train on his way to the district headquarters. They would all gather in front of the first class compartment of the train as soon as it stopped and pay their respects to the official, who would get down from the train and talk to them. They would stand around looking at him respectfully till he got into the train. The train would only move after he got on. They would then talk to the station master and go to the house of one among them, play cards till it was time for dinner, all the time commenting on the official who was on the train or some news he had given them from the seat of the government in Bangalore.
My father was one of those officials. He was shifted from one small town to another every three years or so. When he came to this place, we did not expect to stay here for more than three years. I was attending a government girl’s school which was just across the street. Because father was in the same department the teachers in the school were very friendly and I had no trouble in my studies. Suddenly one morning my mother discovered I could sing and arranged for the school music teacher to teach me music. So it was that every evening I would go to the teacher’s house near the tank, learn music for an hour, visit the temple nearby and come home.
My friends were all from the school. They thought I was peculiar because I wore clothes which father would bring from Bangalore when he went there on his official work. I had relatives in the Capital. Sometimes they would come visiting us. The whole town would ogle at them because they wore very “Modern clothes”. Some of them even spoke English!
We friends enjoyed talking to each other of the everyday happenings in school, or a new teacher or something happening in town. We knew there was a big bad world outside the town, but we hardly ever knew what was happening there since the newspaper from Bangalore came the next day and we children got to see it after the adults. Anyway, the stories in the newspapers were so outlandish for us that we never believed them. Only half the town had electricity. The rest managed with kerosin lamps. The only Radio was in the doctor’s house and if there was any special news on the radio, the doctor would tell his friends when they met in the evening.
As we thought, Father was shifted to a smaller place after three years. This new place was deep in the wet region of the Western Ghats, and the population of the town rose to one thousand when our family reached there! It was the beginning of the monsoon when we reached there in the old, rickety bus. The bus was open on all sides; the windows were secured by tarpaulin to keep the rain out. The incessant rain beat down on the bus. The country road was muddy and all I could see out of the tarpaulin was water flowing and wet green leaves of the trees on the side of the road brushing my face if I lifted the edge of the tarpaulin. Mother had packed a basket with all sorts of fried eatables to keep me and my three brothers busy during the bus ride. She opened the basket and passed them around. They had lost their crispness and tasted like cardboard, but we ate them anyway. The memory of that cardboard tasting chakli haunted me when I was walking in the manmade forest outside Frankfurt in Germany some thirty-five years later. It does even today!
This new place had no train service and all Father could do in the evenings was to play badminton for a while and then sit in the clubhouse and play cards. The town had no electricity and official peons used to go to the clubhouse with lanterns and bring back the bosses to their houses! Here also I had friends from the high school I attended. Kamala came from a village outside the town and was not available in the evenings. But she could be depended upon to win an argument with the boys on any subject. She had a voice and a vocabulary that the hardiest of the villagers were afraid of. Nagarathna came from a farming family and had to milk the cows and distribute it to some customers and had no time to spend with me. She could tell us stories of ghosts in the forest, or the peculiar flowers and fruits we found in the forest during our holidays. Savitri was, like me, an outsider and could be depended on to spend sometime with me till her grandmother called her home. There were some boys like Fernandes, Srinivas and Nagaraj who played with me, or took part in the debates and discussions in school. Some of them would come and talk about books we read or plan a play or a saraswati puja in school.
Three years in that small town and we had to move again. I said fond farewells and promised to write to everybody and got into the bus to come to the capital city. College was a revelation. Everybody was speaking English! There were so many girls, so many teachers, so much happening in the city that my letter writing became less and less frequent and over the years stopped completely. Even then, all it needed the memories to come back was a sudden shower which drenched me, the smell of champak flowers, the sight of people eating out of leaves like the ones we used to collect from the forest or even a folk song somebody sang in a function in college.
Time, they say does not stop for anybody. It did not, for me. I finished college, got married, went to Delhi, took up a job and fully engrossed myself in a family and everything it entails. But somewhere in the back of my mind was the picture of Kamala, whirling a rope around her to call the cows home, of Nagarathna measuring milk out of her brass pitcher and pouring into somebody else’s vessel or the yearly festival of lights which was the highlight of our lives, of Fernandes arguing that industrialization was best for the country and we could easily live by bread and not grow rice or engage in agriculture of any type! He and most of us had not seen wheat and did not know that bread was made out of wheat! The rare occasions when we had to sing together and he would always want me to begin singing and join me from the second note, the way Srinivas would come and ask me what story book should he read, the way Nagaraj managed to make Ganesha idols out of clay all of us collected from the quarry outside the town…… these were images that never left me.
I am going back to that small town now. I had never even talked about those images to anybody till now, not even to my family. Now, only now, have I brought up this topic. It happened after we came to Bangalore after some forty years of staying away from home. Even Bangalore had changed beyond understanding. I could not recognize our college or the street where I lived. The roads which we used to walk from home to college and back had turned into busy thoroughfares with so much traffic it was scary. The people dressed differently, spoke differently and the special feel of the city could be found only in some pockets. It was while talking about all these changes that I mentioned my wish to see my little town in the middle of the rain forest among the foothills of the Sahyadri Mountains. My family laughed at first and it was my young nephew who said ‘You can’t go back’ When I asked him why, he told me that the small town that was etched in my memory had grown and he had been there for some work and it was nothing like what I had described. I was heart broken, but still wanted to go.
Everybody wanted to come with me. I had a tough time telling them that this trip was something special, something very personal and only I could make it. I looked up the railway tables and found that the railway had not reached my little town even after fifty years! The bus ride, they said would be too tiring.
I hired a car, with a dependable driver who would also “look after” me and we set out on a bright morning, fully prepared for the journey. I had fished out the addresses of my friends from old papers I never even knew I had saved and now kept looking at them over and over again.
The journey was not very eventful. We stopped for breakfast after a hundred kilometers and continued our journey through National Highways. I kept looking out for thick forest along the road, but my driver told me he had been traveling that way for a decade and the only thing he saw was the social forest developed by the government full of eucalyptus trees. Oh yes, he also mentioned the plethora of signboards along the way. “There is a forest of them alright, selling everything from building sites to TVs to mobile phones” he said. We stopped for lunch in a town I had passed long ago. Then it was a rickety bus that had carried me along with my mother to the only hotel in the town where mother and I were asked to go into the kitchen to eat, because we were not expected to eat with the ‘Janata’. Today the place is transformed into a busy place, with a Medical college which I could see was an imposing building on top of the hill outside the city. The driver told me that the city had eleven colleges, attracting students from all over the country. There were banners on the road advertising meals from the north especially for students. We stopped at one place and went in to eat lunch. I could have got the same lunch of chole, bature, daal and palav anywhere in Delhi or Jaipur or Sonepat! Where was the old Mysore recipe of sambar and rice and fragrant rasam and papad and bonda? The waiter was a tamilian and he did not understand my Kannada at first and then he said “nobody eats that kind of food here” I shut up and finished my lunch and we started on the road again.
It was seven in the evening when we reached my small town. There was a hotel near the bus stand and they had rooms for us. I took a bath and had dinner and rested my weary bones.
The next morning was bright and the TV in the lobby downstairs was tuned to BBC World because some people having breakfast wanted to watch world news! What a change from the days when the Kannada newspaper from Bangalore came to us the next day. Anyway, after breakfast we set out to the post office and I spent sometime with the post master trying to find out if the addresses I had were still valid. They were not. My car and may be my talk with the postmaster drew the attention of some others waiting to buy their post cards etc. one of them was an old man and I thought may be he could help me. It took me sometime to explain what I wanted. Once he understood what I wanted he agreed to help me. He invited me to his house and we started walking slowly along the main road-very grandly called the Mahatma Gandhi Road. I looked around and found everything new. I remembered the talk of naming a road in memory of the Mahatma when I was in school, but never gave it much thought because the main road was the main road and the place where the buses stopped in front of the small hotel run by the Kamti family was the bus stand and it used to be called the Kamti bus stand, like as if they owned it!
The old man was named RamaRao and he started asking me questions. I told him about Father, my being in the school and my classmates and friends. Poor man, he could not connect the names and was feeling sorry when I noticed a sign board in front of a fairly big shop selling electronic goods. It said RajendraPrasad Enterprises. I stopped and asked my guide if it was owned by the same Vaishya family which owned, in my time, half the shops on the main street and everybody in town bought everything from them. My guide too had stopped by now and said ‘yes, this family has been in town ever since the government offices were moved here from the Old town a hundred years ago. I suddenly remembered visiting the big family with my mother for a naming ceremony of two children, two daughters in law had delivered babies in the same week and there was a big festival and most of the women of the town had been invited to the function. I was, at that time, struck by the patriotic fervour of the family in naming the children Babu Rajendra Prasad and Sardar VallabhBhai. When I had commented on it, mother had said how difficult it would be for the children to live up to the names! It must be the same Rajendraprasad who owned the shop now; I thought and went in to the shop with my Guide following me.
It took a while to explain my visit. The young man at the front of the shop must have thought I was slightly crazy, but then he said I should talk to his father in the Office at the back. We went in and found a very successful looking man, dressed in a gold bordered dhoti and rings on all eight fingers. The office had had many pictures on the walls, some of Gods, some of people. I had no difficulty in recognizing one of the people in the pictures, Venkatachala, who was my classmate in school, who forever used to borrow my notes to study and who could out talk anyone on earth. Father had said he was fit to be a politician. It turned out that he was a politician of sorts, who had become the municipality president and held various other elected posts. RajendraPrasad wanted us to go and meet this uncle of his. I was overjoyed. I remembered the way Venkatachala used to do and undo the strap of his wristwatch and keep checking the time every three minutes. That, when he knew that we knew he was the only one with a wrist watch in our school and how we envied him his money.
Venkatachala had changed. Naturally, it was fifty years since I had seen him, and I could not expect to see the same cocky, all knowing youngster of those days. He took sometime to recognize me, but was profuse with his welcome and genuinely happy to see me. My guide wanted to leave me there and go, but Venkatachala made him stay on, since my guide was some three years junior to us and knew most of the people in town. We started asking questions, they were very impressed by my story. They said they felt proud of me. I wanted to know about the friends I had left behind. Venkatachala started telling me the stories………
Fernandes, who wanted to get out of town and join some merchant ship could do it, but was drowned in the sea when his ship collided with an oil tanker in some distant ocean? Nagaraja was given his father’s job when the father retired, no more making beautiful images for him. He was only interested in making money, somehow or the other and was caught by the authorities while taking a bribe. Lost his job and when he came out of jail, nobody would talk to him and he died a lonely death. Srinivas went to college in the nearby district headquarters worked in a newspaper and even now is considered the angry young (old?) man of the town, questioning everything that happens. Kamala, the fearless, she of the loud voice committed suicide when she was called a troublemaker by somebody. Nagarathna married a distant relative and went to Bombay where she has lived ever since. She comes home every two years, shows off her Bombay clothes and children who don’t understand the local language and goes back after calling the town a backward place. Savithri who used to be like a mouse is now following the worlds’s oldest profession-her house is the town’s red-light area.
It took me sometime to digest the information. Kamala, I thought she could take on the whole world, but she gave in. Savitri was the gentle, docile soul who had difficulty talking to people, but now she a brazen whore. Fernandes was the type who could go on forever, but did not…..
When I said this, Venkatachala thought for a while and said’ who knows what is going to happen next? Remember, all your mother ever talked about was how you will get married and look after children? Here you are, traveled all over the world, sophisticated, so sure of yourself. Who knows what happens to us and when? Life’s travels will take us everywhere. I remember thinking I would get out of this place and never come back. Twice I ran away. Once they caught me in Calcutta sleeping on the footpath, too poor to even buy a ticket back to this place. Once again they rescued me from Banares, where I had got involved with a dancing girl and I thought she was all that I wanted in life. She cleaned me out and even wrote to my family to come and take me away because I was hindering her business! Today, I am a respectable citizen of this town, some kind of a leader, people come and ask me for my advice and opinion on all matters, be it the new sewage system or the building of a girls hostel’.
We went on like that for a while. My Guide said goodbye and left. Venkatachala’s wife served us lunch in the dining hall. It was a hall added to the old house built by the grandfather. It used to feed thirty five to forty people at one time. Venkatachala said, sadly, ‘today I don’t sit here to eat. It makes me feel sad. I used to grumble about all the cousins, distant relatives and even people I did not know sit down to eat here. Grandfather never questioned anyone’s presence. Everybody was welcome, everybody was fed, and nobody was asked how long they were going to stay. Today, I am alone in this house with my wife. This hall echoes with the sounds of yesterday. But people want to be on their own, they want fancy houses, TV to be playing when they are eating, the small tables they have can only sit six people and so they don’t encourage more people in their dining rooms……….Life has changed, really changed.
As I took leave of my fifty year old friend, I felt sad, a bit overwhelmed by the changes in the small town I had carved in my mind. I got into the taxi and we started the journey back to Bangalore. Venkatachala’s wife had packed a basket with fruits, papads made at home and some fried stuff. I had seen her when I was in school. Her parents did not want her to go to high school. The argument was that it would be difficult to get her married if she studied too much. We, friends had laughed at that. Today, Sharada, with schooling only upto the eighth class and never leaving the small town she was born in looks so graceful and full of peace and contentment. Knowing Venkatachala, I can imagine the kind of problems she must have faced in her married life. But nothing seems to have affected her and she is a serene, happy woman. Really, life’s’ journey can take all sorts of twists and turns and leave us where we least expected. Agree with me?
Indu Ramesh Flat 315, Block 30,”Jeevan Surabhi”,10-B Cross, J.P.Nagar phase 1
Bangalore 560 078 Telephone 080-26531646
Email indurames2000@yahoo.co.uk radiobuff@dataone.in