Tuesday, March 13, 2012

The old and the never tried

When I was back in my home state feeding on the homey and the rooted vibes, I happened to do something that I've never done before.

I danced to a band. Like, a proper shaadi band, In the middle of the road. In front of the entire village and my extended family. Without drinking. I was shocked myself that I could do it. Once I started, I couldn't stop.

Towards the end of all the dancing and celebrating , I witnessed something and the first thought that came to my mind was 'Please tell me this didn't happen'.

It was dark and bitterly cold, we were dancing on the side of the road. Occasionally, some vehicle would pass by. By this time, I am tired and frozen till my bones and I'm standing on the side. I see this Qualis that approaches our group, slows down but suddenly veers towards the dancing group and rams into them. I see four people flying in front of the car. I am 100% sure the car has mowed down these people. And I can only think: This didn't happen, please make it 'not happen'. Then, I see this car speeding away and some guys from our group chase the guy, climb on the speeding car, open his door and try to pull the guy out. But, he gets away.

The only saving grace was that the car didn't actually mow down anyone. It did hit those people and they were sent flying but he was careful not to run the car over them. He very carefully steered the car away and sped. My aunt had a fracture and she was the biggest casualty of this mishap. She was our official chai-maker and we lamented her future absence from the kitchen. Chai is very essential at 3 degrees celsius, isn't it?

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A change of topic now and my favorite pics/moments/people from this trip:

1. The most beautiful girl EVER. She is related to me somehow. For the first half a day, she was so shy, she couldn't look up when she spoke.




2. Kaliya aka Satyajeet. My little cousin. (I say little but dude has grown.) Reminded me of someone and I couldn't stop smiling. He drove us and the groom to the wedding ceremony and back. The drive was so much fun and his one-liners had us in splits all the way. And he dances like a dream. He is good.





3. Shiela aka Arun. When my aunt got injured and fell on the road, he lifted her in his two arms and walked to the hospital. It was only three minutes away but my aunt is no zero size model. Just saying.




4. Kaliya trying to hand down some moves. To the music of the safari (mentioned below).




5. Me dancing to the band. I'm wearing two layers of leggings, two pairs of socks and sports shoes under the sari. It was around 3 degrees and the wedding would go on till wee hours.




6. The food. The makkhan. The lassi or like we call, the chhaay. The rotis. The bliss.




7. The visit to my nani's old house. It's in ruins now, abandoned. I don't know if I can call them fond but I have so many memories of this house. For me, village meant this house. I have very few memories of my dad's village or my dadi's house because basically I spent very little time there. One of those memories is when I went back and saw my mami's elder daughter carrying the cutest little baby who I thought was a girl. It turned out that the baby was a boy and that is my first memory of Kaliya. I can still picture what he was wearing.




8. My mom's school where she studied as a young girl. This statue is of the swamiji who started girls' education in the village. He was very strict and my mom was so scared of him. She would not paani-puri when she was 40 years old because when she was in school, swamiji used to forbid it saying that it is made with gutter water. The terror!




9. This plaque. It has my mum's name on it.




10. Our adventures on the safari. it has a kick ass music system that we made full use of. For dancing everywhere.




11. And the cherry on the cake, our adventures with this little friend. Enough said. It is licensed and totally legal. Just saying. I can use it for self defense. Again, just saying.




12. Little boys named 'filmy'. He wouldn't get pictures taken with us. He insisted on solos.



13. My pretty cousins.



14. The beautiful buffaloes near the pretty pond near the pretty temple. A post on my village is incomplete without a bow down to these gentle creatures who are the source of all that makkhan in the pic above.



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Monday, February 27, 2012

I had a dream

I am a dream person. I like to dream - not the waking and day dreaming type, the real sleeping and dreaming type. I like to dream, to recall the dream and to analyze the dream. The confused and fickle person that I am, I look for pointers in my dreams to sometimes know what I'm truly feeling. Does that sound weird? I almost never get my answer. Almost. Sometimes I do.

There are two recurring themes in my dreams. In one I am always stranded on a very narrow wall or stairs or something which is very very high. On top of that I am trying to navigate on these very very high stairs or wall or whatever. Most of the times, I even have to climb from one wall to the next and distance between them is huge and mind you, I am far above the ground. Or I am on unimaginably an high staircase and some of the steps are missing and I have to take the jump. Similar lines, wall, rock, stairs, terraces, lifts, you get the drift. A few years ago, I used to get this dream every single night. Every. Situations changed. Now, it's less frequent. Once in a while. Only when I'm really worried about something.

My mom (right), my sis (middle, duh)

The other recurring theme involves my nani. Infact, all women from my mom's side and my nani's home. I find it difficult to believe that all these women are there in almost all dreams of mine (except the stuck at heights ones). I could be dreaming about anything, anything at all, and there they would be in the background. They are always there as some extraneous characters. And many of my dreams had my nani's home as the setting. All this is more surprising because I hadn't met my nani or even gone to her place in almost 10 years. Yet there they all would be in my dreams.


mommy again

I hadn't thought much of these nani dreams till recently. Till I went back to Haryana where she lives. Till I met all my cousins and aunts and uncles and my nani. Till I smelt the soil, felt the air on my face, the cold on my skin. Till I ate their food once again. Till I spoke their dialect, my dialect. It didn't take me long to realize that I may travel far from my roots but my roots are never far from me. They are within me and I carry them with me.




For past many years, I tried to fight this urge, this dream. I tried to fight every feeling that told me that I am attached, that I have to go back. Why was I trying to do this is another story in itself but let's assume that I had my own very valid and rational reasons. But then one of my close cousins was getting married and I had gone on for 10 years with bitterness, skepticism and fear in my heart. Something inside me let go. Almost instantly, as if being directed by someone else, I didn't think, I didn't fear anymore. I summoned my sisters and just like that I was on a flight to Delhi. To say that 'planets aligned' would not be an exaggeration.




And boy, did the planets align? The five days that I was in Haryana were the most awesome days I have had in a long long time. And I have had some very good days in the past two years and so I'm talking like really really awesome days.




There's this thing about family. I didn't meet these people for the last 10 years, didn't even speak to them. Some cousins who were half my height when I last saw them have grown into handsome young men taller than me. But when I met them, time dissolved, distances dissolved. It was like we were always in touch, never apart.

What was done with a lot of 'what ifs' turned out be an extremely good thing for me and my heart. I no longer feel the void. I feel connected, rooted again.

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The black and white pics are from my nani's collection. How it warmed my heart to see these again.