7. A Free Bird

I wanted to be free. Free like a migratory bird, without the baggage of anything holding me back.

My parents wanted the usual life for me. Everything was planned, rolling on a track, till the end. They planned my school, the courses I will take, the colleges I will go to, the kind of girl I will marry (at 24!) and the house I will stay in for life.

But there was a villain in the story – me.

I followed the path they planned, till I was about 10 years old. I slowly became a rebel after that. I could not agree with the life they had in mind for me. I didn’t want to be first in my class, I didn’t want to go to the science fairs and show stupid charts. I didn’t want to go on stage and give speeches on global warming and its effects on nature. But I was always forced into all these.

By the time I was 16, I found the perfect job for me – I wanted to be a journalist – who can travel all the time, write and be totally free. My parents were shocked, seeing their dreams of IIT and IIM going up in smoke, along with all their future plans.

It took a week for our life to get back to normal. I stopped going to coaching classes for the numerous entrance tests that an adolescent is forced to go through. By the time all the tests are over, the kid will be exhausted and good for nothing more. The torture continues through the admissions and all the further hurdles one has to go through. In one act of defiance, I avoided all that and stared at an unknown future.

We stayed in government quarters provided for my father. He was working in a government department for water works and the accommodation was given to him early in his career. Mom joined him some years later. Though she was in another government job, she was somehow not eligible to get accommodation. So we ended up staying in the same place, all through my childhood and adolescence.

One good thing about living in such quarters was that there will always be a lot of people around you. There will be no dearth of kids your age, and my situation was also not different. There were people from all parts of India staying there, and the different languages, food and numerous festivals happening across the year made it a melting pot of cultures.

My parents were both from Kerala and were brought to Mumbai by their jobs. Their marriage was arranged by their families and was married off in a two weeks break in Kerala. They started their journey back to their city of dreams, the day after the wedding.

I was born in a couple of years, but not in Kerala. My parents stayed put in Mumbai. Mom’s parents came and stayed with us for my first three years, till I went to school. I could hear stories of Kerala, the greenery, the backwaters, and the festivals. But we never went there before I was 5.

The first journey was a great experience for me. I had never travelled on such a large train on a long journey, which felt like a long time for me. It was, in fact, a two-day journey and we had packed lots of food. I was glued to the window, and it provided a cinematic experience for me. The houses and huts outside, the people travelling, walking, sitting on the side of the track, the colours – green paddy fields, yellow and orange flowers, bright reds of drying chillies, all registered in my young mind like colours on a fresh and blank canvas.

It was no less interesting inside the train also, as other families were travelling with kids my age. We soon became friends and shared our rice, chapatis, Pongal, vada, and all the other stuff. The kids soon formed a group and pushed the grown-ups away from the window seats. We sat huddled together at the windows, waving hands to the people outside, people waiting at the railway crossings, and even at the grazing cows and buffaloes, who never seemed interested in us.

By the next day, my new friends started leaving as they got down at big stations with their huge suitcases, probably filled with gifts for their families. At that age, I didn’t feel so sad to see my friends leave as I was glued to the scenery outside. The tracks were surrounded by paddy fields for kilometres. I got interested in the scores of rivers that we crossed. The train made different sounds as it went over the rivers. By the second evening, we got down at our station. My dad’s younger brother was waiting for us. He took me in his arms and lifted me in the air with a wide smile. I didn’t feel uncomfortable and he resembled my dad a lot.

Dad and mom pushed the bags to the waiting jeep on the outside, and we also climbed up into the back seat. I sat, watching the traffic behind us as we slowly got out of the town. Our ride took us through some really bad roads, tossing and turning us sitting in the back. The scenery kept on changing from the shops in the town to smaller shops and then no shops, only paddy fields.

We travelled for probably an hour before we reached our destination, it turned out to be a pretty big house. There was a lot of open space surrounding the house, with a big courtyard in front.

We were greeted by my grandparents, who were familiar faces to me. I ran towards them and hugged them. There were other people at the house also. It turned out that my father’s elder and younger brothers' families were also there, making it a family reunion. I don't remember much after that, as I slept off till the next morning, tired from the long journey.

There was a festival going on in the temple nearby and we arrived just in time for the festival. The next week was spent with my grandparents and cousins, mostly on the temple ground. I barely saw my parents, except during the time of food. The colours, the lights, the faces, and the decorations got printed on my young mind. I did not understand anything but saw the elephants, the huge structures, the colourful masks, and the fierce faces.

The two weeks went by in a blur, and we came back with wonderful memories. We travelled back and forth many times, but as I got older, my studies took precedence and I could not go and stay as much as I liked.