Journey to me..2

The train chugged on into the setting sun. I sat drinking in the scenery, lost to the rest of the world, cut off from the turmoil of my thoughts and the hustle bustle of my co-travellers. Long train journeys always had a calming effect on me. Once it was post dinner , people huddled into their berths. The blue overhead light spread a serene blanket over the coupe. My thoughts went back to my journeys in my childhood and teenage days.

I wasnt a teenager any more, I am a woman pushing through my middle age, only that I think I was more sure of what I wanted from life then, than I am now. Now, there are times I feel a total stranger to myself. My heart tugs at me to break away from age old and self imposed restrictions and go explore the world, whilst my always 'do the right thing' mind wont let me even dwell on the thought. I ask myself, what is it you lack in life? Nothing ! Nothing, except that I have this insistently nagging feeling that I missed out on something big. I am ignorant about what is it that I missed out , all am sure is I surely have missed out. My journey would hopefully help me discover that what eludes me.

To get away from the alone-ness of the overcrowded, bursting city. To be one with the quiet unspoilt mountain terrain , to lie on the ground and feel its beating heart, touch the soil where-to I shall end up one day , breathe into my lungs life, instead of toxic smoke. I wait to look up into blue skies and marvel at the stars. I thirst to drink in the clear crystal waters of the Gangotri flowing down the mountain heights, rejuvenating my body and soul. I have wanted this from a long time back. What lessons await me there? Will they take me to myself? What surprises lie in stock for me? Or will it all be a venture in vain ?!!

Last I remember is the horn hooting in the distance...sleep thou is a divine gift from the gods.

You will always live in my thoughts.

My grandmother and dads little brother shifted from Kerala, left the only home they had known, their relatives and friends to come and live with us here in Bombay. It was way back in the seventies, after the sudden demise of dad which had all our lives come crashing down.

Uncle was just getting out of school, being way younger than dad. He had lost his father and brother in a span of three years. First few years, here, he must have spent training himself for a job, because I recollect he used to be home a lot. After amma left for work, grandma and uncle would take turns doing my hair to school ( I had just begun schooling). The day uncle did it, I had a bad time in school, trying to pull out strands of hair which were tied in too tight and were hurting me. Most of the evenings he would come to collect me back too, singing malayalam songs loud loudly all the way back home, embarrassing the hell out of me. I would poke and pinch and get him to stop somehow. But there was never a guarantee, he would suddenly start off again..crooning to the open skies.

As days passed and he got working, I remember I would sit up late into the night waiting for him. I wouldnt eat till he was back and when he'd see me waiting in the balcony, eyes on the road... he would haul me up and call me paaru and tell everyone proudly that I was his daughter, though he himself was almost only a boy then. It wasnt always smooth-sailing in our family but we were all bound together very strongly in our pain, anxieties and our small small joys. When there were family tiffs I would take uncle's and grandma's side, angering poor amma.

Time passed and life moved on. Uncle married, had kids and they were all doing well in life when he began showing signs of dementia. A couple of years ago, my uncle passed away at the young age of fifty-six. The few times I met him, he being back in kerala by then, his deteriorating state of memory and ultimately his ailing body was, way beyond I could bear ( dont even want to go into what his family must have gone through). I went to pay my respects while he was breathing his last. Helpless and torn inside by the love I felt, I simply sat besides him and watched him lying in a state of coma, struggling with his breath. Maybe because I left before he passed away, even though it will be 5 years this september, I still feel he is back in kerala, in our old, warm house, singing out loud, calling out to me the way he always did..Paaruuu..