My Be-Longings

Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the past perfect!

~Owens Lee Pomeroy

We all have our own nostalgic moments, some of them so defining that they radically change the way we perceive life. And it doesn’t come as a surprise when these moments take you to the best of college days. Traveling long distances from one’s hometown to the college itself was an exciting experience. As I hail from Chennai, which is in South India and went to BITS, Pilani for my graduate education, which is in North India, I have some fond memories traveling to and back from college.

Those memories of my train and bus journeys to Delhi and Pilani are the closest to my heart. Some of the best, surprising and downright ridiculous things have taken place during these journeys, ranging from meeting new people; to losing your bags; to getting stared at by the villagers on the bus to college just because you are seated next to this girl student; to getting into a different coach at a passing station and not knowing which way to go to reach your coach; to buying something and paying from a moving train but not collecting the change; to be happy to get a copy of The Hindu at a platform only to find out it was the previous day’s edition from a metro!

It was customary to reach Delhi a few hours earlier so one could roam around before taking the train. As I chose to leave a little early once the semester ended, I had little company and cut down the shopping time to reach Delhi Railway Station an hour early. I took my seat, arranged my belongings and opened my Reader’s Digest when I caught a glimpse of this woman and a young man, old enough to be her son, walk towards the coach. The woman was dressed in a white sari and wore a collared blouse with sleeves extending till her elbow. Her hair tied into a bun, she resembled my 5th grade class teacher Chechni Jacob who was a figure of authority that commanded the reverence of everyone around without a word uttered.

They seemed to be in a light-hearted conversation that lasted more than half an hour. Just a few minutes before the train was about to depart, the lady did something that would remain fresh in my memory even after everything is forgotten. As her son boarded the train and sat next to me, I introduced myself and found out that he was from Jammu and Kashmir. He was on his way to Sankara Nethralaya (an eye hospital and foundation in Chennai) for training on LASIK.

After a fair amount of solving the ‘acquaintance questionnaire’, I mustered a little courage to throw the bonus question – one that had been hogging my mind.

“Is that very common in your culture?” I asked him with a lot of hesitation
“Sorry. I am unable to understand what you are referring to”
“Your Mom, well, just hugged and kissed you” I said very unsure of his reaction
“Oh that? It wasn’t common in our culture. But things changed after my father left us”

With that remark, he went on to describe the incident that devoured his father to a visibly shocked me. The top storey of the 2-storey home they owned in a part of J&K had been hit by mortar firing. On hearing the deafening sound, they had rushed upstairs to rescue their father. With the whole floor ablaze, rescue hadn’t been remotely possible. And they only had had sufficient time to salvage their belongings in the ground floor. Belongings – With their loved one gone, I wonder if its other synonyms are mere anonyms. That incident, according to him, had brought all members of his family – his Mom, his Sister and himself – very close to each other.

The picture of a sari-clad woman hugging her son and planting a kiss on his forehead was a sight I never saw at that time in the South (except, maybe on Television but it was always exaggerated for effect!). Coincidence is the word we use when we can't see the levers and pulleys. I couldn’t see any but the timing of this incident amuses me even today. The thought of leaving home for studies, after the home-sick phase was over, had given me an enormous sense of having grown up. I was thrilled, and confused at the same time, by all the independence and a very false sense of freedom. What I saw and heard during the first few minutes of the train journey shook me up. As the train and my confusions departed, a sense of clear pervaded my mind. I was ready to face the world and free to do what I wanted but without forgetting where I belonged and where I was loved more than anywhere else – Home!