It is starting to sink in. The last weekend spent at home
before I leave for Russia. When you’re on the road at night with your windows
open, the cold, harsh breeze slaps on your face. It is stopped briefly if
another, larger vehicle overtakes you. I have often seen Trichy as the larger
vehicle shielding me briefly while I recovered. A place where I could stop
spinning like a wind vane in a storm and get my bearings right. A place where
Time stopped briefly, so I could catch my breath and continue running. This
break, however, seems like the calm before I start running a marathon. I do not
know when the next break is.
It is time I counted my blessings. This is not the post of a
soon-to-be NRI looking back at his years of idyllic bliss. This is not an attempt
at melodrama. This is not even to tell people how happy an upbringing I have
had or how better my city is than yours. No. None of that. This is for me to go
back to in moments of need. This is the emotional equivalent of saving for a
rainy day. In moments of loneliness, in moments of desolation, when the ground
I stand on seems no longer interested in bearing the burden of my existence, I
intend to go back to this and tell myself how blessed I have been. It is, in
all respects, a personal diary. It is a record of the bad days I don’t want to
forget and the good ones that I do want to remember. Having spent all my
childhood in one town and most of it in one locality, the memories are linear
and fresh. Random, lingering images throw me back to a memory in which the
image was the backdrop. The signboard rooted firmly and manured regularly by
goat droppings reminds me of the days I waited for the school bus. It still
stands right opposite the bus stop.
The white curtain with an image of Lord Ganesha shielded the
east facing Xerox shop from the morning sun. Yellowed, and patched at places,
Ganesha continues to protect the students making photocopies inside. It reminds
me of the day I first met a teacher outside the school premises and was so
excited that I yelled “Good Evening, Sir”, much to the amusement of the Xerox
shop guy. Outside the shop, Ganesha watched as my teacher told me sternly that
I was not required to wish him outside school premises and definitely not in
that loud tone. As I stand across the road, Ganesha asks me if I still get the
urge to wish my teachers if I come across them. I smile. I wonder if Ganesha
will still be around the next time I come.
The lane I used to walk on to go to my school in 5th
Standard is now a paved road. The newest house and the only one to have a
switch on the compound wall for its calling bell is now faded. Its mint coat
resembles a palette of Copper Chloride. The calling bell switch has been
disabled after a torrent of rain shortcircuited the wiring. I can no longer
ring the bell and run away before the occupants come. I wonder what kids
walking on the road do to keep themselves entertained. Have they also bought
into the newer means of entertainment that keeps your head bowed and down? I
don’t know. I partially relive the joy by pressing the now disabled switch,
knowing that nothing would happen. The old man who is walking in the balcony of
the house next door points me to the “To Let” board hanging from the porch and
asks me if I’m interested. I shake my head and walk on.
Further down the lane is another house. We used to call it
“Azhugachi Veedu”. A literal translation would be “House of Tears”. In a comic
book fuelled alliterative binge, we renamed the house to “Crying Castle”. The
family that lived there had an autistic child. Autism is a common household
word today, thanks to the many movies on developmental disorders. But back
then, we, including the elders, said the kid in the house was mad. “Mentally
retarded”, the more posh among us said. Every day, as we walked to school, the
kid would be in the verandah, bawling at us as we passed by. Not that he had
anything against us. He was just bawling and we happened to pass by. I can no
longer see or hear him.
I look back to see if the old man is still around. I see him
getting out of his house and locking the gate. He now wears a white shirt over
his vest. I walk towards him, and point to the house.
“For Sale, too”, he tells me.
“Do you happen to know the boy who used to live here?”
He puts a finger to
his temple and makes a circular motion, a universal sign for someone who has
lost their mind. I nod my head.
“Didn’t you know? He
died. It’s been 9 years. The family moved to the US. The house has been on sale
ever since.”
He sees the shock on my face. He reads the expression right
and the reason wrong.
“Yes, I know.
Shocking, right? That a house in this locality doesn’t find buyers? Now, that
one was put on sale 2 weeks ago. It has 5 parties interested. The seller is
holding out for a better price. But this one, people seem to think this one is
cursed. Nobody wants to buy this. I am the local broker, you know. If you’re
interested in buying a property, fresh or built, you can call me.”
He hands me his card. Another man who has found a way to
make money out of freely available information. I take the card and walk
towards the main road.
The building of a smaller school in the neighborhood has
given way to a pharmacy chain. There goes the backdrop of the day I stood for
an hour in the sun waiting for the school bus to take me to my 8th
Standard Zoology Practical examination. The school bus that never came. Typical
of a schoolboy, my trouser pocket had a Rs.5 coin, for a crisis. I ran all the
way back home, got money from my mother and took an auto to school. It did not
occur to me that had I waited at the bus stop, a public bus would have dropped
me 300 meters from school for Rs.3. I managed to reach on time. The practical
examination had me examine the head of a cockroach and identify its mouth
parts, maxilla, mandibles etc. and then make a diagrammatic representation (if
cockroaches had courts, I’d be sued for misrepresentation).
How much of a town depends on its constituents? The roads,
the buildings, the traffic intersections, the oddly clashing early morning bell
sounds of the temple and the cycles of the milkman and newspaper guy, the
inhabitants who bring life to the town in festival and flood.
How much does a town lose when each of this changes or
disappears? Are towns Ships of Theseus with newer parts constantly replacing
the older ones of their bodies? If so, how much does the town have to lose for
it to no longer be even remotely related to what it started out as and be
identified as a new one? Would my departure be another short-lived blimp in the
town’s lifetime or the proverbial last straw that takes away from my town its
identity?
Vanity dictates I settle for the latter. After all, it is a
small town. How unimportant could I be? That’s the best part about small towns.
Everyone is important. Everybody knows everybody else. The families, the
fights, the dreams, the disappointments, right down to the kind of rheumatoid
arthritis the uncle in the third lane is suffering from. Everything is known,
everything is discussed threadbare. Stories are woven, like peacock feathers
hidden in textbooks, with the expectation of newer plot elements in each time
the book is opened.
The other good part about small towns is that they’re, well,
small. If you were to attempt an “Around the Town before lunchtime” voyage, you
would very well be home before lunchtime. Phineas Fogg, the London bred
adventurer, never understood the concept of small towns and went around the
world. But we digress. You may be delayed by the appearance of a vaguely
familiar uncle who you last remember running away from because your sixer went
straight through his window. But fret not. In a small town, the uncle would not only take you home for
lunch, his wife would also try to add to her collection of gossip by showering
you with questions faster than the idlis can stop you from answering them.
Trichy is a special kind of small town. Like most towns
along the Kaveri river, it’s also a temple town. The Rockfort temple,
Thiruvanaikovil temple and the peerless Srirangam temple ring its periphery.
What this means for the small town Phineas Fogg is that there is abundant
supply of food. You simply hop from temple to temple. From the delicious
Sakkara Pongal that can bless you with diabetes and cholesterol with just one
helping, to the creamy Thayir Sadham, this town gives you all. Pardon the
gastronomic indulgence. But that comprises most of my childhood in this town.
I grew up in this town. When people refer to the townsfolk,
oddly called Trichyites, they refer to me as well. At least, that’s how I want
to feel. But I’ve not been a part of this town for a few years now. In and out,
in ever widening circles of spiraling distance. A few years in Chennai and then
a few in Delhi. Now, the spiral is widening again. I’m leaving the country. The
town is gradually loosening its soil around my feet. May be I’m a liability
now. Very unwanted. The truth is I’ve known it for a while. I’ve felt it more
than known it.
In the time between two visits, your hometown, like a child,
grows and changes face. You enter it, like a parent who has missed out on the
child's upbringing and tries hard to catch up. The child has changed and so
have you. Neither can recognize the other. And yet you try to connect, to
embrace. But the city does not. It knows. You will now merely come and go like
an occasional bout of flu. And like the flu, you are tolerated, not welcome.
Every time I return, the town has shown me a changed face.
Well, maybe not at the first glance, but to those who have grown with it, even
the slightest differences are a stark contrast. We tried discussing these
changes, Trichy and I, but the discussion went nowhere. I know my place now. I
no longer have a rightful claim. I merely plead, for the town to hold my spot,
and not have me replaced in its ship. I do not know if it will.
I bend down to kiss the soil one last time before my
feathers are spread. Dear Trichy, if I pass your skies, I ask only this much of
you. Offer me a smile, a smile of recognition. When I show you off to my
friends, do not be aloof. Do not pretend to not know me, nothing would
devastate me more.
