living and leaving

The thing about having spent your childhood in a small town is that a sort of indelible identity, a signet, is left on your persona. This thing just pops up time and again like a turtle’s head.

Right now, I wish I were home, throwing out buckets of dirty rainwater. Come the monsoons and our house would be flooded on at least two or three occasions with a mixture of rain and drain water. And then all of us would get together with buckets, trousers rolled up, saarees folded, working in a frenzy. Sometimes, if we were lucky we would catch a fish or two. Mostly, kowoo maacha (Sadly, I don’t know its Hindi or English name).

I’m glad I lived in a small town for as long as did. Only then could I come out and appreciate the difference. It suprises me why we want to travel abroad, especially when we have seen so little of India. There’s a vibrancy, so unmistakable, in every nook and corner. As a part of the huge migrant populace that shifs jobs, hopping from here to there, but does not care to belong to the places it stays at, I have the chance to see things somewhat objectively, rather than be disinterested and stay as an outsider in my country of birth.

There’s so much to see. In Bandra, the other day, I eat the heavenliest malai ice-cream, then walk past ancient houses (like Sir Dorabji Tata's), with a burial ground in the middle of a residential place, into a small building that houses 5 theatres at once. It isn’t a multiplex; far from it actually. I then understand why the place is called "getty." Gem, Gemini, Glamour, Gossip, and Gaiety. English Gaiety is Indian getty. Like as a child what I used to hear as "septi pin" (safety pin) and "salu tape" (cello tape). Indian twists to English legacies.

The one screening “Flags of Our Fathers,” Gem, is no bigger than a spacious drawing hall. It is so cosy, like a Sunday afternoon movie at a friend’s. In the same complex, a Bhojpuri film is being screened (I forgot its name!). The guy beside me, on phone, in fluent English, schedules a meeting with a client in Bangalore and the one to my right speaks crass Bambaiyya Hindi. And both of them aren’t really disparate; just a similar kind of people caught in different situations. We, as Indians, stand for this dispersal within. An expanse of defining traits encompassed within each entity.

Where do I belong to? My fealty lies with finding this out. Nothing else is as riveting, as worth it. The other day, I bought a Lonely Planet guide to India and went to a recommended restaurant for lunch, book in hand. The lady opposite me, a firang, was leafing through the same tome. Both of us smiled at each other in the shade of a common ignorance, a shared zeal to discover. I realized then that I have as much to explore, more maybe. Because this is my country, and it is not enough if I just know it like any tourist with a travel book.