The Chronicles of India – the Katta, the Chai and the Bhaiyya

Each time I make a visit to India - my home - the one feeling that overwhelms me is joy. Joy of coming back to the place where I grew up, joy at meeting the people with whom I grew up, joy of meeting the people I love the most in this world, and above all, a joy of being in a place where your existence matters to somebody else.

This time too was similar – but yet, so much different. Similar, in the sense that, after a whole year, I was going back home. Its always a special feeling to see home. Whatever said and done, however much rent I pay, I’ve not been able to find a place in the US that can replace the image of “home” in my mind. And yet, as I said, it was different this time, in the sense that, I was coming back to a very changed atmosphere. It was as if, an external observer has come to see a very vibrant and changing landscape.

In this post, I intend to speak about the former, the latter I will leave for the next post.

Commonly, the preparation for a visit to India begins about a month or so in advance. It’s a wonderful time when the excitement slowly but surely reaches a peak as the day nears. The last couple of times I went to India, I was a student pursing my Master’s. Hence, it was a universally understood matter that I was broke J. This time however, I could not feign bankruptcy because I was going back after a year of working in the US. So naturally, I was expected to be Mr. Santa Claus-Datar (that’s a cool last name if you ask me J), and all the “chillar” in my family (a uniquely bambaiyya term meaning small change, here used to mean those amazingly small and cute kids in the family) wanted chocolates for the holiday season. So, my bags were loaded with chocolates, toys, racing cars and games for the kids. Then there was lots of dinnerware for the sweet aunts in my life, and gifts for all the near and dear ones. Boy! It had taken me a month’s preparation to fill up 2 large bags with 32 kg (each) and 1 shoulder bag with 15 kg of stuff. I mean, I was literally carrying more stuff than some beasts of burden!

The history of my travels between India and US has always been “dhamakedaar”. There was a time when my flight was delayed 7 hours in London when I and Samir literally traversed the whole airport to kill time. One other time, I reached New York JFK about 10 minutes after the scheduled time of my connecting flight. (This one time they had actually called back the plane and made them open the door to let me in J) and needless to say, my baggage didn’t make it. On another occasion, I reached Paris about 10 seconds before my connecting flight and they came to get me in a car on the tarmac, rushed me through security and then offered me a Business Class seat since my original seat was taken! This time too, the journey lived up to the expectations. As usual, everything began normally. The day was sunny (so no weather problems in the US) and an hour before I left for the airport, I checked British Airways website to find out to my amazement that BA had cancelled all flights out of Heathrow due to a heavy fog. Even the international flights were supposedly leaving with large delays. However, when I reached Heathrow, much to my surprise, I found that BA was able to navigate the fog with radio and they were leaving the flights almost on time. I hence, reached Mumbai on time, but due to the mess of this fog, they filled our plane with transfer passengers which meant that my bags were pushed in the deep (or rather deeeeeeeeeeeep) recesses of the cargo hold. It took my poor little bags 2 hours to come out on the belt into my eagerly waiting arms! J (The people milling around the airport had started asking me for directions thinking I worked there! J)

And then began my incredible vacation. Each time I go home, I think this was the best vacation, and each time the next one exceeds the earlier in the amount of happiness. Hugging my ma and dad at the airport after one year, seeing their sweet faces and their smiling yet tired eyes fill with tears of joy touches a cord somewhere deep within me. Very few occasions do that to a man, and this certainly is one of them. The feeling I have while resting my head on my ma’s lap and feeling that heavenly comfort of her hand caressing my hair is something I cannot transcribe in words. Sincerely speaking, one year is just too long a time to live without this simple joy.

The very next day, I met Sharmili and felt another happiness that I had lived a long time without. Just seeing her walk out of her office, barely able to conceal her smile, her perfume reaching me before I tell myself that this joy is real and then the magical embrace in which I always feel I can lose the whole world – its all an enchantment that carries the name of love. That weekend with her was filled with the happiest moments of my life.

All through this vacation, the one common thread that I can now see was that never, and I repeat, never did I spend a day alone. It was a month filled with endless warm moments with family, friends, relatives, neighbors – in short everyone I hold close to me. Talks with my dad and mum over endless cups of that wonderful potion called ‘garam garam chai’, an amazing two day stay at Samir’s farmhouse where me and my school friends met after 8 years and spent the night laughing and rejoicing over a game of cards, awesome food and even better memories, plenty of evenings spent chatting with friends on the Shivaji Park katta, a week at home with my daadi, ma, dad and my dear old caretaker (who came all the way just to see me) spent chatting like the good old times, with ma making all my favorite dishes, and savoring the best of Mumbai like bhelpuri, batata-vada, Natural’s ice-cream, missal and filling myself up with the awesome ‘ghar ka khana’…….. now that I think about it all, those days went by just like those that Lucy, Edmund et al spend in the magical land of Narnia. You can live an age in India and yet when you come back here, it is as if nothing much has happened.

Like Narnia, India too is filled with amazing and bewitching characters. There’s the ‘kaamwali bai’ who must fall sick when there are guests at home, the ‘doodhwala bhaiyya’ who must come late when you want milk, and extremely early the very day you have told him not to drop milk at your house, the ‘rickshawala’ who will line up in front of you when you want to go walking to your friend’s place across the road and who will refuse to even stop when you hail him to go to the railway station, the ‘paanwala’ who puts together the mystical and magical concoction of ‘paan’ which to me distinguishes India more than anything else (Sachin Tendulkar includedJ), the ‘policewala’ who will be waiting right around the corner when you are speeding in you car and is nowhere to be seen when someone picks your pocket in the local train. These characters are what makes India so very interesting a place to live in. I now understand what those four kids in C.S. Lewis’s book must have felt when they suddenly find themselves in Narnia after coming from their dreary world. While in India, you constantly feel alive. Something or the other is happening, and if you are not the one doing anything, then somebody around you is doing something that affects you. Yahan, har pal, ek umr jeeney ka ehsaas hota hai. There are local trains getting late, traffic jams making you listen to the tacky rickshaw jhatak beats on the stereo, crowds in the mall, queue for the movie tickets, grabbing that extra meetha puri from the paani-puri wala, running across the busy street to cross the road before the cars, waiting outside the restaurant for your friends an extra fifteen minutes and then showering them with gaalis, the amazing cacophony of honks used as communication media, the drifting aroma of coffee beans at King’s Circle as you stand in the afternoon sun in front of dingy stalls for low priced novels, the mouth-watering sweet-sour taste of rassam and sambar at Mani’s in front of Ruia, the fifteen minute wait in front of the thelaa at Dadar for arguably the best vada-paav in Mumbai, the refreshing salty breeze of the Arabian Sea at Chaupaati as you take a stroll with your beloved, a quick coffee at the ever crowded CCD, the mesmerizing aroma of incense at your favorite local temple, the neighbors ringing your bell to give you a bowlful of some dish they know that you like, the melody of the latest Bollywood hit playing on TV, a late evening ride on the bike with your friend and then a late night ice-cream at Worli Seaface, watching the latest Marathi stage play at the local theater and laughing your ass off at the silly jokes, standing on the corner holding a bursting bag of vegetables while your mom bargains with the bhaajiwaali, the sizzling sound of tadka at home as ma makes dinner, an afternoon spent hopelessly learning to fly kites with some friends, the mouthwatering taste of papad and achaar with your food, traveling in an ST bus bouncing on the road while going to your village temple, daadi’s scolding when you tell her you are not hungry at lunchtime, munching on Bourbon biscuits while having some piping hot chai…………..

I could go on forever and yet only describe the iceberg’s tip. That was how my time in the magical land of India was spent. And when the time came to open the ward-robe and step over to the other side, I sincerely could not bring myself to do it.

Yet here I am, back in the US, wishing I had a ward-robe on whose other side lay this enchanting land which I could visit when I wish to – or better still, stay on in my Narnia…