Aah, To be Back in One’s Village (Part 1 of 2)

The trigger: Aunty hung up the phone after being at the receiving end for twenty-five minutes. She started looking for me, and hailed, “I say where are you?”

“You have my ears, dear,” I answered - deliberately with a dear, unsure of the raised voice. Sometimes anticipatory bail helps.

“You recollect, we decided we would visit Kerala at least once a year?” “Very much, and we will, dear,” I persisted with the suffix, still clueless.

“And when is that going to happen?” “In seven months from now. We visited in April this year, dear, ” I helped her refresh memory.

It was that phone call from a family friend sharing her recent Kerala trip that had triggered all this. Whether her statements tallied with facts or not, invariably you begin looking for your duffel bag to stuff your clothes and set out. Such captivating accounts she manages to give.

Since both of us are committed to swalpa adjust madi, any earlier decisions of ours can be overruled rather than sustained. Thus we decided to undertake it now, not seven months later.

The hiccup: In our April visit Ragu-Padma’s suitcase fell off the train near Wadakkanchery station as Ragu, always in a hurry, brought his luggage a little closer to the door to be in time to alight at the two-minute stop at Trissur. Luckily the police retrieved an hour later, thanks to a Samaritan rag picker delivering it.

This time, for two reasons we were skeptical whether we should invite Ragu and Padma or not. One, if their earlier experience was anything to go by, they would long back have sworn, never again to down South. Also, it is unfair to remind them of an incident that they are better off having forgotten.

Second, our trip would be more to our villages (my father’s and mother’s, and Aunty’s father’s), pay obeisance to the respective deities there, not to speak of the adima kavu (specific Devi temples, normally within a radius of 50 km, to which each family owes its allegiance). None of these places would be of any interest Ragu or Padma.

Nonetheless, we asked them. Their response?  Not only were they enthusiastic, they insisted that we undertake the trip in Ragu’s Cadillac (read Honda City) car. “Your Hyundai Grand i-10 will be too cramped,” I wished he had just offered his car, but not made this comment. Anyway.

Division of labour: “This time the trip should have all the ingredients of a leisurely picnic, not traces of a touch-and-go relay race,” the four of us decided as we charted the trip with halts at Coimbatore, Guruvayoor and Palakkad. I would draw a detailed itinerary, take care of hotel-bookings, and arrange for a driver from the agency. Ragu will handle finance; and the ladies the knick-knacks – and, no doubt, shopping all through the journey.

Optimism vs precaution: With Kerala having faced tsunami-magnitude floods consecutively the last two years, I checked the weather forecast for the week. It predicted heavy rains in all three places for the entire week. Added to that, as a precursor a la “Beware of the Ides of March,” in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar before Caesar was assassinated, it began to pour in Bangalore too the previous evening. I shared my weather findings with Aunty only to be rebuked by her, “Don’t you have anything better to do? Time you learnt to be a facilitator rather than a stumbling block,” and listed the occasions when weather predictions went for a toss.

“Was it yet another instance of my misfiring knack, or Aunty’s misplaced optimism?” Did we do the right thing in undertaking the trip despite the weather warnings, more so with an unknown entity at the wheel finding his way through heavy rains with unattended or resurfaced potholes of last year’s flood that lay bare to take its toll? Or, should we better have cancelled the trip?

To be continued… Part 2.