The road trip...
A July Sunday morning.. drenched in rain and laziness. I whispered into her ears… “lets go to Shive, its raining..” She smiled and said okay.
A 1 hour 15
minutes away drive to a small piece of farm land we have bought is our favourite
get away from the fast paced city. On a monsoon day the drive is all the more
beautiful, with the landscapes changing in shades of green; names of which I
don’t even know in my limited vocabulary. We left the house at 7.30 am sharp
with the rim zhim happening around us, and a flask of ginger loaded tea tucked
in with me.
It was just
mother-daughter duo today. Without asking me a word, she connected her phone
and began playing Taylor Swift. I have begun to grow to like this singer,
though I find myself trying hard to get a hang of the lyrics.. really hard 😀, as the music I find quite repetitive. We are
blasting the music from our little car, whose one of the remaining assets still
being, “a powerful music system”. The rain is playing hide and seek and we are
enjoying it with whatever we are doing along with it – listening to music and
driving the car.
As we get out
of the city, the greens of the trees, the whites of the clouds, the transparent
water of the rains and the smooth breeze all seem to blend in together and do their
thing. I look at the expansive sky without any buildings around me, and wonder
how she can take in Taylor swift, AR Rehman, Honey Singh and all the varied other
sounds and music in together at the same time? How there is so much of inclusiveness
in the air .... the same air which gets divided with buildings, concrete roads,
instructions and just more words…
We reach our small little patch of land and one room structure that we have just built. Chai goes perfectly well with the surroundings! The pout photos with the awesome background of mountains and waterfalls is being taken by my 14 year old.
We easily spent over an hour there just chatting and absorbing the moment. Then like reiterating the umbilical cord connection, she asks “should we have Wada pav?” .. the very thought that I just had a minute ago! I smiled and said “yes… lets do it”.
As we go the
entrance of Shive village, the usual wada pav wala is just frying hot wadas..
We grab 5 from him wrapped in a newspaper. I call this fabricator who owes us
some pending work for over 5 months now. He has been evading our phone calls
and I finally connect with him and decide to meet him in person. We follow him
to his house, and see a little over 1year son, half blind wife and recovering
Dinesh who seemed to be not lying about his health situation. I try to take it
in writing from him, that he will finish the work in the next 10 days, which he
writes with shaking fingers. The anger which I had initially of him not
finishing the work for so long, just disappeared … Sunishka was standing next
to me as I was getting him to write the signed note for me, which she affirmed
was required action to be done by a witness!
As we got back
to the car from Dinesh’s house I realised the bag of mango and jamun seeds I
had collected through the summer; that I had brought along. I asked Suni if it
is going to be Taylor Swift again on the way back, and she confirmed,“ of
course”! Though as the music started it was Shilpa Rao singing .. ‘Badla hai
sara yu yu yoon' … from English Vinglish. I smiled and with every beat of the
song, we started dispersing the seeds away on the barren but fertile lands of adjoining
villages! When the bag was empty… we both had a huge left cheek to right cheek
smile and the feel good factor of giving back!
The drive to
reality was filled with desi vibes and beats. The rains had almost gone, but
the weather was still awesome. We stopped to meet two of our little cats who
lay resting at a small forest opposite home. We lost one fellow a year back and
we got the other one, this week last year. They both wanted more from life and
left us to find the ‘more’. They lay rested there in the medium that would take
them from this world to another….
As we bid them
farewell, I was telling Suni about the two new snakes my friends had released
in this area in the last month. As we spoke, Suni yelled… “snake…” A little
fellow just went past her leg in front of her and she had a heightened heart
beat, unable to relate how what we just spoke, came to reality 😀 .It was rainy season, and snakes were all out in the
open and we were literally were in their house…
Our A Star is covered with a layer of mud and dirt, which now had in it memories of a superb
morning of beauty, conversations, driving, music, excitement and .. bonding…
To many more
such drives ….:)
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