Vagabond

The other day we were driving to Jallandhar for an evening out in town and trying to keep the children entertained, Aparna was reading out the story of “the Hunchback of Notre Dame” to Taruni. Somewhere in the story when Esmeralda the gypsy was being described, Taruni turned around and asked ‘What’s a gypsy?’

Well we kind of explained it to her that they are wandering people with no permanent homes and that kind of stuff and it suddenly struck me that ‘we’ were pretty much the same… I mean (using me as an example) I belong to Bangalore, having been born and brought up there till NDA. After that it been Poona, Allahabad, Bidar, Tezpur, Ambala, Pune (the name changed somewhere in between), Jamnagar, Tambaram (Chennai), Hakimpet (Hyderabad), Bangalore, Adampur (Jallandhar) and finally Bengaluru (I guess we got scared of the tag ‘we’ve got bangalored’). Of course not counting the countless TDs at Jaisalmer and Naliya and Delhi, etc. So that’s 10 places in the last 20 years and believe me I’ve had it easy.

So, on an average every 2 years I have shifted my base all across our country from the blistering heat of Rajasthan and Punjab to the body melting humidity of the North East. From the pleasant year round climes of Bangalore to the abrasive mugginess of Chennai. Though I’ve lived in places so diverse, and being fairly accommodative of different cultures, I have not been able to imbibe any of the local culture. I have been a Bangalorean and will always be. Though today when I come home to Bengaluru, I am a stranger in my own town. Honest. I used to get into autos in Delhi, strike up a conversation with the driver and he’d ask me where I belonged to, and he’d be surprised that I was a South Indian and in an auto in Bangalore, speaking Kannada, he’d be surprised I belonged here…

I think we (I hope I am not being too presumptuous by speaking for all faujis) are comfortable everywhere but at home nowhere. We carry around our fauji environs from Srinagar to Tanjavur, from Naliya to Chabua impervious to the place, the local dialect, dress or food. There’s this book called ‘The train to Pakistan’. It’s a vivid rather gory account of the partition and Khushwant Singh sums up the reason for the blood thirst of the displaced Hindus and Muslims is because they are uprooted not just from their land but from their identity, their roots. If it’s such a strong, primordial feeling, then why doesn’t it affect us? I went on a holiday to Wellington (Ooty) and saw so many North Indians, Punjabis, Sardars, UPiites, Biharis, Bengalis all settled down in the heartland of TamilNadu it’s amazing and don’t they feel marooned? But they still tenaciously cling onto the Defence Services Staff College crowd and the Wellington Gymkhana club, possibly their only lifeline to people and a way of life they can identify with.

Many years ago, when I went on a holiday to the US (I actually joined Aparna who was there on work), I was supposed to find her waiting to receive me. But because of work she got delayed. Those days there were no cell phones and here I was, at the huge San Francisco Airport alone in the US, my first time, not knowing where to go, what’s happened of Aparna, I should have been in a panic right? When she came almost an hour later, she found me reading a magazine with a sandwich and a cup of coffee having bought a calling card looking unperturbed. I guess I would be comfortable walking around in the exclusive designer stores of UB City as I am in the bazaars of Charminar in Hyderabad yet I would be out of place in both these places. Maybe that’s why I find travel so alluring, I am trying to discover myself. But I’ve read somewhere that the journeys within are much more difficult compared to the journeys without….