Slivers and waves

Some places are like songs, like music. When you return to a particular location, it takes you back to when you were first there. The feelings all come rushing back. There is something powerful about the sheer mountains and the vast seas. 

At barely 22 years, I went to Pondicherry by myself. My first solo trip, if you will. I had always liked going to the beach before, but the Bay of Bengal by the Pondicherry shores seemed to pull at me. I have visited the place at least 8 times in the three decades of my life but I am yet to go back with my son. Something stops me, you see. The thought of going to Pondicherry as a mother feels different. 

A decade back, in 2015, my first international trip took me to Austria and Slovenia. First trip of me as a part of a couple. Vienna for the song by The Fray, and Before Sunrise of course, and Salzburg for The Sound of Music. Renju and Lakshmi added Gosau and Villach to the itinerary. Klavze 28 and Nebesa Chalets were wonderfully complementing experiences, but Gosau? Gosau had my heart. 

Riding into the Gosau village on the bus from Bad Ischl, with the pretty flowers hanging out the windows and the gently rolling landscape, all the cottages that sprung at foothills of the mountains on both sides of the road, the running stream with tiny, walking bridges over it, the sheep and cows grazing away lazily along, the little school kids who got on the bus mid way, the gentle ascent of the road further ahead and the final stop by the lake, Gosausee.

I remember being in tears by the beauty of what I saw. For many months to come, I choked whenever I brought back to mind the picture of the Gosausee lake and the pretty village. For years I held on to the feeling.

Since then, I have visited places more breathtaking and beautiful. The enormity and diversity of Iceland’s landscape still looms over the memories of the mighty Alps at Wengen-Murren. Switzerland’s beauty remains unmatched.

After 10 years of marriage, Aniruddh decided to bring me to Gosau again. I welcomed the idea of visiting Gosau as a family, to bring Kush to view the world through our eyes a little more. There’s barely a few years left before he hits his teens. So, for his 7th birthday, I agreed with Aniruddh to throw in another vacation for the calendar year instead of the customary birthday party.

Like I said, I have seen places where the forces of nature are raw and scary, and I know that there are places that are seemingly unbelievable still on this planet. But Gosau? Gosau still has my heart. Visiting again with Kush brought back slivers of what I felt all those years back. The innocence weaved between the waves of emotions surprised me.

One of these days, I shall brave a trip to Pondicherry as a family, with my baby, yes.

Heart Glass

This picture shows a small portion of the compound wall of the house I mostly grew up in. It bears the name of my grandfather on it. The builders to whom my grandfather sold the property to, left this intact when they put up the new building. No one knows why. It’s been like this for the past 2 decades, at the least. I have memories from that house I don’t talk about. My childhood, really. During my middle school years, I walked home from school after karate and basketball practice. Most of the kids at school passed by my house on the main road on the way to school and then back to their homes in the evening. On some days I waited for my parents to return from work, swinging on the black gate, while my grandfather looked over the balcony from the first floor. On others, I watched SWAT Kats and Ninja Robots on CN.

I barely add to conversations when someone is reminiscing about their childhood. As a young adult, I practiced forgetting to such an extent that I fail to bring to surface what’s inside my brain and out through my tongue. I’m tempted to cleverly use the phrase ‘Of Laughter and Forgetting’ here in this piece but this will have to do. ‘Identity’ was the first book, the first gift ever, that Aniruddh gave me. I don’t think I will read it again at this age. I haven’t finished ‘White Noise’ because I find the central preoccupation scary. The same can be said about ‘Em and the Big Hoom’. Today is my mother’s 4th death anniversary. 

I remember one evening in the kitchen in my old house, the same house from which the compound wall in the photo comes from. The lights are out and candles are lit, my mother is cooking dinner. I remember sitting cross legged in front of the small temple area within the kitchen and doing times tables. I think I was writing table 7. There was a faint light from the setting sun through the half-window above the sink, diagonally opposite to me. I can see the outline of the stairs of the house at the back, leading up to the neighbours behind the house. You could sometimes see people walking up or down from our kitchen window. I must have been 6 or 7 years old. 

Cut to about 3 years later, the kitchen is now converted into a bedroom. There is a lot more light coming in from the same high, narrow window. It is clearly sometime after noon. My mother is not with me now, she is either at work or resting in the first bedroom. I have the image of my father walking to the window to cover it up with a towel, hooking the fabric into the holes of the mesh on it. I am looking at this faintly, with my eyes barely open. He then proceeds to come to the bed I am on and lies next to me. 

My first memory of inappropriate touch by my father was when I was five years old. The last time he touched me was on the first day of my menarche. My precious son will turn 7 years old next month. Since he was born, I have witnessed how my words and my actions shape him. How his father’s, Aniruddh’s, moods affect him. A slight change in the tone of our voices and you can see the enormous effect it has on him, a young child. How they change the way he looks at himself and at the world. Things that happen to you and around you in your early years literally shape how your brain develops. Your personality is the result of your experiences, both present and past. 

Looking at that preteen girl as a third person, I can imagine and predict how her abuse will affect her adulthood. Being that preteen girl, I live through its effects every day. Understanding this in my mid-thirties is helping me re-path my thoughts, it is what encourages me to take what feels like a giant, heavy step every single day. 

I owe it to that little 5 year old girl, still inside me. I owe it to my darling son.

In all this, I am learning more about my mother, days after she has passed, than I learnt when she was alive. I can only imagine how much she kept to herself, and how it ate her away. I may not pen a ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’ memoir in this lifetime, but I do have stories to tell. One death anniversary at a time.