Journey to my paternal village

This summer I was in India. I had not been to my paternal village in a long time and decided to make the trip this time. Typically, when I am in India, I travel by personal vehicle. However, traveling by car on India’s new gleaming expressways has been making me feel disconnected from the land and people I am passing through. The new expressways feel unmoored from place and time, and I feel unable to taste the flavor of the land I am traveling through. In other words, traveling by car has been quite dull. So, this time I decided to travel to my village by public transportation.

It was a Saturday morning in June end with the temperature hovering around 100 F. I left home around 11 am and walked to the nearest train station. Near the train station, there was a breach in the boundary wall. I entered the train station through the breach and crossed over the train tracks. The platform was still a few hundred meters away and I walked along the train tracks towards the platform. As I passed some bushes, I smelled rotting flesh. I looked around and saw a dead dog covered in flies in the bushes. I felt a bit sad at its lonely passage to afterlife. I continued moving and got to the platform. I didn’t have change. So, I bought some juice, got some change and made my way to the ticket counter. As I told the ticket clerk my destination, he asked me for Rs.10. I was shocked. My paternal village is about 50 km (30 miles) from Delhi, and the train fare was just Rs 10 (i.e. 10 cents). Even a rickshaw from my house to the train station (the distance I had just walked) would have cost me Rs. 50 (50 cents). No wonder Indian Railways makes no money.     

Anyhow, I got the ticket, crossed the foot overbridge and reached the platform. The train station I was at is a small station. The express trains do not stop at this station; only the local passenger trains (commuter rail) service this station. As a result, the platform was full of locals from the adjacent semi-rural area dressed in the traditional attire. The older men were wearing dhoti kurta and the older women were in their Ghaghara choli. The younger men were in the now standard pant shirt while the young mothers carrying their babies in their arms were clad in sarees. 

The passenger train arrived. The usual mad rush of everyone trying to get into the train at the same time ensued and I hustled and bustled past the bodies into the passenger car nearest to me. Luckily, I spied a relatively vacant section and plopped myself on a seat. A young mother with a 10-year-old was sitting opposite me with two more middle aged gentlemen. An old lady with sunken teeth and wrinkled, weather beaten face, dressed in traditional attire came and sat next to me. She reminded me of my long-gone grandmother. The fan in our section was not working. Fanning herself with her dupatta, she quickly moved to another seat that had a working fan. ‘Bahut garmi hai’ (it is too hot), she said. 

The train started, moving forward at a leisurely pace. After a short while, I saw open land and farms passing by. A couple of vendors passed through the passenger car. One was selling chana daal (a snack), another one sold potato chips and bottled water. A female vendor passed through selling cheap, used clothes. 

The train arrived at the next station; a new batch of passengers got into the train compartment. A couple of middle-aged ladies made their way to my section. One of them said to me, ‘It is ladies’ compartment’. I was shocked,’ What?’. Apparently, there were so many men and boys in the passenger car that I had not realized I was in a ‘ladies only’ compartment. I gave up my seat to the ladies and made my way toward the door of the passenger car. The entrance area was crowded with several passengers standing with their luggage. I stood next to two college aged boys. They were talking about computer science. Apparently, one of them was doing his bachelor’s in computer applications. I started chatting with them. Their family was into farming, and they were going to the next town to get their pesticide spraying machine repaired. We talked about AI and its potential impact. The boy said, ‘People used to say in the 80’s that the advent of computers will lead to job losses. However, it did not happen. I think it will be the same with AI’. Clearly, the boy was way more optimistic than me. Aah, the optimism of the youth!    

 
Couple of stations passed by and the train reached my destination. I got down from the train. It was a small, rural station with practically no one on the platform. Beyond the station, there were farms as far as I could see. I walked to one end of the platform and made my way out of the station premises through another breach in the wall. A small dirt path led me to a metaled road couple hundred meters ahead. It was about 1:30 pm by now. Sun was right overhead, and it was scorching hot. The road was deserted. On the right-hand side of the road, there were some green crops covering the land. On the left side, the ground had been tilled but not sown yet. The brown earth was tilled into neat rows. I passed a canal. Apparently, the water in the canal had not been running for a while as the surface was covered in green hyacinth, and it smelled bad. A little further ahead, I heard a rustling sound in the shrubs by the side of the road. I looked closer and I saw the brown tail of some animal rushing to hide in the bushes. I quickly moved to the front end of the bushes to see what animal it was. I found myself staring into the eyes of a full-grown monitor lizard (locally known as Patda Goh). I had never seen a monitor lizard in India, and I was very surprised to see one. I scared the monitor lizard, and it ran to one side of the road. I tried to follow it but quickly lost sight of it. 

My paternal village was about 6-7 kms (~ 4 miles) from the train station. I still had some walking to do. This was the first time I was taking this route to the village. I saw an old man sitting by a tubewell and I asked him for directions. He told me about a shorter route, but I decided to take the longer route through the farms instead. I passed a gaushala (cowshed). It had a big, covered entrance, perhaps 8 ft tall and 12 ft wide. Past the cowshed, a couple of tractors passed me with the drivers looking askance at me, perhaps thinking, ‘who is this city guy walking in the afternoon?’

The heat had begun to get to me. I stopped in the shade under a tree for a few minutes to cool myself down. After another half a mile, I turned onto an old, broken-down road that went straight to my village. A boy and girl rode their bicycles on the shaded part of the path. On a nearby farm, a farmer was tilling his field with a tractor. His head was covered with a wet cloth to cool his head. The field was inundated, perhaps it was being readied for sowing paddy. I passed a woman clad in traditional clothes sitting on a charpoy (cot) in the shade by the side of the road. 

By now, the heat was getting too much for me. I would stand under every shaded tree I could find, rest a bit and warily eye how far the next shade was. I was going from shade to shade. I passed a tall, narrow, saffron hued temple with a flag flying at its top. Seeing the temple, I wondered where the cremation ground was where my grandfather was cremated almost 40 years ago. I could now see a boundary wall half a mile ahead. I wondered if it was another house or if it was the entrance to the village. 

As I made it to the outskirts of the village, I turned left on a brick paved path bounding the village. The boundary wall of the houses was painted yellow and a small drain flowed by the side of the road. I turned right at the next intersection, and I was in the village proper now. A house had an ornate wooden door. I passed a small path which was the old entrance to our village house. It was closed now. On the right was a white colored house with a courtyard and an open staircase. We used to go and get drinking water from their handpump when I lived in the village as a kid. Finally, I reached the new lane leading to our house. The surroundings had changed completely. There was a well just outside our door. One time, my ball had fallen into the well and my uncle descended into the well to get it. It was an event. That well had been covered long ago. Behind our house was a small pond. Buffaloes would go and cool themselves in the pond. If I remember correctly, my father learnt swimming in that pond. That pond has also been paved over, and more houses stand in that area. Our house itself had been redone completely. It used to be a semi pukka (not solid) house with mud covered walls. There used to be a wooden ladder with many broken rungs in the front yard and a big Neem tree that my father would climb and sit on. All of that was gone. In the changed surroundings, I could not quite identify our house. I finally called my aunt who still lives there. A door opened 2 houses down; my aunt came out and welcomed me. I was finally home.

Home is not just four walls, a roof and its surroundings. Home is a place where we feel welcomed and we find some peace and solace. It is a place we connect to. It is a place that roots us irrespective of how far away we go. 

I hope that this Thanksgiving you have also managed to make your way to your home. I hope that you too have had an interesting journey whether it was by train, sleigh or on the back of a bullock cart. I hope that you are at a place where you feel welcomed. 

Have a Happy Thanksgiving and may you find some peace and solace in the togetherness of home. 

Regards,
Kapil

P:S – Like years past, we are celebrating the holiday season with a $50 off on everything. You can use the code HOLIDAYS$50. The code is valid till Dec 31st, 2025.