A trip down the memory lane

It had been a tiring day for me. I was a software engineer in a MNC in Bangalore. Our product was about to be released and work had been hectic. I was working for 12-13 hours a day. 12-13 hours a day along with the one hour drive through the endless and frustrating traffic would mean absence from home of 14 hours every day. As my car trudged on the highway, I spotted the sky scrapper buildings and the glass covered IT offices everywhere. Cars of the latest models and designs filled the roads. A peek into the cars revealed, expensively dressed, smart looking men and women either on phones or working on their laptops. I looked around again- bumper to bumper traffic. I sighed.

Release was scheduled in another 3 days. I would be free then at least for another 2 weeks. I sighed again - this time in relief. I logged into my laptop lost in my thoughts, when a mail blinked at me. My friend Priya was in Baroda the coming week - could I come and spend some time with her, she asked?

Baroda! I hadn’t been there for 15 years. I had studied there. Plus I needed a break.
I immediately booked my tickets.

I landed at the Baroda airport with my one year old daughter Nishka without much thought. The only thing that I looked forward to was spending time with my dear friend. But then I was in for surprises.

To start with the drive back from airport to my friend's house took "just" 15 mins. I had visited my friend’s house many times during my college days. But that day it looked more lively and beautiful than I had remembered. The house was a bungalow in a quiet locality. Flowering trees ran in veins in front of the house, and flowers of all colours fell in front of the house.

"Tomato, Potato waaalllllllllllaaaa.. !! Tomato, Potato leeee loooo !!" I heard a voice call out as I sat in the veranda eating the breakfast. I had to be dreaming. Do they still do door to door selling of vegetables? And just as I was pinching myself, I heard another voice, "Kabbaadi wallaa" I smiled. It was the newspaper guy announcing himself.  A while later I heard a "mooooo" outside the house. A beautiful white cow with brown spots stood at the door. Aunty brought out her green waste to feed it.

After a short rest, Priya, Nishka and me set out shopping - in her two-wheeler! I hadn’t been in a two wheeler for years and Nishka was travelling on the two-wheeler for the first time. She sat like a pro between Priya and me and giggled merrily as she felt the breeze on her face. She craned her neck around Priya to have a good view of the road ahead. To say that she enjoyed the ride would be a huge understatement...!

For sure, we shopped that day. But the highlight of that ride was our visit to the house I spent my teenage in. Memories and emotions gushed in as I saw the house. The house was a single storey independent home that had a huge garden around it. The house looked pretty much the same, but now there was no one living there. The garden around the house had grown wild and there were weeds and bushes all around. When we stayed there, there were 4 or 5 tall Ashoka trees in the front garden. Now only two of them stood there. I looked a little further at the huge veranda in front of the main door. I remembered how our cycles would be parked there- My brother's blue BSA SLR and my red. I remembered how my brother's bicycle was stolen one morning from the same veranda.

I went to the backyard. The kitchen was in the back portion of the house and there used to be a huge cellar beneath the kitchen. The kitchen had a wooden door that led into the cellar and the cellar would always be filled with water during the rains. I saw the sink in the kitchen garden. I remembered how I had heard my father cry in pain for the first time in my life. He had had a slip disc as he was lifting a full bucket of water. My heart choked with emotion. I turned around and saw weeds all over the garden where there used to be my mother's kitchen garden. I spent the next half an hour of our drive back in silence.

The quiet drive back home was exactly what woke me from my reverie. There were no honking cars and neck to neck traffic there. I looked around a little more. The roads were full of two wheeler traffic. No big cars. Mostly Zens, Altos and Maruti 800s. I looked at the people in them. They seemed happy. A few malls dotted the roads on which we were driving. No skyscrapers. All the major pizza, burger or cloth brands seemed to have established themselves here. Most of the roads were wide and old palatial buildings sneaked in through the huge gardens.

It had been only 3 hours, but I realized that I had enjoyed one of the best drives of my life.

Next two days passed in spending time with some old friends and chatting with Priya and her family.

As I sat on the plane on my way back, I reclined back and thought about my visit. People in Baroda lived in old style houses. Their houses were big, but their hearts were bigger. Their cars were not the latest model, but they were enough to drive friends around. Back home we had latest styled houses. We had the latest cars and mobiles and yet we felt a little outdated every 3 months. We seemed to be running but were perpetually stuck in traffic jams. We had posh houses but sometimes lacked the time to spend with friends.

I knew I was being a little too harsh to my lifestyle in Bangalore. But then I also knew that I needed to do some serious rethinking and put my life back in perspective.
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*Some names, place and incidents mentioned in this post have been fictionalised.