farfromeverythingexpected

1. You end up clicking a lot of photos of your feet.

2. You learn to trust strangers because at times you and your backpack won’t fit into the enclosure that is the toilet (without bringing the walls down).***

3. You struggle with a plate of pakoras. With friends, the plate is wiped clean before you can capture it on camera.

4. There is a lot of pressure to introspect. Like, ‘I am struggling with a plate of pakoras…if I were with friends…’

5. Alone in a room in some remote part of Himachal the phone—whenever there is network—seems like a wondrous instrument.

6. With new friends and nobody to correct you, you stretch your stories.

7. You make friends that much quicker.

***29 DECEMBER 2012 (the day the 16 December Delhi gang-rape victim dies): The bus stops at Dunera, a sleepy village in the Himalayan foothills. The conductor shouts out it will be a 15-minute halt. I am asked by an elderly lady, also travelling alone, if I want to go to the toilet. I did not have to—I tell her so. When she looks disappointed, I offer to go along. I know the drill since I have often done it with the women of my family. Somebody has to stand guard outside and also hold the handbag. So before she enters a door leaning on its hinges I ask the lady for her handbag. She hesitates for a brief second and hands it to me. She knows she has little option but to trust me. When she goes in, my attention is diverted by a little boy’s antics. The boy seems to have a dead bird in his hand, a parrot. He is holding it upside down and very delicately washing a part of the bird’s body. On closer inspection I realise that the bird is still alive, just very resigned to the little boy’s whimsy. It did not think it worth its energy to put up a fight against the chilly water of a late December morning. Curiosity gets the better of me and I ask: What are you doing? He replies, very matter-of-factly, that he is washing the parrot’s dirty feet. He must have often heard his mother asking him to keep his feet clean. He was passing on the personal hygiene lesson to his pet parrot. And I soon realise that he is not a sadistic little nipper who takes pleasure in torturing mute beings. For, after giving the parrot a foot bath, he gives it half of his guava. That must be quite a sacrifice for a little boy. I must say he is bringing up his parrot very well. The lady has come out of the toilet and is visibly relieved to see me. We quietly make our way back to the bus.