Indian Affirmation

How DID I end up here?Or,more pertinently, how did I not end up here?I had been told the story many a time before–Brothers kill brother.Widow moves to South Africa in desperation,with my great grandfather,her son, in tow.Fast forward sugarcane labour,fast forward Apartheid,fast forward 1994,fast forward to twenty-something me.And so it was with genetic nostalgia that I viewed those masses of people at Kochi Airport,thronging for their luggage,ideas of order as opposed to chaos did not feature here–India just was.We left there by car and rode off into the darkened streets leading to the countryside.I could see the forms of coconut palms willowing against the night sky,alongside the road and far off into the distant horizon.The open road delved into ditches and rose over wide waterways that stretched for miles in either direction,and still in the darkness one could see the faint reflection of night in their still waters.Eventually that road gave way to a little enclave of tortuous little turns that rushed passed my window.Overhead,a mass of tumbled gnarled branches formed an almost perfect tunnel over our heads, their leaves illuminated every now and then by a lightbulb slung slanted over from adjacent tree branches.The outline of makeshift corner stores could be seen everywhere.The highlight of our trip was clambering onto a train headed south for the town Changanacherry,which I will always remember–watching canoe fishermen dart through the waters to earn their keep.The look and smell of the fish market (‘the more flies, the better tasting the fish’ I was told),those multitude of beady eyes glaring yellow at me from the mountains of ice,the constant noise and colour and chatter, and all manner of man and beast living off the land that they shared,and the land that itself, was alive with colour,vibrancy,dust and delight. Order,chaos,rationale,time;it seemed to all come to naught here,at some default setting of my soul.When the time came to leave, we set off sadly back to the airport.And just as they had come, the lights, sounds, twisted little roads and make-shift make-believe corner stores, flanked by open fields and coconut palms, faded fast into the night and memory, where foreign tongue and new found friendships lay.Leaving was painful, as if tracing back some genetic memory, of a time long ago; when friends were few, life was fickle, and the sights and sounds of India,rushing through an open window, were the only reminder,of a family leaving their home.