ONAM IS A BUS RIDE...

Onam has its sights and smells. But if you ask me what is that single most memory about Onam that pops up first, it would be the bus ride from my city to the village-turned-town where stood my Achan’s house. That’s how Onam begins.

As the bus winds its way cutting through the misty August mornings, my entire being gets soaked in the anticipation of good days lined up. Sitting by the window seat, I catch sight of the familiar name boards. A crumbled house on the side of the main road always caught my fancy. Shops carrying my name. A May flower tree that stretched its branches to the middle of the road. A playground that shrunk in size every time I passed by. A bend that opened up to a scenic mountain on one side. And a curve that always made me shoot a prayer upwards as I looked at the stream below and saw how the wheels of the bus missed it by inches.

It  was a ride that soothed me. I looked forward to the bus ride to get lost in my own world. I saw no one boarding or getting off the bus. Once in a while, a child’s cry would bring me back. Else, I remained enveloped in the company of my thoughts. Now, that could be anything. The one year that flew by. The friends, the times, the conversations, the adventures, the many occasions when my heart skipped a beat, the phone calls, the school and later the college. Anything and anyone.

It was a ride that often disturbed me too. That part of a much-familiar house, brought down for renovation, unsettled me. Why disturb memories when you could build a new house? Have the children in that house all grown up and parted ways? Is the mother dotting an empty nest? Don’t they miss that mango tree and the swing on it and the times they touched its branches as they swung upwards in glee? I had too many questions.

It was a ride that spoke to me about the times that had changed and was constantly changing. The tide that was washing up on my shores. And the old ones that left no marks but a few dents. Every year, during that bus ride, I would suddenly get a clear idea about the workings of my mind. How it circles around an incident or a person. How much I do not want certain changes and how I long to throw away some into the past. It just sets the right pace for the ten days to come and the many months to follow.

 And what ten days they were! The sumptuous sadya, cousins, the sleeping together with them on the floor on large bed sheets spread across the big dining hall, the numerous pranks we played with each other, new dress, goodies, the scent and flavor of village life, fishing with bottles and towels, running through the rice fields, the love showered by old servants, the neighbours and relatives who met only at this time of the year and the delicious snacks made and stored in large  tins to last the entire season for the nearly twenty children that we counted.

As it goes, nothing lasts forever. With ammumma gone, relatives relocated and the ancestral house now abandoned, Onam remains a sob and a throb that keeps reminding me of old times gone by. Most of all, the bus rides in those misty mornings. Like the get-togethers, the bus rides are no more. Probably, why I can’t read my mind clearly now. Every time Onam is here, I long to board a bus and talk to myself.