Motherland

I guess they figure I'm just like the Australians or the Europeans that filter through backpacking around. Indians I meet smile and say nice things and ask me if I'm enjoying the country and if I've seen the Taj Mahal. As if I'm from outside, from bahar. Sure, it is a bit unsettling. The more I think about it, the more I'm grateful that my aunt entertains my India-travel ideas. Around us, no one is bothered about the time. People relax on their berths or against the straight-backed seats.

The first time I see the swinging door I feel my heart in my throat. Then it relaxes as I see a green panoramic blur. This scene on the second-class train makes me stop, two feet from the wide open door of our train, two feet from certain death. A polished sun warms us, the passing landscape and me, as the train plugs forward sleepily, its passengers knotted from ropey beds.

An Indian man's silhouette fills the void of the doorway as he smokes a beedi. His heels are on the train and he lets himself hang out, outside of the compartment. Dark eyes trace the valleys and hills in a familiar, tender sort of way. He seems to harbor no compassion for any human being, but to love these pastures of green square fields as if they're his own children...

"Did you find the washroom?"
"I found the washroom all right. Nevermind I found the door, too."
Abha masi laughs.
"Why don't they keep the compartment doors closed?"
"Because the village people ride."

The method takes me by surprise at first, locals jumping on and off as we approach the smaller stations. But soon I am compelled to investigate the moving landscape. 'Not scared you'll fall out, are you?' I hear a clever voice behind me. Lulled by the brown uncut hills and something quick behind them, I hold the doorway in the way I'd seen it done and place my heels at the floor's edge to lean outside. A harvest of sun-kissed winds warm the goosebumps on my skin. I feel them skate across my forehead, whispering in my ear.

At the gate to Udaipur's City Palace we drink Thumbs Ups from green bottles with straws.

"If I had twenty days, you know, Dipi, I should see the palaces, go boating."
"I was thinking the same."
"Very good."
"Might I stay here and continue on my own?"
Of course, she is worried.

"You are young, and unmarried, and India is not safe to travel alone, especially for girls. Your grandmother will be angry with me, as will everyone at East of Kailash. And your mother," she cringes, "She will have my head."

But I know she hears me and so she concedes.

Twenty days later, I wait by the taxi stand as inconspicuously as I can. Wearing Indian dress. Trying not to stand apart from the crowd, lest my navy-coated passport slip and give me away. Old Delhi station, stocked with brown chai stands and peopled with a familiar, even hum, turns over sleepily this afternoon.

I lean upon an iron railing. A white Maruthi pulls around and I see my aunt before she finds me. She embraces me like a sister, a friend misplaced for years. Rickshaw and taxi drivers back away to clear a path.

"You're not tired?" she says.
"No. I'm glad to see you."

At a chai stand in Chandni Chowk the fingers of the sun spread low across the steps to Jamma Masjidh. Saris outside shop windows gleam and I listen to the chatter of buses and cows and rickshaws. The things I studied don't belong here. Heat-transfer equations. Kirchoff's laws. Yet I've found a new course of study in the Rajasthani landscape. The source of the voice that rides the wind to America is here, and I know it is her energy that vibrates within and sustains my very marrow.

Dipika Kohli is a freelance writer and owner of Design Kompany, based in West Cork, Ireland [www.design-kompany.com].

The article previously appeared in the fall 2001 issue of the Abroad View magazine.

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