Trip No. 8; Nostalgia Time

The Eighth Trip, but a Personal One

Since about a year I had managed to persuade my family that we’d make the trip to Basar soon enough, postponing it every chance I got. But last week I was given a final ultimatum that no postponements would be accepted. I had returned only the other day from Ongole but I gave in. Though it meant skipping Abids we set off for Basar last Sunday. I had been to Basar nearly thirty years ago, when my dad took us there in a jeep. We had crossed the Godavari river in the jeep with its wheels completely inside the water. The jeep is an amazing vehicle. It climbed the steep gradient of the river banks without any fuss. It was then that I fell in love with the jeep which remains till date my favorite vehicle. It was the first vehicle that I learnt to drive. Every time I see a jeep my heart beats faster. But this time we took a cab.

One reason I wanted to go to Basar was that we would pass a town that held a lot of memories for me. It turned out to be a nostalgia trip. It was early morning when we started on Sunday. I was surprised at the super smooth highway with four lanes and snazzy grills on either side when the road passed villages and towns. The villages were cut off from the road. One of the joys of traveling by road is the opportunity it gives to pass through tiny villages and the pleasure of taking a momentary peek into their lives. But now, with the modern highway it wasn’t to be so. At some places the highway completely skirted places that were familiar to me- Toopran, Ramayanpet and Kamareddy.

After traveling some distance on the smooth, wide highway I realized there was something major missing. At one place we had to get off the highway and make a detour through a town. I realized we were on the old highway and then it struck me what it was that I was missing. There wasn’t a single tree lining the new highway. It was totally bare. The old highway had ancient banyan trees lining it on both sides giving shade and offering a pleasure that cannot be described. Each tree had its own character. All such old trees seemed to have been cut down and I could see the uprooted stumps of such trees. I felt sad that trees that were there since decades were cut down just so we could reach our destinations faster. It felt unreasonable but that is the price one pays for development.

Such wide, new roads also meant that the numerous, big rocks on the hillocks that dotted the landscape were also being reduced to rubble. The new highway was laid using the granite from those very rocks. This is a region where small hillocks with rocks abound. Everywhere I noticed rocks had disappeared and hills once big enough were now reduced to small mounds. This was a bigger shock, rocks that had been around since time immemorial and that gave the landscape some character, now turning into something we are treading under our feet on literally. Development extracts an enormous price that cannot be estimated in terms of anything.

At Basar we had a quick darshan in the temple before it closed at one. One feature that is becoming common in famous temples are the touts. Taking advantage of the impatience of people standing in lengthy queues, touts offering short cuts to everything have made their appearance. It was with a sense of unease I noticed well dressed, trendy (obviously, educated) youngsters opting for such shortcuts. Then there was the graffiti scribbled on the freshly painted walls of the temple. It marred the experience. I wonder why these vandals do such things, spoiling every historical place with their inane scribblings.

The highlight of the trip was obviously the boat ride in the river. The river Godavari, wide and deep flowed silently through Basar. We got into a boat that the guy rowed into the middle of the river. I noticed people putting leaf cups filled with flowers into the waters and releasing them. A girl rowed blocks of wood tied together with thermocole pieces. A lengthy rope trailed behind the boat. The boat guy said there was a magnet at the end of the rope that dangled deep inside the river. It was to attract the coins thrown into the river by those who consider the rivers holy.

On our way back home I decided to take my family to a school where I had studied when I was quite young. I wanted to see the old school at Jankampet where we would come from Nizamabad, five or six kilometers away, by a rickety school bus. Somehow things looked smaller now. Our school, Nirmal Hruday, a school for boys only, was now converted into an old age home. The grounds were bare years ago but now there were mango trees and crops. I showed my son the class rooms where I had sat. It was all eerie going back to a place after more than thirty years.

Then at Nizamabad, I showed my family the school where I had studied fourth and fifth classes before moving to the other school at Jankampet. I also showed him the house where we had lived. Every thing was as it was when we left thirty years ago. The government quarters where I spent my childhood was now abandoned and stood decrepit with the doors closed and weeds everwhere. There had been a garage for my father’s jeep, a dark place smelling of petrol and oil. Once I had put my hand through a gap in the gate and something bit my hand. I had to take some bitter herbal medicine for days for what our servant thought was a rat bite. I took a few snaps of my old home for memory’s sake.

It was an odd experience, this trip to Basar. When he saw my old schools and the house I had lived in my son asked me a lot of questions. Who were your friends? Where did you play? What did you play? He was quite impressed by the school in Nizamabad which was a big building amidst a vast ground. Now a junior college has been added. I was glad I showed my son the places of my childhood. I guess no matter how many times one revisits such places the original images are permanently imprinted in the memory and are not replaced by the new images.