Writer Rani Rao Innes pens an insightful three-part story about the need for freedom and the desire for roots, exclusively for the readers of Unboxed Writers.
She could not believe she had missed her flight at such a time in her life. Her wedding was in a week. Most of her extended family had already reached Bangalore. Other relatives and friends would be arriving from different parts of the country, some from different parts of the world – and she was stuck in Bombay airport! The flight from Heathrow had been delayed due to fog and landed an hour after her connecting flight had taken off. Failing to get a seat on any other flight the same day, she’d called her best friend Maya who lived an hour from the airport. Maya had insisted she go back to her place for the night. The airline had provided accommodation but Maya wouldn’t hear of it.
Maya, who was also attending the wedding, was going to Bangalore the next day by train. Sapna waited outside the airport in the cloying heat, the panic slowly gathering into a knot in her stomach. She felt stranded and wanted to take the next flight back to London where all was calm, cool and collected in contrast to this chaos. Almost too calm and quiet in the rather sanitized order of her organized existence. She loved coming to India, but on short visits. Spending time with her mum was an annual tonic which charged her for the rest of the year. Her mum always knew best and Sapna knew her she was always there, occasionally looking over her shoulder, sometimes clucking when she didn’t approve of Sapna’s choices. For Sapna, her mother’s opinion, approval even, was important though she told herself it wasn’t.
In fact, she, at times, rebelled at her mother telling her what she should and shouldn’t do, although she had backed off a lot since Sapna went abroad to study and work. But the implicit approval or disapproval sometimes bugged Sapna. She wanted to be free to make her own mistakes, as she put it, and insisted she’d learn and grow because of them. Her mother had once asked was there a need to make all of those mistakes – couldn’t one sometimes learn from other people’s mistakes? Sapna had strongly disagreed saying that didn’t work for her. She had to make her own, even if she paid the price.
Now Sapna had agreed to marry someone who was essentially her parents’ choice for a husband. As she stood waiting for her friend in the overpowering heat of Bombay, Sapna wondered how this had come about. Had it really been her decision or was she influenced by her parents’ wishes and just happy to have their approval? Arjun was the son of their dearest friends. Sapna and Arjun had grown up as close friends. He had always been around as she was growing up, looking out for her and being there when she needed a shoulder. But they’d parted ways when they’d gone to different universities.
It was only in the last couple of trips to India that they had started spending time together again. It was like, they’d never parted. Although a young man of 29 now, he had the same boyish charm, the same dimpled grin that she remembered and the same gentle, warm eyes that could grow serious with thought. He also had the same empathy that used to send her racing to him when she needed that shoulder. She felt safe with him, and comfortable. They even shared the same sense of humour. He made her laugh. And he listened. Was that enough reason to marry someone? He did not set her pulses racing. And where was the lightning they spoke about?
For heavens’ sake, hurry up! Maya must be held up in traffic and there was no knowing how long she’d have to wait. Sapna found a little café selling soft drinks and chai outside the airport entrance. From that vantage point, she saw all the comings and goings, some amusing. She could almost tell which of the foreigners were arriving for their first visit to India and who were the more inured.
The first-timers looked hot and bothered, nerves frazzled. Sapna watched in sympathy tinged with amusement as the harassed foreign tourists reeled from onslaught of the pushy taxi drivers. The porters gave the visitors little chance to make up their minds which taxi they wanted – or whether they wanted one at all! They wrestled the cases from the hapless visitors and then, having victoriously wrested them, darted through the throngs to the taxi rank at great speed. The anxious visitors ran after them, holding on to their caps and bags, probably wondering if this was the last they’d seen of their baggage. But the cases and bags were deposited safely in the taxis, as were the owners. The taxis then lurched away shaking and jolting the contents, human and objects.
It must be a traumatic first experience of a new and very different country, Sapna thought. She knew the porters wouldn’t steal the bags, but the visitors didn’t. She empathized with their shock of arrival. Even she, born and brought up in India, felt the heat and noise oppressive after eight years away in a country as grey and cold as Mumbai was bright and hot, and colourful. Funny how she loved and missed this weather in the UK and an hour after coming out of the airport started finding it oppressive and unbearable.
She’d argue emphatically about all the wonderful things that India was. If her friends could see her now, sweaty, impatient and almost wanting to go back, she’d never live it down. She’d always ‘won’ her arguments about the magic of India, a lifestyle still clinging to the spiritual, traditional and family values. She’d conveniently forgotten mundane realities like the overpowering smells – stench of open drains blended with fragrance of multi-coloured garlands mixed with the aroma of samosas and chai. Could she now, after eight years in the UK, reverse her life-style and settle down in India? Could she give up the anonymity and the freedom of living away from ‘home’?
Finally, here was Maya waving wildly out of the window as her car drew up.
To be continued..
Rani Rao Innes is the senior partner and lead trainer of Link Communications, a specialized communications skills company based in the UK. She has regularly presented courses and training workshops for private and public business sectors as well as students and teachers in the UK, Belgium, Malaysia, Japan and India. She has also been active in theatre for 30 years and was the director of Canterbury Players in Kent for eight years.