Recollections from my last visit to India

At home with nephew

Menu at one of my favorite hometown
joints taking liberties with spelling
Chinese & Singapore

Not to long ago I visited home which curiously in my case could mean any one of three distant places. It could be Nashville where I lived for almost four years and which is still listed as my “home of record” in my company’s database for my international assignment in Liberia. Alternately, it could very well also mean Liberia or my house to be more specific giving almost the same comforts of home and the place I retire to each night. I say almost to the house in Liberia because it’s just that…a lot but not all. My home in Belgaum where I grew up is still THE home and I say it with no disrespect to the other two locations.

A mud brick Bassa home on the way from
Harbel to Buchanan

Diamond...my watermelon lady!

It’s probably the cool of the laterite bricks, the clay tiled roof, the two giant Champaka tree in the front yards with their soothing scent and ever-present shade and where I have broken a bone or two or more likely my family that makes the place so special. In the future there might be more places I may call home and I am not discounting that one of them might actually beat Belgaum but for now it still rules the little matter of the heart.

An interesting design of a Bassa home with a
central section for cooking and lazing

I had promised my maternal uncle that I would be there for his son’s engagement in February and it sort of made sense as I would get to meet a lot of people I had not seen in a long long time. It’s quite surprising that my cousin decided to get engaged at a very early age (twenty one) and just to be clear to some of my non-Indian readers that it is no longer the norm in present day India although I might be on the other side of the spectrum here.

A farm house amidst
coconut trees

I hail from a small community in India called Savji, and notorious for being a little conservative and among other things getting their children married off early with more emphasis being given to being settled in family life and business rather than education. It’s especially the case for women. Although, I have to add that I sense things are a changing…gradually and thankfully for the better.

Farm houses owned by relatively well-off Liberians
in the bush

I had to get from my hometown to my uncle’s town but due to logistical issues I could not take the car which meant that the only option was to take the public transport. My brother volunteered to join me while the rest of the family would take the car a day later. Getting a tad nostalgic, my journeys as a kid on the public transport of India and chiefly the state transport buses was the place where I cut my teeth as a traveler. The long journeys on narrow roads in often crowded buses with several stops at villages along the way required patience and an ability to enjoy the ride be it by tasting local food along the way or by interacting with fellow passengers. As I travel through Africa now, I am thankful for those long and often excruciating journeys because the virtues learned then have helped me negotiate travel in a continent where moving about is neither comfortable nor convenient.

Walking through the farm lined with palm

Ah...my melons

Just to put things into perspective, it had been almost a decade since I last took a public bus in India. The construction of a four lane express highway, just as I was leaving India for my higher education in the US, coupled with the increased flexibility in spending in modern day economically burgeoning India meant public transport was moving away from the state transport buses towards more luxury coaches, air travel or travel in the comforts of one’s own car…or so I thought!

The journey was a little bit of an eye opener. For a ride that used to take a little over three hours at a time when the express highways were non-existent and the IT industry still nascent it took us five long hours to reach my uncle town. Along the way we stopped at the same bus stations which somehow seemed oblivious to changes happening all over the country. The structure of the platforms was exactly the same; there were still hordes of passengers waiting all over the station complete with the same stinky urinals. The people waiting on the platform were somewhat of a throw back too with several in their traditional garb that I hardly encounter now a days. It was like seeing the other side of India’s economic boom where things have not changed much, especially for the people who fall outside the rich and middle class category, and perhaps in some instances has gotten a little worse.

Plucking them out

Yep...I took all of them

It was late at night and just as I was feeling nostalgic sampling street food of yore waiting for the connecting bus when my brother pointed out a couple of commercial sex workers in modern western dresses walking about looking for business. As a kid traveling this route I had never encountered any but more that things having changed this was probably because I was too young to notice them then. Just then an incongruous looking Mercedes zoomed in and out of the station snapping me out of my nostalgic world.

Judging by her gaze, she probably
doesn't see a lot of outsiders

 We got to my uncle’s place after midnight and the next day there was more travel but it was through a rustic patch of southern India albeit in the comfort of my uncle’s air conditioned car this time. Gazing at the pastoral scenery and the simple life of the people I was left with an aching sensation of having traveled extensively in Africa but having hardly explored my country of birth.

Things have changed a lot in India over the past couple decades but there still are pockets that have remained relatively untouched and I hope I can explore my country someday before it all changes for better or for worse under the guise of modernization.

I have been back in Liberia for a while now as I write this it’s the summer time when my company’s rubber production is at its lowest which unfortunately does not look very good on the financial statements. The mercury does not rise a great deal here even in the summer months but coupled with the humidity it makes things a little sticky. Also past are the months where the Harmattan blows from the Sahara and gone with it are the cool but hazy winds. Summer time also means it’s the season of the watermelon and I have been gorging on it recently. A favorite pastime this summer has been to go to a rural farm and handpicking watermelons.

Getting some exercise strolling in the country size, eating organic food and supporting local communities by buying directly from their farm produce seems like a healthy and socially responsible (self righteous?) way of living. I have also been enjoying shopping in the local markets but I will elaborate more of it in a future blog.