Mulki

Whenever we traveled from Chennai to Mumbai, I would ask for the window seat on the train. Renigunta, Guntakal, Raichur, Solapur. These unfamiliar names were like chants, potent with possibilities. How long will the train stop? Will I be allowed to get down in one of these stations to fill water with pa? Or will I be allowed to take a stroll along the platform, like the adults sometimes did?

I am unsure when it started, but I would make an important choice peering out of the window as the train chugged on. As we passed the rugged landscape where boulders and rock hills grew like an untended garden, I would assess every hillock and choose. The decision usually was made when the train slowed down for a signal and I had more time to absorb a rock hill’s shape. After having decided on a rock hill I would try to commit it to memory - between this station and that. Near that coconut tree that curves like a bent arm. Right where there is a blue coloured pole next to the railway track. I had to remember right, for that’s the rock hill I would live on when I grew up.

Once I decided, I would start imagining how I would make a house on top of it. The house would be a tree house — a tree or a group of trees where I would live in, eat the fruits off those trees, and read those books. As the train jostled on, I would watch the landscape without really seeing it, for I would be busy imagining my life on that rock.

Once a cousin, who was a little older, was traveling along. I pointed the rock hillock I had decided upon to her and told her that’s where I would live. She laughed. She said that’s a lot of land. You have to buy it - you have to earn money and have a contract.  My mind voice did a little grrr, while my face arranged itself, pretending to be unaffected. Perhaps, that was around when my training first began — mind voice says one thing and face says another. Don’t argue. Retreat into the tree house of my future and munch on fruits.

Is that what it means to be a romantic? You can retreat to a world without sale deeds and salaries. You can live in a home trees made for you, and there is always a book at hand. And when you see a board announcing the name of a station you have never heard of and it catches your eye, you promise yourself you will be back here someday, and perhaps, even live there. Who knows.