The greatest part of every trip is the great story you get to tell back home. This story is one of adventure, of all those childhood games we played, way back when we were children. This is a story of discovery that in my private space would trump the Swiss Family Robinson or even Columbus and his New World.
The holiday destination was Orange County Resorts in Kabini — a town that rests in the mouth of all things green and wild that is brought to it by the Kabini River. You wake up with the smell of spring that is round the corner and the call of the bird that found the worm. It was the generous bosom of luxury in the outback, one so expansive that it would take an Arab perhaps three months to cross on the back of a camel.
The wild is not for everyone, especially when you condition yourself into believing you are a city brat. So true to the lives we left behind, days one and two were spent in the decadence of hot cocoa and multi-cuisine buffets, peppered with wildlife safaris and nature treks, just to get that right balance of Mowgli meets Mean Girls. And nobody was complaining; it was a holiday now, wasn’t it?
But then comes the turning point — essential in every story. The point this story turns around is where one of our own decides to go cycling at the break of dawn. She violated every single ethic and code of the sisterhood holiday which up until then revolved around breakfast in bed and lounging by the pool. So resentfully we co-operated, followed suit and found our bottoms on saddles at 7 a.m.
My feet found its space on the familiar pedal, and at that moment I was either a prop in a magic trick that involved overstepping boundaries into a past generation or just stuck in a perfectly orchestrated time warp. I pedalled into the countryside like I had never been away. It was summer holidays in the village, spent under the shade of the Casuarina, on the summit of the Pipal and swinging on the Banyan. With the familiar smell of barnyard animals and the boiled sweets that were perpetually tucked in one cheek, I pedalled. I pedalled to make up for all the time I had lost and to remember all the times I had forgotten. And my band of merry women followed.
Along the road we found a track that led away from the road into some distant unknown, and we followed it. We rode past the cows, Brinda and Gopi, who we knew from a forgotten Ramanujam poem, and fields of sugarcane and sunflower. The path narrowed and the grassy terrain became the slush that was left over from the rains. We dropped the cycles and continued, wiping the sweat of the morning sun with the backs of our hands.
The path curved, and beyond the curve and the barbed wire that stood before us was the river bank in all her magnificence and we stared in city-bred wonder. Through all the safaris and nature treks we were the outsider; we watched the spotted deer through binoculars and took pictures with digital cameras. But this time you are a part of the picture, it finally felt that each of us as an individual contributes to the glorious whole of nature.
This is the story that I told back home, the story of revisiting a memory. Like a black and white photograph that gets oxidised with being tucked away for too long, the picture was patchy, but never forgotten.
