There are three kids in a dinky car driving down East Coast Road. One calls shotgun, another DJ. They laugh loudly at silly jokes, stick their heads out, and speed past large farmhouses and rows of trees. They own the road. All their demons look smaller in the rear-view mirror. The first glimpse of the pale blue water and a catamaran’s silhouette in the horizon is thrilling. All this, set to an Ilaiyaraaja song as background score.
This is my memory of the drive. I am not sure if this is exactly how it was. Was this my imagination? Or just a nostalgic hologram projected on my mind? I have often longed for that feeling: driving out of Madras, leaving the city behind, a city whose streets I know like the back of my hand. A city, where I have often thought that if I mute all the sounds I’ll surely hear the sea.
Blind date
Then one morning last month, a WhatsApp group named ‘Reunion’ was formed with the same three kids, but 15 years later. An impromptu plan was made, and before we knew it, we were on the same road, on our way to Puducherry again. We had no big plans, didn’t know where to eat, what to see, or the things to do in Puducherry. I didn’t even Google the place where we were booked — I just left home. I did, however, make a playlist of songs for the drive. I was DJ.
As I was landing in Chennai, I had thought to myself how I sometimes forget my friends’ faces, but never the sound of their laughter. I just have to close my eyes and can hear that sound clearly.
As we set out on the drive, I couldn’t help but notice how all the places that seemed so large back then seemed to have shrunk. The VGP Golden Beach gates seemed smaller. We looked for the big moustached man in the costume who used to stand statue-like at the entrance, sword in hand. MGM, the amusement park where we would go on the same ride two or three times just to feel a little more dizzy, seemed tiny, like a children’s playground. The Cholamandal Artists Village, which I used to fantasise was a utopia where a lucky community of artists lived by the sea and painted all day, looked small and blurry as it whizzed by. Do places shrink as we grow older? We agreed that they did.
We stopped to buy hand-woven wire baskets in the brightest pinks and yellows. The same colours as the saris of women in village paddy fields, colours of mittai (candy) pink and kili pachai (parrot green).
We stared at the backwaters and drank tender coconut water fresh off the tree. We took selfies and swore we would click a Dil Chahta Hai photo of the three of us before the trip ended.
I’m the invisible one on most holidays, the woman with the camera. This time, there was a lensman with us, so we got beautiful frames with all three of us.
We did nothing planned that day in Puducherry, we walked a lot in any direction we picked, admiring doors and textured walls and marvelled at how light changes everything. We wandered into a beautiful French villa where women were embroidering as they listened to Ilaiyaraaja songs. We watched a movie at the local theatre and remembered that the last film we’d seen together was Shankar’s Mudhalvan , first day first show. Now, one of us was cinematographer for his latest film — a quiet fist-bump moment.
The little things
That night, we sat on the rocks of the promenade and watched the full moon rising. We wished there was a powercut so we could see everything bathed in moonlight. We remembered how during some of our drives we would turn off the headlights just to see the night. We realised you forget things about yourself. Little things. The you before you. The you no one in your life now may know or recognise. We remembered these prior things about each other. Childhood friends know you the way no one else does, like siblings and parents, except they were privy to your uninhibited self. We went back to being kids, without realising it. We lay down our arms. Dropped pretences.
On the last evening, we took a boat ride to a quiet beach. The sun was setting and the seaside was strewn with dead fish and sea shells. We found a perfect starfish, so perfect even the fisherman remarked it was unusual. On the drive back, I thought to myself that it was as if nothing much had really changed, we were still three kids in a car driving down the coast road. Ilaiyaraaja still rocks and we still laughed the same way. Just maybe not as often as we used to. I promised myself we should meet again soon. Just for the laughter.
The writer is a cinematographer, the non-bearded variety, and is called ‘Cameraman Madam’ on the sets.
