A Day In The Life: Moving - 2

My parents were married in August 1980. My grandfather was in Sudan just before that, the next posting in line for him was Srinagar. His boss told him,
Dekho, being a South Indian you may not want to live in Srinagar, but that is the only vacancy just now. Your son is to be married, you take leave for a few months. I’ll sanction three-four months leave for you.

After the marriage, Thatha was restless, and unused leave is encashable. So he went to Srinagar, with my grandmother and their two daughters, one of whom went to school there then, at Presentation Convent, and the other, who had a Masters degree by then, had nothing to do at home till come next posting (Cuttack, in Orissa) and joining a B.Ed. and then a teaching job.
Thatha had promised Patti (Dadi) that he would take her to Srinagar when he got back from abroad. It was inadvertently prophetic.

The bulk of their saamaan was on its way, by long, winding roads up mountains and down them again. They had some ten-odd suitcases, and stood around at the busstop;
Saab, houseboat? Houseboat? Haan, saamaan hum le lenge.
Before they found the bungalow they later moved into, they lived in a houseboat.

God knows where they got water from, Anyway there was one tap... There is an island in Dal Lake. We were parked near the island. We were going to a Gujarati place to eat; after a few days a Kashmiri woman started to come and make roti for us, cook for us, on the houseboat itself.

Yesterday I bought a book of Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry. For a change, I found a book I was looking for in one shot. Telling S, I find that a Kashmiri friend of his had discovered the poet a few years back, and was ecstatic by this find.
What is it that binds us to our roots? I feel a rush of oldworld pride when I say we are Palakkad Iyers, makes me feel like I belong to some ancient clan, older than living memory, older than time and place can say. I feel a tug, like the tug of a kitestring, when I am home, in Lucknow; to fly away and be tied down.

As I crossed a bridge today, on the way home
Flying over a sabji mandi
I spied a kite
Stuck flapping dustily
between two wires, power lines,
And below me a train flew into my line of vision.
Symbolism washed over me,
a wave to drown in;
Patang-baazi is this:
Being stuck gathering dust
between two strings.

Thatha spent ten days in Jammu once, long ago. The river, he says, is cold; it comes from the mountains, from frozen peaks. And Jammu is hot in the summer. This is what you do in summer in Jammu, he says; you sit on the riverbank, buy a mango or two (there will be people selling mangoes right there, just for you; and you can take the office car and go with the Assistant Engineer for company), wrap it in a handkerchief and toss it into the river.
Cold mango, hot day.

I don’t live in the part of the city, or inhabit the world of patang-baazi, kiteflying. I am an urbanista, it seems.

I opened a book of poetry by Anurag Mathur, of all people; having read only The Inscrutable Americans, I was curious.

He who belongs everywhere,
Belongs, I fear, nowhere.
Where do I belong?

It's not a new sentiment. In 2006 or 2007, I was writing:

I belong everywhere
And so I belong nowhere.
Who am I?

Meanwhile, it doesn’t matter that much to me, in real terms where my family, “split establishment” lives, since I don’t live at home now anyway.

It's never a new sentiment; but a story only becomes your own when you've worn it for a while, broken it in, and had corns on your feet to remind you.