Wedding Bells And When Nostalgia Dwells On The Banks Of The Broad Brahmaputra

This post, believe it or not, has been almost two years in the coming and, as I was reminiscing with my mother of how I almost didn't make it to the Gauhati wedding, I thought it was high time I wrote about what was a very emotionally charged time for me...
The invitation came on WhatsApp and as I had always sworn I would attend this particular wedding when it took place, I was all set to buy my airline ticket and I mentioned this to my daughter over a phone call. But my departure coincided with her arrival for her visit home from college, for the December break, for the very first time since she had left. She pleaded with me to not go, as she wanted me to churn out all her favourite food from my kitchen. Since my children were born, I have stopped gallivanting around the globe without a care in the world, and this would have been a first for me but I gave in, albeit with a heavy heart...I decided not to buy my ticket and stay at home and cook for my daughter instead. A week later my daughter called up (a more mature sense seems to have prevailed!) and said, "Mom, please go, we will manage..." My joy, in a very cliched manner, knew no bounds and I immediately asked my Dad to do my bookings, as Indian web sites were showing better rates when accessed from India, for what would be nearly a twenty four hour journey from Nairobi, as I would be travelling to the North Eastern part of India. Sadly, my super tech savvy and pro at online bookings Dad messed up one part of my multi sector booking, giving me the very first indication that all was not well with him... It was during this trip that I went home to Pune for a few days, after the wedding, and saw first hand how fast his health had deteriorated and I pushed him to get tests done, followed by subsequent hospitalization, which bought him some more time on Earth...Bottom line, if you think something is wrong with your own, your partner's or your parents'/ in laws' health, it usually is...Follow your gut, don't let denials from them (or yourself) cow you down.
But I digress. To get back to the wedding, and why this visit was so important for me, I need to go back more than thirty three years.
10th July 1986: The day that we had been anticipating for long had finally dawned. My Dad had been posted to Gauhati in Assam and it was time to bid goodbye to our beautiful colonial bungalow in Pune and to our dear Army-family neighbour and her two daughters. I still remember Ruby Aunty, illuminated by the headlights of the Army jeep that was to drop us off to the Railway station, tears glittering in her eyes, as she held her two young daughters close by her side, along with a plastic bucket my Mom had given her at the last minute and which she had insisted on paying for...All our trunks with our household items, books, toys, our car, bicycles and my Dad's motorcycle had gone on ahead much earlier and all our personal items were to go with us in a few suitcases, accompanying us on a journey which would take four days and three nights and two train changes, to a place we had never seen in our lives. Such is life in the Army but it does foster life long friendships!
My sister and I had been eagerly awaiting our first glimpse of the mighty Brahmaputra. My mother had told us that it was India's broadest river and at some places you could not see the other bank if you were on one side! I put each river, whose bridge our train trundled over, through what I call to this day, the 'bank-visibility test'! We spent nearly three very amazing, books and great friends filled years in Gauhati, a beautiful, rain drenched really green city, though a sleepy little hamlet then, in comparison with my comparatively huge home town. It is a testimony to the deep and abiding friendships we formed then, that we had remained in touch with all our close friends for more than two decades, by snail mail, as FaceBook and WhatsApp came into our lives many years later. The bride to be had been my mother's student in Nursery school in Gauhati and they had visited us a few times in Mumbai and Pune over the years but we had never made it back to Assam. The time had finally come and my mother had landed into Gauhati a few hours before my fourth and final flight touched down, nearly a day after I left Nairobi, which was nothing compared to the four days it had taken us from Pune, way back in 1986...
1st January 2018: The first shock came when I popped out of the airport, ( the same airport that I had taken my very first flight from in 1989, when I left Gauhati), and I saw a KFC outlet with Colonel Sanders looking straight at me. Since the airport had been practically next door to my Dad's Army unit, the only army officers I had ever seen in the vicinity all those years ago, were him and his colleagues...Well, it looked like globalization had not left this once pristine corner of India untouched.
I had told our hosts, (the bride's parents, both professors and Heads of their respective departments at Gauhati University and both also from my Alma Mater, Deccan College, Pune, who incidentally also happen to be on my personal list of my top favourite people in the world), not to bother to send anyone to pick me up and I could take an Uber, as I knew the road to their house like the back of my hand, considering that our former school was in their neighbourhood. I had spent three years going back and forth everyday, on that very road. They disregarded my request and sent a kind colleague to pick me and it was a good thing they did, because a whole new by pass had cropped up which I had known nothing about. It hit me then that nearly thirty years IS a long time...
Anyone who has ever attended an Indian wedding knows how quickly one gets enveloped by the warm and welcoming atmosphere. Old memories get a new life and lots of new friends are made and how do you know the bride/ groom stories are exchanged over multiple cups of masala chai (spiced, milky tea) and Indian sweets and savouries, a staple during weddings, even as everyone pitches in to help as much as they can. Women resplendent in sarees of the most vibrant hues and since this was Gauhati, women draped in Mekhela Chaddars, (which is the North Eastern variant of the saree), of pure Assam silk, with the most intricate embroidery, were at the wedding and it was a visual treat for my eyes. As a pre teen, all those years ago,  I had never realized how eye catching this garment is and how beautiful the women looked in it...Wedding songs rent the air and the smell of henna and fresh flowers permeated everywhere,  mingling with the aroma of all the delicacies especially cooked for the wedding. Glass bangles in all the colours of the rainbow tinkled, gold and diamond jewellery added lots of bling and bindis adorning foreheads twinkled brightly. I was so glad I was able to attend this grand wedding ceremony. I had known the glowing bride since she had been a really tiny tot and it was a pleasure to see her on her big day. The groom was a Canadian boy, so every Indian ritual had to be explained to him and his friends who had accompanied him from across the Ocean and that added a lot of fun and camaraderie to the event. The bride's girl friends from Canada were all dressed in her generous mother's sarees for the wedding reception but they carried off the outfits so well that it was hard for the rest of us to believe that they were wearing Indian clothes for the first time in their lives! The added bonus was that the main wedding day was also my birthday, so I got to celebrate it in Gauhati after twenty nine long years, with my mother and old friends and new!
Two of my new friends have already visited us in Kenya and we, in turn, have been invited to their home in the United States. It was also great to connect with our hosts' house help who had been with them all those years ago when we were kids and she had been slightly older than me then and now was the mother of a smart young son.

                                                                     Wedding Hues

We got a bit of time in between the celebrations to indulge in a bit of nostalgia. My mother and I walked the roads of the suburb where we were staying. We used to pass this junction every day on our way to school and back but could barely recognize it now, due to the numerous cars and bikes that kept traversing it. This was where we used to halt once a month after my mother, who used to teach in our school, got paid and she used to buy buns for all of us army brats in the Army Bus! Sadly I could not find the bakery but even today the whiff of freshly baked buns takes me back to my Mom's pay day in Gauhati...I remembered a store called Paragon which, to this day, has me hooked onto deep fried white chick peas but I have never eaten any to beat the ones that store sold. After asking a few people, we managed to find our way to Paragon and believe it or not, there sat the chick peas in a glass jar, just like they used to, thirty years ago. I never buy anything without checking the manufacture and expiry dates but I trusted this store implicitly from my Gauhati days and immediately told the person there to sell me everything which was in the jar! He was surprised but complied and then it was sheer bliss to crunch and much those spicy, sinful chick peas, even as the flavour exploded on my tongue, exactly like it used to, every month, all those years ago.

                                                    Maligaon: So quiet then, so busy now

                                                      My pocket money drainer!

                                          Fried, spiced white chick peas, I'm addicted for life!
(Connoisseur's tip: Haldiram's Masala Chana comes a close second to Paragon's chick peas' virtues!)

Our next stop was my sister's class mate from Gauhati school days and good friend's shoe store in Maligaon. When we asked for the younger brother who had been my mother's student, the older one who runs it now came out and though it was hard to reconcile the little boy we had known with the strapping young man in front of us, we explained who we were and he remembered immediately! I'm sure he felt the same as he had last seen me as a super skinny thirteen year old...He immediately contacted his sister and though she was busy in a conference, she made it a point to come and see my mother at the reception venue the next evening, after a long day's work, as my mother was leaving the following day. She later took me to her own home too. Such are the old ties that tightly bind...

                                This store did not change and connected us to my sister's friend!

                                                 On the banks of the great Brahmaputra!
 (And I stole these lines from our school song, else I would have written an alliterative 'broad Brahmaputra'!)

We also took some time out for shopping, drove along the Brahmaputra and were awed by it, bought some wonderful fabric, shawls and other souvenirs like the famous Jaappi, the woven straw hat of Assam, and the Gamcha , a hand woven cotton embroidered towel, from Pan Bazaar and Fancy Bazaar. I also bought some gold plated stunning Assamese traditional jewellery. My mother even bought an orchid plant for our garden in Pune! When we lived there, we would traverse the twenty three kilometer distance to the city centre only once every few months and our main haunts were the bookshops (many of my books have Gauhati, Assam written on them, with my name and the date!) and the famous bakery, Shaikh Brothers. Their fresh bread and jammy Swiss Rolls were a special treat for us, even as we eagerly dived into whichever new book we had started reading first, the minute we got home. My sister and I used to cut off the raised mound at the top of the unsliced loaf, dividing it between the two of us, irritating my Dad no end because then every slice had a crust only on one side!

                                          The small but sweet indulgences of my childhood

 I had planned to stay on for a couple of days after my mother left, as I wanted to catch up with my school friends and indulge myself with a few more nostalgic visits in Gauhati. I volunteered to drop her to the airport, and on the way we visited another of my mother's Gauhati friend's at her brother's house, where she was staying. Gaur aunty belonged to Gauhati and had been our first neighbour in our Army-Air Force housing complex there, as her husband had been in the Indian Air Force. I had met Aunty just a few months ago when I had dropped my own daughter to college in Dubai, as her daughter (my childhood friend!) stays there now and she and her family had already visited and stayed with us in Nairobi. (The world is very small!). But Aunty and my mother met after nearly thirty one years and it was very emotional. Today, my daughter is friends with my friend's twin daughters and so the relationship forged so many years ago in Assam continues in the United Arab Emirates.
The next day I began my solo adventure! I had hired a trusted cab driver for two days, recommended by my host, Tamuli uncle. My first stop was the famous Kamakhya Temple, a stone's throw from their house. I had last visited this temple as a ten year old child but I had vivid memories. After seeking blessings from the Goddess and admiring the temple architecture, I was ready for my meanderings into the past.

                                                                      Kamakhya Temple

I asked the driver to take me to Mountain Shadow, our old housing complex, into which so many of my pre teen memories were so deeply entwined. As happy coincidence would have it, one of my Dad's old students, (he had coached her for the Defence Forces entrance exam), also a friend of mine, was now an Air Force officer and was posted to Gauhati then. She had given instructions to the guards to let me in at the gate. Otherwise, gaining access to a protected area would have been next to impossible! By yet another unbelievable coincidence she lived in the same block of four flats that we had lived in, just below our old house! So when I went to meet her, I entered my own old gate, and passed the very spot my friends and I had spent countless hours playing happily, our only worry being 'Hope there's a delicious dinner ready on the table when we get home...'

My beloved balcony at 3/2 Mountain Shadow, where I spent countless hours studying, reading and doing embroidery! The only thing's that's changed in nearly thirty years is the colour scheme...

My next stop was the area just behind our old house, where the new Institute was being built then. Our favourite game, as a group of pre teen boys and girls was playing hide and seek in the newly dug foundations of this building. I did not know then that I would see the completed building only in 2018! We had spent many hours in the old bamboo structure, watching poor prints of Bollywood movies on an old VCR, while guzzling down soft drinks of a dubious brand, something I won't let my children touch with even a barge pole in this day and age.

                                          The 'new' Institute, which is now thirty years old!

Then I asked the driver to drive towards our shopping complex, ' Anarkali', which had housed, among other shops, our grocer cum haberdasher (the Brit meaning!) where I used to buy cloth to make clothes for my doll, marbles, Parle sweets, Cadbury's and Amul chocolates, birthday gifts for friends and other sundries, the Air Force canteen, the Air Force Women's Welfare Association Shop from where I unfailingly bought my parents birthday and anniversary gifts every year from scrupulously saved pocket money and a sweet meat shop where a person called 'Babloo' made the most delicious samosas I have tasted to date. Sadly all the civilian shops had been moved out of the complex and when I asked about Babloo, I was told he had passed away. The bare look of the complex brought a quick tear to my eye, it had been buzzing when we left. I had cycled here numerous times to buy something or the other and later ridden my Luna there too...
Then we drove to Gauhati University and I directed the driver to take me to the Professor's Quarters Area. Most of my close friends had lived here, as their parents had been professors at the University and thanks to all that snail mail, I still knew their house numbers by heart! Though they had all retired and moved out by now, I spent some time gazing at the house where I had had my first sleepover ever (after begging my mother in school itself to let me go directly to my friend's house. That friend visited me in Pune with her family from the U.S, in 2017 and they stayed with us!), at the houses where my Dad had dropped each girl home in our car, ( a luxury in India in those days), on our way back from the birthday party of another dear friend, who lived in Gauhati City.
And then it was time to meet my school friends! We had arranged to meet at a restaurant in town and this was the very first time I would be eating at a restaurant in Gauhati… It wasn't the norm when I was growing up and our only forays out were to the Army mess for a party, or dining with another Air Force or Army family in their home or an annual picnic on board a cruise boat, on the Brahmaputra. I was very excited to meet all these ladies whom I had known as pre teens and never met since. I was especially touched as they had all taken time out from their very busy schedules just to meet me, as per my convenience. It is hard to catch up on thirty years worth of news in three hours but we managed to make a good headway. And most of them  knew a lot about me, thanks to my blog! They refused to let me pay for my share of the lunch, saying it was their treat as I was the visitor! I felt so humbled by their magnanimity and was doubly glad I had carried tiny souvenirs from Kenya for them all. The years just rolled away and it felt like we were sharing a classroom again. We were certainly as noisy as a bunch of middle schoolers!
My final sojourn of the day was at the house of my friend's parents who lived a little away from the town, in an area unknown to me. Luckily for me, another school friend lived in the same area and kindly consented to come with me. We ended up going to meet Sharma uncle and Aunty together and also got acquainted with my friend's sister in law and niece! Though my friend lives in the US, her parents had arranged a quick dinner for me in their beautiful bungalow. So much hospitality warmed my heart...
All too soon, it was time to board my flight to Pune and then a few days later to Nairobi...I bid goodbye to my warm and wonderful hosts and to the new couple. It was only thanks to them that I had been able to make it back to this lovely city, got to be part of a fabulous wedding and to relive  bits of my childhood again...
My only regret? I waited nearly thirty years to make this trip happen, but better late than never!

      Goodbye green Gauhati! I hope to get my husband and kids here for a visit someday soon...