These days I never seem to have enough time…I sleep late, skip meals, constantly multitask. I attribute it to raising a toddler. But the real culprit is the high speed internet. A typical evening goes like this: Kids have gone to sleep. I open my inbox and voila!! There is a clearance sale at XYZ. Within seconds I am on the XYZ website browsing through things I don’t even need and adding them to the online basket. Finally after a couple of hours when hubby reminds me its too late, I take stock of my basket. Sense prevails when I decide I don’t need most of these things and decide to drop the basket. But in the meanwhile I have wasted so much time!! If it is not online window shopping then its browsing intellectual articles or just mere gossips.That leaves me barely any time to think or dream!! And I have still not joined WhatsApp despite being branded Ancient by those active on it.
But Once Upon a Time, I used to Dream. Long before summer classes, camps became a trend and internet became a playground, vacation meant only one thing – chutti!! No studies, no classes, no timetable just lazing around at your grandparent’s place or your home. Time to eat, sleep, play and DREAM!
Studying for the last few papers of the annual exam was always tough. My mind raced race through a hundred possibilities of what I could do after my exams – read story books, play in sand and water, start some new craft, eat yummy snacks, travel places. As soon as the exams were over our bags would be packed. NO, not the trolley ones, but simple carry bags and cardboard boxes.
Doing a trip to my Ajja’s place in Kundapur meant taking the bus – this was before the era of Konkan railway or even video coaches. There were many operators – Vishal Travels, Ghatge-Patil, Canara Pinto, Nava Durga to name a few. The journey was typically 15 hour long; that is if we were lucky enough not to have a punctured tyre or be stuck in a road accident. The three things we had for company was music, scenery and dreams. How romantic!!!
Well not as much as it sounds! The only source of music back then was the bus audio playing random Hindi songs and Kannada bhajans on poorly positioned speakers. There was no Walkman, no Mobile, no iPod! The one good thing was that we got to hear new songs. These days having a choice to hear what we want limits our scope to explore and hear something new. I have been running the same playlist for ages with a few additions maybe!
The beautiful scenery outside was a distraction to the inner reality. The seats were uncomfortable and the coach had a fleeting smell of puke, cigarette smoke and urine. Did I mention that the only air freshener then was agarbattis! A 2-3 hour delay on the ghats due to a nasty road accident was taken for granted. With limited leg space that was further reduced by a couple of bags near our feet, we eagerly looked forward to the next meal stop to loosen our cramped muscles and use the loo!! The bus had regular stops in Pune, Belgaum, Bhatkal for tea and meals. After finishing our loo ritual in the stinking toilets we would down a cup of tea and get into the bus ( I always had a phobia that one day I will get into the wrong bus since they all looked so similar! )Food was always packed from home – biscuits, chapati and jam, pickle, chips. We carried bottles of water from home – the packaged drinking water was a new and expensive concept.
Coming to the best companion – Dreams. True that a child’s mind knows no limitations. I would dream of being beautiful, successful, marrying Prince Charming, wearing the best clothes and all the superlatives that my mind could conceive as I let the chilly night breeze blow into my face. My thoughts could easily fuel a Disney Princess movie. Often the person in the seat ahead of me would order the window closed and then I would drift into a short sleep.
Around the 1990’s when the Honavar bridge was being repaired, our buses would literally be carried across the river on a ferry. There would be a long queue of vehicles – lorries, trucks, scooters, buses to get onto the ferries adding to a few hours waiting.But generally as years passed by, the seats became more comfortable, the journey shortened, video coaches were introduced but everything else remained the same.
As I write this article sitting in a modern-day coffee shop , I am re-living the journey. The delays did not matter neither did the discomfort. These were dwarfed by the excitement of reaching Ajji’s home, the warm welcome as Ajji would come over to the gate and say ‘Aili ve Amma’ and Ajja would prepare the hot bath water for us to freshen up, the love of uncles and aunties and the yummy taste of khotto (खोट्टो) with ्coconut oil and unlimited chutney. Ah! How I would give anything to be back to those LONG LONG AGO days when TIME WAS AMPLE and I DREAMED A DREAM.