On the Road: Memories Of Days Past

National Highway 4 ran through Nasik, linking Mumbai and Agra, two great cities. For four people who sat down recently to lunch, it was a memory so dear that those who revisited the city said it was better not to return, for the change was deeply unsettling. We went there as children and some of us were even born there. The economic boom was still about 30 years away and the small town's fame, such as it was, rested largely on the legend of an epic exile.The common thread was fathers who worked for a German MNC whose unit there was headed by a quick-to-temper German, whose impatience with mediocrity was matched only by his pursuit of perfection. The highway was critical for the 12 houses of a bank colony that the company had requisitioned for families from all over the country. Several people from Bangalore stayed there in forced conviviality. A small corner of a Bangalore field represented a shield against the all-pervasive Marathi influence. Over the years, we too became Maharashtrian in many ways, assimilating culinary and cultural inputs with unnoticed, and eventually welcome, ease.
The highway was interesting for children. A left took us to Green View restaurant, which was really a dhaba; a right to Hotel Dwaraka, a traffic junction so busy for a small town that it became a landmark. For us in the colony, the dhaba was a place we could walk to for birthdays and sundry other celebrations. On the highway, we kids waited for buses that ferried us to schools. Huge trucks roared by on their way to somewhere, laden with goods. By the highway were the vineyards where famous grapes grew, which, in times to come, would be globally marketed as wine. So, as we four exchanged notes on how life, and time, had treated us, it became increasingly clear that often the past is best left undisturbed, even by nostalgia. We have become global souls in many ways, living thousands of miles apart. The bonds are more in memory, stretched by the pressures of modern-day life and Bangalore traffic. But distance is not really a big deal two connecting flights and we're in the new place we call home. The next generation will perhaps go to new frontiers and call new communities their home. For us, though, the colony by the highway will always be a cherished home.