Three Trips in One

When I was planning this trip, I was thinking a lot about how I was feeling, rather than what I was actually going to do when I got there. But the way it worked out, my three weeks in India were divided into three separate vacations.

The first week was spent in Delhi. Staying in a city this big and this busy is something you have to learn to get used to and navigate. But make no mistake, Delhi is an International city that has everything you want and some things you probably don’t. Last time I was here, I concentrated on the things I didn’t like or want, instead of everything this dynamic city has to offer. So this time I enjoyed Delhi because I saw it through a different lens with a different perspective, you might say. I really enjoyed being there with all the inconsistent, ridiculous paradoxes this complicated city represents.

The second week was all about Goa. It’s hard to imagine, but when we were leaving for Goa I didn’t really feel like going. I wanted to stay where we were. I was really having a good time and wanted to continue exploring Delhi but of course we had to go.

Goa turned out to be what I would call a dream vacation especially for a Canadian who just left frigid -45 temperatures and now felt the sun and sand in a +32 tropical climate. And once I arrived in Goa, I wanted to stay forever or at least until mango season when I could eat mangos and fresh coconut all day, lay around in the water enjoying the chill attitude of the place.

Goa was a dream in so many ways and a great way to let go of whatever is bothering you in your regular life. It helps to renew and refresh your body and mind. But as beautifully perfect as Goa was, it was the next part of my trip that was the most important to me—going to the Punjab.

Getting to the Punjab was a feat in and of itself and much more arduous than getting to India. It’s a 41/2 hour drive from Delhi to the town of Chandigarh, which is the capital city of the state.

We thought it was best to go by car and hire a driver. I left this task to my mother and I realized pretty quick that I should have been more involved because rather than picking someone who had a stable and reliable vehicle or who knew the roads of India like the back of his hand, my mother went with the guy they used last time because he’s the son of the long-time friend of her sister’s and “he’s really nice”. My cousin’s raving review of him was that he’s fun on the drive because he likes to chat!

At this point in the trip, my mother and I disagreed about basically everything, so I thought I would just passively acquise to this guy without saying much and not asking any questions. I regretted my decision when he turned up an hour late to pick us up and showed up in a beat up old car that couldn’t even properly fit our luggage in the boot. And then it turns out the car didn’t just take “petrol” but it took actual natural gas to run and not every gas station had natural gas or CNG as they call it. And I’m sure the whole thing is perfectly safe and they require all passengers to exit the vehicle and stand 20 feet away during a refill for some unrelated reason.

Pulling up for natural gas with explicit instructions from “Duh” magazine.

So let’s just say I didn’t have great expectations of him. I just hoped he would get us there relatively safe and sound and with ALL our luggage.

Our first stop was just outside of Chandigarh. One of my oldest cousins on my father’s side lives there. He is a very successful intelligent, hospitable worldly man who is now in his 70s. He lives in a gated community and his home is beyond compare with its beauty and security. There are many levels of security checks before they even let you through their heavy metal gates. I had to promise my first-born. Sorry. Not sorry.

His condo was spectacular. It looked like something out of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Those with Impeccable Taste (Who No Longer Live With Their Children)”

The condo was bright, spacious, beautifully decorated and my cousin and his wife welcomed us with open arms and gave us a guest room that was more beautiful than our accommodations at the Taj.

Amazing accommodations.

View from view from our balcony.

But it wasn’t the surroundings that made this part of the trip extra special, there were a few other contributing factors - one, his wife has the same first name as me so imagine if your whole life you never met another person with the same name. It’s a unique name. I can look for it all day long on the keychain spinning rack at the dollar store but it’s not gonna be there. A name nobody has heard of and nobody knows how to pronounce. Almost everyone pronounces it wrong and everyone asks, Sorry, what was that?” To now have your cousin’s wife have the same first name is unimaginable for me! But every time he called her, I answered “Yes?” because I was used to being the only me in the room.

And the second reason seeing my cousin was pretty fantastic was that being one of my oldest cousins, he was able to regale us with stories from the past, stories that we did not know about our family, and stories that pretty much ended in some kind of illegal act (by today’s standards, anyway) or some kind of beating that my father gave somebody or a beating that he received!

Either way, it was great to hear these stories because as my cousin told me, he is my father‘s favourite nephew, and my father was his favourite uncle. Clearly theirs’ was a close and special bond that must have been hard for my father to leave behind when he moved to Canada.

He talked about how he never met a man like my father before or since, and that he admired his unselfishness and generosity and his ability to help others. It was nice to know that the qualities that our beloved Papa possessed that were so clear to us as his children, were ones he possessed since he was a very young man. He told us about how people would come to see him from all around my father’s hometown to settle their disputes or cure their ailments.

Hearing about my father’s crazy activities had me thinking about how we really don’t know our parents. Who they were before they were our parents. When they were at a different point in their lives. Most people are ever changing, resulting in them changing quite a bit by the time they have children and when I was listening to my cousin’s stories, I realized that my father had a whole life in India that I know very little about, And I certainly didn’t see that side of him when he matured enough to become my father. I always knew that he was a great man full of kindness in that he had the true spirit of giving in the most unselfishness way. But now I learned how famous and sought out he was, far beyond the borders of his small town.

The man I knew was quiet and reserved and I am still having a hard time picturing the man known as “palvan” (meaning wrestler, because that’s what he did for work? as a hobby? and wrestled people from town to town). My cousin then told me a story about where a man was harassing a young girl in the alley outside of the family store and Papa chased him down and beat him up and told him never to do something like that again. Again with the beatings. …? And then another outrageous tale where Papa was accused of murdering his enemy’s son (Papa? Murder?!) and had to spend the night at the police station until they cleared his name. My cousin said when he returned from the police station all bloodied and bruised, people were in the streets cheering and chanting his name.

At this story I wondered if my cousin was maybe weaving parts of the “Ramayana” into Papa’s story, you know the part where Lord Ram returns to his kingdom from victory after his exile in the forest.

But seriously, Papa was a legend, at least to all of us. But I still can’t picture my very peaceful nonviolent patient father beating up someone or taking a beating himself. If only I knew him then….on second thought, maybe not….

We miss you Papa.