Bhadravathi, my sasuraal… a place frozen in time, a place, well preserved in a time capsule…where the landscape, the people, attitudes and life style seem to have been fossilized at some point. Of course, the children here are enterprising….hardworking and scale great heights educationally and careerwise! The current generation  of youth are all over the world…yet, Bhadravathi continues to be what it was 24 years ago…when I first saw it. Like Tennyson’s Brook… the place seems to echo the sentiment, “…for men may come and men may go, but I go on forever!”

It is the ideal place for one’s summer vacations… if one wants a vacation in its real sense… doing nothing…lotus eating days…It seems quite a change from the noisy days and nights of Sharjah, where the sound of vehicles whizzing along the road below your flat kind of forms a background music. Here, as I lie reading or just thinking, I hear twittering of birds, raucous calls of crows, chattering of squirrels and an occasional cuckoo. Peaceful, green and serene…

It is not that it is isolated from the rest of the world. We have cable TV offering around 65 channels, quite a wide variety of entertainment under your thumb compared to the measly ‘you –don’t- have –a- choice- fare’ we get in Sharjah. Of course, we have subscribed to Pehla… but the channels you want to watch are hardly there… Unfortunately, E-Vision, the govt. operated cable TV has not reached our area. Getting back to BDVT, the local cable guys have a competition in TATA-SKY network offering a wider variety.

The taking over of the local iron and steel factory by SAIL has brought in a handful of North Indians to the place, so there are shops where you get condiments like Rajma and a variety of spices… 24 years back, shopkeepers used to look at me with a blank look if I asked for rajma or paneer…! Times have changed.

Talking of change, the park in BDVT has gone phases of remodeling to reach where it is now. There are two parks lying side by side, one generally used by walkers and joggers…and the other by families, as it has children’s playground facilities…

 I frequent the former. 25 years back, it just used to be a wild ‘not much cared for area’. But over the years, it has undergone a lot of changes. One significant phase was when rail lines were put around the park and a two compartment- train was introduced. It was fun to take my kids on a ‘chugging around the park’ trip… After the initial euphoria, it ran at a loss… People probably wouldn’t buy tickets…or lost interest in it and the train got grounded. Enterprising pilferers stripped off parts of the train…and it became a rusty relic…

Five years back, I think, the rail line was replaced by a macadamized walkers’ path.

Good for BDVT! Now I see so many people frequenting the park from 4.30 in the morning till 8.30 when some late risers still find time to walk or run to health. In the evenings, it becomes alive by 5 and till shadows deepen in every nook and cranny of the park, people remain there, eating hot peanuts or odiously pink candy -floss or even the local brand of icecreams.

The walker’s path runs for a length of 816 meters around the park. The path is wide enough for three persons to walk without jostling one another. Every 200 meters is marked along with some adage on health and clean living. It is relaxing and rejuvenating to do two to three laps around the park. In the MajazPark in Sharjah, I used to meet some people regularly, yet acknowledgement would never go beyond the ghost of a smile or at the most, a nod. Here, it would be sacrilegious to do that. Here you meet your grandfather- in – law’s friend, an octogenarian accompanied by two men… you bow your head in respect or fold your hands in namaste… You meet your family doctor, your beautician, some parents of your ex-students… Sometimes, it becomes obligatory to stop and exchange a few niceties with such people, answering their questions on when I landed, what the husband and the twins are doing, how the in laws are faring… I should also recall the names of their spouses and  kids and ask about them… All formalities over, you are free to walk… but you are at a loss for words on meeting them during the second or third lap around the walker’s path… so you flash a smile, the second time you meet them…and concentrate on their shoes the third time… then you pray that they finish their walk for the day before you meet up again… or  make good your escape by cutting your walk short…  I don’t like talking ( to others) while walking… my walkie talkie time is strictly my very own, the time when I multitask – like enjoying the peace and quiet, humming some long – forgotten song that you are suddenly reminded of,  watching  people, and thinking about my blogs…

In a small place and a close-knit society where you are known to almost everyone and know almost everyone, you need to have excellent social skills. You can not be impolite to anyone…So, whether he is the banana vendor or an  octogenarian patriarch… you smile graciously and answer the initial greeting “kofi aayithaa?” and update the on the latest developments in your part of the sphere…

The initial greeting that I mentioned is unique to the region. It is like the typical British small talk mechanics - of remarking on the weather…Here people just ask you, ‘Kofi aayithaa madam?’ ( Have you had coffee?) or ‘Thindi aayaithaa , madam?’ ( Had your breakfast?) This is the general enquiry from 7 in the morning to 12 noon, after which it is ‘ Oota aayitha, madam?’ (Had your lunch?) till the evening when it reverts to ‘Kofi aayithaa’….! I sometimes feel like walking around with a placard that says, Kofi at 6.30, ‘thindi’ at 8.45, ‘Oota’ at 12.45… as these things have a fixed routine at home here… But will be like mocking at the sensibilities of the general public here…

 So goes life out here during the vacations… with a definite monotony that is a welcome break, like a package deal … a rejuvenation program… at the end of which we feel energized to get back to the mundane life back in the Middle East where you feel lonely in a crowded place. That is the flipside of the coin!