Prompt Sunday: Forgotten Sands

Prompt: You have moved from one place to another plenty of times ever since you were a kid. Write about one such memorable shifting experience.

{ Writer’s note: I am sorry but I couldn’t help writing this as a third person narrative, with someone else in mind, for reasons quite significant in my mind}

She had never imagined that the sound of tires rolling over gravel would carry an emotional value for her. Then again, the number of times they moved from one city to another in her living memory was more than she would have wanted it to be. Being a Railway officer, father got transferred quite often. Sometimes, a bit too often.

Some say that a transferable job has its benefits. You get to see so many places and have so many new experiences. There are a lot more things that you get to see. Like, a few minutes back, she got to see her room, once crammed with things of all sorts until it was a living testament to her teenage, now suddenly a vast and empty container of nothingness. It felt bigger than she ever imagined. To think that she had always wanted a bigger room. Some sights change your mind in ways that nothing else can. As she had glanced around the room for one last time before leaving, she couldn’t help the stinging in her eyes when they saw the childish scribbles of an infant as the sole inhabitants of the 8X10 bedroom.

She wasn’t really too small when this had happened the last time. The house in Nadia, it’s surrounding garden, the echoes of her childhood friends were memories all too close to the brim of her mind’s waters. And now it was happening again. It somehow felt unfair that she had to go through all of this again. Having this job, its ever changing nature, none of it was her choice. Nobody had asked her for it. And she knew, that as long as she was living with her parents, nobody ever will.

After all, hadn’t she heard a bit too many times how lucky she was that her father was in government service? That her entire student life is now practically going to be a buffet of the choicest schools and colleges falling head over heels to serve themselves on a platter? The stereotypes made her chuckle helplessly. A jolt from a pothole on the road brought her back to the present, although not in a particularly pleasant way.

Their mini caravan comprising of Dad’s car and the moving truck pulled over at a Dhaba. Ma immediately ran to get some hot water for Nani’s hot water bag, her most loyal companion on such strenuous journeys. Dad started looking for a cigarette shop, albeit with less urgency, but as a necessity nonetheless. If she hadn’t already been in a state of nonchalance, she might have been irked by it now. She decided to take a walk.

The moving truck was quite big, one of those dog-faced trucks that have the weirdest horn-tunes possible. This one had a shrill nagin-sapera tune that jarred her senses every time they needed to overtake. She absentmindedly strolled to the back of the truck. It had all the signatures you expect: garish demon images to ward off evil spirits garnished with strands of lemon-chilli threads, a funny taunting message and a biri-smoking truck driver.

“Kya memsaab? Want to check the samaan? Wait wait.” Before she could say no, he had crushed his biri and was opening the latch. The semi-door fell open with a loud noise and there everything was. The last three years of her life, everything tangible she had attached to it, boxed up, taped and marked. She felt that if she looked carefully, she could see the memories flowing out through minute cracks in the cardboard.

“What happened Dharampal? Why is the truck open?”, her dad barked at the driver. “Sir, memsaab wanted to….”, Dharampal drifted away as both him and Dad looked at Memsaab, whose eyes weren’t strong enough to fight the stinging this time. Her dad approached her with open arms. She wanted none of it. She took off in the opposite direction, towards the car and shut herself in. She could never forgive him, for all the lost memories, for all the friends that drifted away, for all the hallways and bedrooms that still had the marks of her crayons and her creativity. She couldn’t.

“Beta, kya hua? Don’t cry beta. Look at me,” said Nani. She had completely forgotten that Nani was in the car. Her neck carefully placed on the bulging hot water bag, she said, “I know that all of this must be really tough for you. You youngsters think we are the old lot, but we also went through quite similar experiences. You must be cursing your dad, aren’t you?”.

She looked at Nani through the haze of her now moist eyes. She could only manage a nod.

“Beta, It must seem like the right thing to do right now. And I wont burden you with the same old words that it will be better with time. I just want you to think of one thing. If you dad wouldn’t have been transferred, you wouldn’t have made the memories that you have in the last three years now, would you Beta?”, asked the wise old woman, as she rested her head on the seat rest and closed her eyes.

She turned in her seat and looked out of the windshield at the highway, seemingly infinite into the horizon. Although it was too soon for the dampness of her eyes to dry, the pleasant memories of the last few years, some of which were in those boxes, seemed to make the world a lot more brighter and lighter.

She could see her parents sitting at a cot outside the Dhaba. They were exchanging worried glances, sneaking a few at the car. They were seemingly oblivious to their own worries at that moment. Haven’t they always been, when the choice was about her? Her dad, once a creative and athletic person, chose to oil the wheels of the Railways. Perhaps it was for her. At that moment, she felt the water of her eyes evaporate with the heaviness in her heart. They had made much bigger sacrifices in their own times, most for her.

She got out of the car, and closed the door behind her. Stretching her arms, she waved at her parents with a smile. The relief on their faces was quite unabashed.

Standing there, the horizon seemed to hold a lot more memories to come.