Provincial Life

It is the month of summer vacations. School is over – and in my case, probably forever. Mangoes are in, and so are Ahmedabad’s mango-sellers who will try to rip you off by sneaking in a rotten one in the perfect dozen you purchased. Only an expert eye can catch this daylight robbery, not me. It’s time to trudge over to the railway station, to climb the steel steps of the train and crawl into the upper berth, to grumble about it being not made for tall people, and to gracefully sleep knowing that when you wake up – you would be in your grandma’s city. Mangalore – the city of Taj Mahal hotel and benne butter, of neer dosai and ghee-fried prawns. Usually, I would arrive as a pack of 3, and would taxi up the slightly hilly terrain of the Western Ghats to bapamma’s village, but this time it was a solo bus ride. A lot more diversity: full of students, employees, labourers, and a bus conductor who communicates with the driver through the language of whistles. Is there an audio component to the bus drivers’ license test, and is this an India wide phenomenon or just the South?

Summer vacations at your grandparents’ is relatable to most kids. Yet, the difference this time was that I was no kid – no lazing around with tummies full and eyes sleepy. As you grow older, you are drawn into the backstage of those relaxing summer days with delicious food – in cleaning, chopping, sweeping, scrubbing and so on. I hope both boys and girls are. Village life is no joke, by 7 AM there is breakfast on the table and people getting ready for work. A far cry from the b-school days where there is no day or night, just deadlines. Taking a detour to acknowledge how the people I shared those deadlines with have made sure I went from a heartless extrovert to an emo introvert in two years, god knows how.

The air here is unpolluted, the water is fresh from the well, and there are dogs who chase birds and constantly pregnant cats that judge them. Every summer there would either be puppies or kittens for us city kids to obsess over. As I try to unravel the shift from campus to home to village to another country, my grandma hands over a broom – this is not the place to ponder. At 83, she is fitter, faster and more efficient than I am – and has the diplomatic and financial skills of a (successful) feudal lord. She advises what to do with my future dollars while handing me a dusting towel before I realize what is happening. For a change, I’m making mango milkshakes and pampering her.

The provincial life this time is bittersweet, it is difficult to enjoy simpler things when your calendar is moving faster than your brain can process it. At times, I truly wish I were like the magpies and peacocks that wander around here, with not a care in the world apart from looking pretty. Speaking of pretty, another summer constant is Kannada serials, in which the actresses have kept up with the latest fashion and beauty trends, but the plotlines have remained the same. There is one serial that has been going on since 2013, and it is not the longest running one to exist. You may laugh, but TV soaps keep a large cross-section of Indians entertained, just by their sheer continuity and unrealistic melodrama.

Sometimes, reality is even more entertaining as my 2023 has proven to be. I have been fielding surprises (for a person who hates surprises) one after the other, in the midst of large, planned changes. There are so many once-in-a-lifetime moments going on and it’s been barely over a quarter into the year. For the purposes of privacy of my circle of loved ones who don’t write blogs, I will delve into the fairly public one – my graduation. A long-held dream come true, the 14 year old Aishwarya who put up a sticky note with IIMA in it on her study table would be so proud. That is all you need at times, to know that your past self would be immensely happy with how far you have gotten today. I even showed up by chance in the local paper as a “degree holder” – much to my mother’s surprise who only wanted to know Ahmedabad celebrity gossip.

Institute convocation is one of those rare maha-events where all the people you had been hearing about for two years show up, the names have faces, just like a movie made from a book. It goes by in a flash, there is so much going on- lives changing with each roll call. No truly, I can tell you that any middle-class Indian family sees a significant financial upgrade when their child gets a top tier degree’s placement. And the morally better reason, a prestigious achievement. My family roamed around meeting professors, friends and their families while making sure we had enough photogenic moments to last a few years. A joyous celebration overall, while bidding goodbye to the ones who made up your world, your everyday. It is weird knowing I can’t just walk up to a friend’s dorm to play Sequence, or go to campus Teapost for thepla and chai, or go peacock sighting in the faculty housing area, or become a prof’s favorite student…but today, I am just grateful I could experience it all in the first place.