Families on the Road

K's memories of road trips with his parents, similar to mine, involve memories of squabbling. My Dad was city bred, my Mum was a village belle- their childhood couldn't have been more different; my Mum's summer trips involved bullock carts and extended families making cart trips to Courtrallam (she swore there were tigers in the higher reaches of the falls); my Dad's involved free rail trips to obscure towns with a large set of siblings and cooking vessels. Between these two worlds, a marriage was forged, and two adults from the Delta and the Dryland squabbled over trivial pursuits such as where the country road lead to, what river lay beneath the dry sand beneath the long bridge, the temple in the distance and the like. There were also road trips that I have dim memories of, with my uncle and cousins- I distinctly remember one involving a wedding that my uncle was determined to miss and a rainbow that we were determined to chase; and several involving temples, Ambassador cars, and outbursts from my usually calm grandmother. Of course, considering I was under five in most of these memories, I suspect age has glossed over a lot of the unpleasantness.

Temple chasing is a very South Indian sport. One leaves at the crack of dawn to cover as many temples as can be covered before the Gods take their mid morning nap. In the heat of the afternoon, one attempts to cover ground before the Gods wake up in the next town several kilometres away. This was standard operating procedure for several summer holidays until we sisters "became older", after which syncing menstrual calendars was too much effort. Now we have temple tours that are offered for older folks who miss the thrill, and the sport now is to discover obscure temples and make online appeals to rebuild and renovate. It is all very good except when my father found out that Ambassadors can be replaced by Autos. So now, he traipses around ghost towns with his band of born again brahmins in Autos and is quite proud to accomplish five temples in under five hundred rupees.

My childhood road trips always involved veering off the beaten track, getting lost and associated mayhem as my parents argued over mapless directions. Presently, Google Maps does a great job of throwing you off course. A particular memory of a recent trip involved Google Maps landing us on a road that randomly ended in a large field. Disappointingly, my Dad and I were the only ones laughing joyously, while the rest of the newly acquired family stared in uneasy silence at each other.