Every alternate year, I went back to that little village despite dreading the seemingly endless journey. Despite being provided with options and having alternate and much better places to live, my parents insist to continue living in that obscure little mountain village often inaccessible during rainy season, with a distant mobile phone network that works just a few days a year.
That little village is also the place where they brought us up their six children. It must be the one place they wanted to brought up their children and grandchildren but that’s not the case for my parents. None of us stayed back and none wanted to live there in the future so we all tried to make up by spending our summer and/or winter holidays with them rather than getting away to one of those exotic location often advertised in those glossy magazines like most people do. Of their eight grandchildren two were born in their presence and the last one was over a decade ago now.
That doesn’t meant I don't like the place. No matter what that little village is the one place I still called home and my heart still beats for it. Despite my untiring complaints of everything, from the lack of privacy to my inability to use my mobile phone or wifi-internet connection, and despite my unending whining about the lack of basic infrastructures and the government’s apathy, I still yearn for that village and the simple people who live there.
My mother sent me off to live with my Brother just before I entered my teenage years not only because of the ethnic troubles at that time, but also to escape the drug-prone environment. Moving to Delhi has been dramatic for me in many ways. But I'm not complaining or blaming my Mother, rather I thanked her for letting me face the real world early without waiting for the inescapable reality we are ought to face in the future and being caught unprepared.
My whole family has been scattered across India and abroad. My parents are getting old and there are slim chances of a family get-together. I often wondered if my parents ever felt lonely and regret sending all of us off. Mother always explained that it’s for our own good and with the hope that we can make something out of ourselves.
I can’t say we made something out of ourselves with pride –to other, we are still nothing but we did it okay. We all would loved if our parents wanted to live with at least one of us in a city, but they have sacrificed enough doing without us and we are not going to ask them to part with the one place they love. Apart from that, I often observed how handicapped and worthless they felt in the few occasion they came to visit us.
In the village, they have farm and garden to keep them busy, animals to take care of, have close relatives as neighbours who sought their advice for every decision and can take care of them if the needs be. They have a full and dignified life there, the only thing amiss is their children. If they had lived with us, they have to give up all that since life in a city call for a totally different life style. We don’t want them to make so many changes and adjustments so late in their life or feel sorry about themselves for the remaining years of their life.
We know how much they miss us and we miss them too. It’s a sacrifice –a sacrifice to maintain dignity, to show our respect and love and as a token of thanks –a sacrifice that we all understand. That’s the reason why we never wanted to drag them away from the one place they love –the place that we all realized we are still in love with.
