PEREGRINATE

CHAPTER 1

Present time

"Baaaaaahhhh"

The loud and unexpected sound made me almost fall out of the bottom berth if it were not for the suitcases I stacked up around it. I had done so the previous night to keep an illusion of privacy in this people-filled train compartment but now it just prevented me from kissing the dirty floor.

I craned my neck up to see what the heck was that sound when I saw a goat trying to reach our empty meal packets through the window grill. As I scruffled up to shoo it away my dad appeared on the other side of the window.

"Oh good you are awake. Get down. We have reached our station. I will send a porter to get our bags down."

When I first heard that my dad had taken a new job I was excited. It finally might be the jolt that we needed in our lives. The fact that our new residence can technically be classified as a small town was a rude surprise.

Ranjgarh was a small town in the state of Gujarat near the Gujarat-Rajasthan border. With just under a lakh population it was a town. Another welcoming fact was that it had no station of its own. Buses plied very frequently from the railway station connecting these remote towns and villages scattered around the countryside. We could have chosen the bus but since my dad was a government employee a car came to pick us up.

I emerged out of the station with an expectation to see dusty uneven roads and a bullock cart waiting to drive us there. So I was pleasantly surprised to find proper roads and vehicles. Though it was not as crowded as the city there were people around at least.

"Good morning, sir. Let me carry those bags for you. You and your daughter can get in the car." Our driver welcomed us. He was a middle-aged man with a pot belly who had the peculiar penchant for ending each sentence with a smile. It had been endearing till now. My dad helped him put our bags in the trunk while I went to a nearby shop to buy a bottle of water.

I was hungry though and asked my dad if we could have our breakfast here.

As we started to take off after breakfast, the driver, whose name was Madhav, glanced at us in the mirror. "It is a good thing your train arrived on time. I will make sure we reach your house before it gets dark."

It was around seven in the morning and the Sun set around five in these parts of the country. That was almost twelve hours of driving. Were we in the wrong state?

After just over two hours the building of the city gave way to the open roads of highways. My apprehension just increased with the passing seconds. I was leaving the comfort of familiarity. Yes, the same place and same people over years can make a person feel a bit claustrophobic but at least the fear of uncertainty was absent.

I was in my final year of schooling so college life would soon be knocking on my door. I could hardly stay here but a few months and would have already left for my college by this time next year.

I felt too nervous to have lunch when we stopped by a roadside eatery. Yet I washed down a naan with water to avoid my father's lecture. Though he had moments of carefreeness he might be as worried about this move as me if not more. But I could not say with certainty. He always behaved in a similar manner in every other trip. Barking orders, assigning blame, walking in strides with absolute zero consideration to the person running behind him.

An hour later Madhav informed us that we had now entered the outskirts of our town. I did not know how he could tell. Maybe the lifelong residency had given him the eye to distinguish the vast fields of one area from the other. Most fields grew wheat but here and there fields of maize and sugarcane were scattered too. I had never seen such a scene in real life.