Perhaps it’s time I talked about something else. But here is OJ tracing memories of her home:
And that one over there was my perennial threat from Nana. “If you don’t eat like a lady, how will I take you to the Taj?” And so I fed my face like a well-trained robot lady at 6, because the Taj, as we know, is The Taj, and every 7-year-old dreams of a Shamiana ice cream with a pink biscuit stuck in it. In college, our parent Rotary held its weekly meetings at the Ballroom and we’d gatecrash them on flimsy pretexts so we could devour pastries from the Sea Lounge. It was earlier this month that the Boy and I strolled outside the ‘old’ Taj while I narrated the story of Watson’s Hotel and how an insult founded this magnificent structure.
And then there’s yet that other one, the Victoria Terminus that was our pride as we carted suitably admiring foreign visitors around, reveling in what was ours. The first train in India chuffed off from here we’d point out, as their eyes took in the gargoyles and gothic grandeur. So many bleary-eyed childhood trips were flagged off from its innards. Two minutes away at college, we’d laugh about how every Hindi movie has its one obligatory VT shot to depict arrival in Mumbai. What would we know about arrival, chronic natives that we were.
I feel shamed and angry – not so much with the silly boys who thought AK47s were their ticket to manhood, but with us … our politicians and administrators
Oh but it’s not time yet. We can hold off talking about something else a little longer….can’t we?
It is the same topic everywhere, same pain and same frustration.
It is difficult to speak something else at this point of time.
However, what we need to understand is that more we talk about it more frustrating and painful it becomes.
GBU
Arti