Only few people and few bonds matter in life....

Ours is a very democratic family. All members have equal right and freedom to express opinion about almost everything and opinions are examined carefully before a collective decision is made!

To feel that each one of us has freedom to do as per our wish, on an average day, I cook Pesto Pasta for the boy, pasta with white sauce for the girl, lamb curry for the Head of the Family while I stick to my staple fish curry and rice! If we decide to go for a movie together, we only travel together to the movie hall but I head to a theatre screening a Bollywood movie and husband and children settle down in a different theatre for an English movie. Needless to mention, we take lot of time and deliberation to decide on something major!

For us, “ Let us go somewhere for vacation” is a very major and sensitive issue. Honestly speaking, so far, our travel diary is almost blank. In the past 16 years that I am married, we had only been to Nainital for one and half day and we had gone to Phuket last year for 5 days. Reasons are many…..

…..Primarily because, husband is required to travel about 20 days a month to all parts of the world as his employment demands. His tired body yearns for the cosy comfort of home and some home cooked food during holiday and he would prefer to stay at home given a chance.

….. Secondly, I am not a travel person per se…. I do not possess strong legs to walk miles to explore things or to marvel at the exploration people have already done; I do not have a strong heart to jump into any kind of adventure in a faraway land; neither I am emotionally so strong that I could forego my mandatory annual visit to Greater Noida; I would rather prefer to travel to Greater Noida during holidays and watch Nature’s wonders on Discovery Channel or National Geographic and I have no regrets for “missing out on fun”. (Of late, I have been nurturing a secret wish of going to see Leh and Ladakh all by myself, reason unknown to me even!)

If travel to different places is equivalent to gathering knowledge, then I am illiterate and uneducated to the core and I am not ashamed to accept that fact.

…..the last important reason being purely financial. Yes, I could not come out of typical “service class” mentality where ‘ salary’ is earned to be saved for a better cause of life and spending so much of money on a holiday and few days of fun does not get a ready and quick approval from me much to the annoyance of my husband and children !

But that was when children were small and they were yet to learn to put forward their likes and dislikes! Now they are grown up and mingles with friends who go for vacations (ordinary and exotic) each year as a ritual. Peer pressure was building up within them, I guess and finally, two years back, both of them were very critical of the fact that we had never been to any place other than Greater Noida during holidays. In the evening, after a very brief deliberation, the house was divided into 3:1 and a family decision was made that we would go for a vacation each year at least once. My contribution to the plan was limited to packing my stuff and carrying myself to wherever they would decide to travel!!

The planning for “December holiday” has started in the household for this year. The other day, husband got four travel magazines of DNATA and I was given the honour to decide on a place for the family to travel to. As usual, before I could lay my eyes on the beautiful sample pictures of the places featured in the magazines, I read the “per person” cost and did a quick mental calculation of the “financial outflow after adding 30% overhead cost”. My husband was insistent that we should go to some place in Europe this year. Tragically enough, I have very blurry idea of geographical definitions and boundaries of Europe, America or as a matter of fact, any other continent and country other than India. To avoid confusion, I announced during dinner time to the children “We are going for an Austrian holiday this year. Now, if Austria does not fall in Europe that is none of my problem. I have already decided”. The family approved then and there.

“We have to apply for visa well in time so to avoid last minute panic and uncertainty” was my husband’s premonition. To look and talk little informed, I tried to search in Google for visa formality the other day and left the site halfway as it was too much of information-overload for my brain. I thought it prudent to leave it to the person who is most experienced in the family as regards travel is concerned as he travels in and out of Dubai almost like any Airline crew member…. I went off to sleep a little excited and happy that day thinking about our ensuing Austrian Holiday.

Just after I said my prayers and closed my eyes with the happy smile still intact, strangely enough, memories of the incident happened during my fifth chemotherapy session flooded my mind like a surge of mud-water and swept me  three years in the past to the hospital bed. A serious allergic reaction of the chemotherapy medicine almost took my life. The Oncologist mentioned to us later that he never encountered such severe reaction in his entire career of 16 years as a Cancer specialist and that I was alive was nothing short of a miracle! While the doctors and nurses were fighting tooth and nail to bring me back from the clutches of death, I was barely conscious to understand the severity of the battle. I could only feel the tight hug of my husband who kept on whispering into my ears “Dare not leave me alone”; I could only remember how dad wept helplessly to his Almighty when the diagnosis came out, “Take my life but dare not snatch my child from me” and I could only murmur to the doctor,” I have not kissed my children good-bye”.  

I was not afraid that it was time for me to end my earthly journey so soon and so abruptly and the thought that I had not travelled to many places while I was alive, did not even occur to me. Rather, I could sense immense calmness within me that I could be a good daughter to my parents; that I could be a good mother to my children; that I could be a good wife to my husband; that I could be a good friend to few. 

On that day and time, I was ready to travel to God’s own country and since then, I am always ready. Life has taught me to stay clutter-free. I live life without many attachments, without much expectations, without any regrets for my acts and deeds and I feel extremely content at all points of time. With each passing day, the realisation is getting stronger that only few people and few bonds matter in life; rest all is immaterial and peripheral to living a happy life. Whether I get to go for an Austrian vacation or not; whether I get to appreciate the blue water of many oceans or mighty heights of mountains in different parts of the world or not; whether I get to taste cuisine from around the world or not --- the measure of my happiness and contentment is not going to be altered, for sure!

Cherish those few people in life and nurture those few bonds with all your heart and soul!!! Having said that, if an opportunity arises on the periphery to travel to a new place and explore, grab it with both hands.

On a funny note, I will certainly irritate my children and husband with this philosophy of mine and a decently long lecture to convince them to buy this. I see a prospect of saving few thousand dirhams and a holiday to my very own Greater Noida in December….