It’s 5:29 AM and I am awake. Actually, I
have been for the last hour or so since he left for the airport. The same
feeling of ‘now you are in-charge’ envelops me. It’s the ‘mode’ I put on
whenever hubby is away. I tell myself, you can easily sleep for one more hour,
but no, my brain refuses to oblige. (Before I got married, I was determined not
to be like my mother, a little too alert and anxious when my father travelled,
especially though a teen’s perspective. But, as time passes I see myself gradually
becoming more like her.)
It’s too early to get out of bed, the kids
are asleep, the house and the world outside is silent. With my eyes closed and body
still (like I am still pretending to sleep) my mind begins to wander. I think
new thoughts and bring back old memories. Some memories are easy to find, like
they are on the top shelf of my bedside drawer, but others are lying in the
bottom shelf, hard to retrieve, dusty and takes time and effort to pull out.
I think about the last ten years of our
marriage and even the time before that. All the years I have spent in Gurgaon, right from the time I was a school girl and
Gurgaon was like a budding city with a few residential buildings and even fewer
corporate offices. Where finding snakes and mongooses was a common phenomenon. Schools
and hospitals were numbered and the bus journey to my school in Vasant Kunj
took 20 minutes. The construction of the highway had not begun and to travel to
Delhi using public transport (Haryana Roadways) was an adventure in itself.
Sounds unbelievable, no?
I witnessed how it grew from being the real
“gaon” to the “global village” that it is turning out to be with world class schools,
offices, restaurants, shopping centres, hospitals (not to mention traffic and
pollution levels). Similarly, it watched me grow from a school girl in uniform,
to college student, to office goer, to married woman, to becoming a mother-of
two. I have called Gurgaon home for more than 18 years. Right from passing out
of school, college, university, job, marriage and motherhood, this has been my
base.
I would not have been thinking about it as
I had never in all these years, for I had taken it for granted. Even the
thought of living in another city never crossed my mind…till a few weeks ago. Soon, it will be reality. It will be time to pack our bags and
move. This is more unbelievable to me than the transformation of Gurgaon. Nowadays, I look
at everything through the lens of ‘What am I going to miss?’ and I see a lot
around me that I am going to miss very dearly, including a lot of friends and family.
It’s 6:30 AM, hubby has boarded the flight
and the kids have begun to stir….
P.S: Hubby is moving to a role in Ahmedabad
and we are moving with him. The city is not alien to me having visited the city
several times (and blogged about it) since my in-laws stay there. My mother says,
“After 10 years of marriage, you are moving to your sasural.” Indeed, I am.
