The road came to this village seven years ago. I first came to this village before the road came. We both came to the village as foreigners–alien to its past, politics, and present. I was still studying in school when I accompanied some of my relatives to the village they call my ancestral home. I had grown up without a history of that sort–all I knew was the classroom and the playground. Of that particular visit,    I have a very faint memory, apart from the long days of walking to reach the place. The only person I remember is my paternal grandmother: she was wearing an unshapely cap that covered most of her head, and I remember how frail her body looked as she welcomed me through the village gumba. I was introduced to her as her natini. And I came to learn about an extended family that had never existed before in my world.

My world did not have any resemblance to the world here. This world had trails, imprinted on its stone-paved path decades ago, which used to be frequented by traders and tourists. Now, these trails are being reclaimed by nature, as buses, jeeps, and motorbikes zoom over the new road. And people have also started forgetting the trails. A new bazaar is taking shape right where the village begins, where the bus-stop’s hustle and bustle keeps the environment lively. The latest dohori songs and the all-time-favourite Hindi songs from the 60s and 70s blaring from the bazaar signify a potent economy–one shorn of the allure it once had for ‘bideshi tourists’.  One of the hoteliers, who left his ‘tourist hotel’ to run a hotel in the bazaar, commented on how the income from the local business is almost equivalent to the seasonal one. This evolving economic-scape thrives on a business model that is based on ‘busy-ness’ where every idle conversation, supplemented with cups of tea (and alcohol at night), contributes to the newly found economy. In such a milieu is where I met Radha Bajai.

Radha Bajai runs a pasal in the corner of the bazaar. In her mid-60s, she has graying hair tinged with mehendi-orange; a bunch of keys hangs from her neck and a cloth-purse dangles from her waist. She lives on her own, and the bustle provides her with a decent living. She likes to take a nap in the afternoon when the bazaar also pretends to fall asleep. One day, I found her readying materials for aloo-pakoda, made from the usual ingredients: boiled potatoes, onions, and garlic. But when I asked her how she would prepare it, she had no clue. What struck me about this was the way she had jumped right into making it. Maybe that is her story–the ability to adapt.

To adapt is perhaps the very definition of change. There is something about adaptation, however, that I find unsettling. It seems like a logical response to changing circumstances, but it is almost, to my mind, an antithesis to transformation.

While my first question (how does one measure change?) still remains unanswered, I can draw a tangent from it to the second one. An anecdote might help explain what I’m talking about.  I recently visited the village school here. As I crossed the pine forest that led me to the lily-covered playground of the school, I could see tiny figures in white-and-blue uniforms climbing the stairs to assemble into lines. I found my own ten-something-year-old self amid the students, hands stretched into two parallel lines. I remember how in my case the assembly line was the place where we gossiped with friends, exchanged glances, and quickly shared what was in the tiffin for that day. In the school here, an oxygen cylinder, used as a replacement for the mandatory bell, was clanged as the teacher ordered the students to keep quiet and then to sing the national anthem. I realised that while the anthem had changed, the ritual around singing it had remained untransformed. Untransformed, yet changed, on so many levels.

As I start to peel layer after layer of these changes, at times surfacing and at times concealed in our daily lives, I transform. I have broken down, been shaken into reality, and been crushed by my own crippling sense of flaws. But I have also been able to shed so many inhibitions, grown so many strengths, and begun to appreciate the stories behind people, and the people behind stories. Every time I travel, I have learnt to keep my senses alert and my mind open in order to let in the infinite scope of the insane possibilities of transformation.