Travelling through the night

My parents were very much interested in travelling. We used to be taken to various distant cities during school vacation time on a week's trip. Our family was a big one as was every family in those days before family planning. But the size of the family never deterred our parents from lugging us all around the state. In fact I suspect that in some hotels people had started wondering whether we belonged to a school excursion party at the sight of so many children swarming all over the lounge when we checked in!

Whenever our school vacation started we would load the boot of the car, the roomy Ambassador (rented ones before my father bought his own) with big suitcases. My mother would have packed all of us one set of clothes for each day of the travel in one big case while the other one would contain the clothes of my parents. (My mother who loved dressing up in new sarees, would pack two sets of dresses for each day!) Then all the spare blankets would be shoved inside the big 'airbag'. Another basket would contain a primus stove and various ready-to-make flours to make dosas wherever we stayed for the night. They would have packed lunch and dinner for the first day too. We could see a bunch of banana leaves to be used as dinnerware, stuck amidst the luggage.

My parents would sit in the front with the driver and the smallest kid. All the older kids would sit in the roomy back seat. Since we all were thin and small this was possible! There would be a great fight for the two window seats. My younger sister V would always get to sit in the window seat as she had been sick, once, long ago and so had earned the 'right' to sit near the window to catch the fresh air blowing in from the open window and thereby 'avoid' travel sickness. (There were no air-conditioned cars then.) All the others would take turns to sit at the other window; after much fight, of course. The travel as such would be very hot and stuffy (no wonder, with all of us packed like sardines with bits and pieces of bags and snacks) in the daytime. But we all had a rollicking time at the back with various word games and anthakshari of film songs (which was made popular then by Radio Ceylon.)


We would stop for a picnic lunch at the roadside, under a shady tree, if possible, near a stream so that we could wash our hands. My mother would spread a big ground sheet she kept in the boot for this purpose and we would all have our meals there. This is one of the most enjoyable memories I have of all our travels. We would go for a walk in the nearby fields and coconut groves while the landowner would look on the 'city people' (us!) passing through their area with curiosity and would sometimes offer tender coconut milk from his trees.

We would stop for the groundnut being dried on the wayside and buy from them to munch. The usual cucumber, cucumber fruit, palm fruit(nungu), roasted cobs of corn and guava fruits would be bought from the wayside vendors whenever the car had to wait at a level crossing for the trains to pass by. These were the snacks we would usually eat while travelling, our hands sticky with so many fresh snacks and stopping often to clean ourselves at the municipal taps on the streets of passing towns.

Night time travel was something I always liked. Usually my smaller siblings would have fallen asleep by nightfall and I would be free to sit at the window. (Alll through the day I would have had to sacrifice the window seat to them, as the responsible eldest child, though I was only nine or ten at that time!) My younger sister at the other window and myself would hold a singing 'competition', each singing at the top of our voices various film songs. But we would never listen to each other. Each would be in our own world as all our singing would be into the open windows! We just enjoyed letting ourselves go free with all our 'singing' and enjoy the experience immensely. I recollect the rush of the cold night air into my face and the semidarkness inside the car, even now, whenever I hear one of those songs. If happiness is something we feel at such moments, I was truly happy then!