We're Moving

"But we can't!"

"We can and we are. No more discussion."

I was aghast. We were moving to Lohana town? "We're Kutchhis!" I protested.

At this, my Dad looked up at me over his newspaper. His eye had a very stern look, one that I rarely saw there. "They're Kutchhis, too," he replied, through gritted teeth. "Now go away."

"But ..."

Dad slapped his newspaper down on the table. He rose, all six feet of him, a tower of seething rage.

"I am ashamed," he sputtered, unable to get the words out coherently, "to have raised a daughter who does not want to move somewhere because someone speaks differently as compared to us. I don't know what we've done wrong raising you, but we're moving there and you're going to make new friends there. That's it."

I ran to my room and threw myself on the bed. There, I sobbed in to my pillow.

We were going to leave behind my friends, my cousins, my college, all the book readings and poetry meetings ... to move to the back of the beyond where they said 'kui' for 'kuro' and 'halai' for 'moklai' .

The Kutchhi dialect does not have a script, and vocabulary varies from village to village, town to town. The examples given are for the words WHAT and SENDING

. I mean, in our college, we laughed at people who said 'kui' and 'halai'. Now I'd get laughed at if I spoke the way I'd grown up speaking! It didn't bear thinking about.

"Listen, don't go," Mitali said, when I broke the news to her. "I'm sure you can stay with me. Sort of like Sirius Black, running away from his family and going to James Potter's house. My parents would welcome you, like the Potters did Sirius."

I was so desperate I tried asking Mitali's Mom. But she seemed to have taken a leaf out of my Dad's book. "You'll soon make new friends. And when you come to visit, you'll be saying KUI!" she chuckled at me, quite affectionately.

"Never. I'll say KURO always."

Mitali's Dad had been listening. "My single piece of advice to you would be -- adapt," he called. "You'll have fun in Lohana town. They celebrate all the festivals the traditional way, with all the customs and rituals we've forgotten here. We've become too urban."

"I bet none of my new college-mates will be Harry Potter fans," I sulked.

Mitali's Mom gave me a quick hug, but it was still a NO on living with them forever.

*********

Our stuff was packed in cartons and sent off by truck. We got in to our car, waved Mitali's family goodbye, and Dad started driving. My eyes were all puffy with tears.

We had to break journey overnight, and stayed at a small hotel. We reached our destination -- our new home -- just before lunch time the next day.

To my complete astonishment, our new drive-way was swarming with people. Dad slowed down and drove in carefully, as they cleared a path for our car, waving and smiling. We disembarked -- and were surrounded. I felt myself being garlanded, and a sweet was popped in to my mouth. The three of us had to stand at our new threshold while someone performed an arti (traditional welcome), rotating a salver containing a flaming wick five times in front of us.

"Good luck in your new home," the crowd chorused, as we set foot inside. And then, as one, they began to pray. It was a prayer of welcome, of new beginnings, of togetherness, luck and love. There were fifty people there, all of them strangers, some of them as young as two years old, some as old as eighty, all singing together, welcoming us in to their community. I didn't know the words of the hymn they were singing, so I merely stared around, open mouthed. My parents had apparently learned the hymn some time in their youth, because they joined in lustily.

After the prayer, four girls my age came running over to me. They were wearing the traditional sarees, and had flowers in their hair. Back home, I would've sniggered at someone with flowers in her hair. Now, I felt under-dressed, in my jeans and T-shirt. With huge grins on their faces, they told me they had decorated my new bedroom. "We watched for the truck to arrive, and came in with the moving men," they informed me. "If you don't like the decorations, you can always take them down."

I bit back my retort and followed them.

The wooden door to my bedroom, in the farthest corner of the house, was closed. One of them turned the doorknob and opened it with a flourish.

I stood and gaped.

The first thing to catch my eye was a huge Gryffindor banner on the far wall of the room. Hedwig's cage stood on top of the wardrobe, and Dobby was sitting on the bed. Chudley Cannon posters decorated the other walls. "We looked up your Facebook profile, when we heard you're moving in," one of them said. "That's when we got this idea for your bedroom."

For a long time, I stood there. When I turned to them, my eyes were puffy with tears again.

We exchanged hugs.

I was home.