It never announces itself loudly, the soft thud of boxes being shifted in the garage, a truck humming in slow reverse with its tail door open and ready, and my mother, quiet and methodical with years of practice, wrapping last minute cutlery in yesterday’s newspaper, its headlines still trailing the weight of recent conflicts. The signs are familiar. It is time to move again. Another farewell is quietly unfolding.
My father wears his discipline as he does his uniform, neatly creased, precise and dignified. Yet, in rare moments, I have watched him sit alongside our loyal pet retriever on the balcony, their eyes following the slow drift of clouds through the lush green valleys of the Nilgiris, as if listening to the silence, the momentary quiet that resides between his assignments.
We moved often. I knew my world not charted to a place, but like the waves rhythmically breaking on the shore only to recede, reappear and break shore again. I remember collecting school badges like river pebbles, each holding the glint of a different stream, a new place we briefly called home. Just as the glistening streams at the foot of waterfalls tumble gently from mossy rocks and vanish into the valley mist, we too joined vibrant landscapes and touched lives, always moving, always leaving yet never quite letting go.
Home was never a single place. It travelled with us, sealed in a few cardboard boxes marked with fading ink. These held the usual belongings of any family, a trusted pressure cooker, few dog-eared report cards and books softened by time. Each time we unpacked, a familiar smell would waft out, a mix of condiments, mothballs, and something hard to name. Perhaps memories, unpacking quietly before we could.
In Coonoor, I first saw how clouds move over the hills and through the valleys as I sat at my father’s favourite spot on the balcony. Unlike the thunderous monsoon of the north, here in the Nilgiris they moved gracefully, like thoughts gently meandering through a quiet mind. One afternoon, watching them rise from the valley and reshape themselves at will, I understood something unnamed within myself. We are like the valley clouds, I thought. Shaped by wind, held by nothing, never staying, yet never gone, always leaving a trace of our presence in every valley we pass through.
At every new school, I learned the ostinato rhythm. I learned to speak quickly and smile sooner, before hesitation could set in. I made friends with kids who had lived in one place all their lives and with those who, like me, could grow fresh roots in whatever soil we were given. Our friendships bloomed swiftly, like the Neelakurinji that carpets the Nilgiri hills in blueish violet hues once every twelve years, brief, fragile, tender yet unforgettable. We never said goodbye, we said, “stay in touch,” and let our names drift in shared memories like paper boats floating downstream.
I carry no permanent address, only the rhythm of pack, leave, arrive, unpack, begin. When people ask where I’m from, I smile and say, “nowhere in particular.” But in truth, I am from foggy school mornings spent with friends, from farewells under the moonlit sky, from mess halls where men with medals laugh like boys, from wind swept mountains, from numerous cityscapes, from places where streams smooth pebbles as they pass, and from valleys where clouds never learn to stay still.
Like the drifting clouds over Coonoor, we children of the uniformed do not forget. We journey, we reshape, and we keep flowing, held not by place, but by our memories in motion.
Photo credit: Kim Parag
References:-
- Ostinato Rhythm. https://www.britannica.com/art/ostinato
- Neelakurinji. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strobilanthes_kunthiana
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