Tamil Nadu

开篇：润墨网以专业的文秘视角，为您筛选了一篇Tamil Nadu范文，如需获取更多写作素材，在线客服老师一对一协助。欢迎您的阅读与分享！

Mridula Koshy is the author of Not Only the Things That Have Happened, published last month. Her short story collection, If It Is Sweet, has received critical acclaim, won the 2009 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2009 Vodafone Crossword Book Award. Mridula lives with her partner and three exceptionally wonderful children; when she travels it is so she can return to them. She believes that travelling is not about itineraries but about changing one’s mind, something that reflects on her entertaining description of a road journey.

On the road

IAM A terrible traveller. i cannot sleep, unless it is between my own sheets, and what is impossible when travelling, atop my own bed. i lose luggage, i lose boarding passes, i lose money. No, i don’t lose myself. Some have argued that right there is my problem. the only thing i am worse at than travelling is travelling alone. i had to ignore the persistent shriek of ‘no’ in my head when i applied for a writing residency to Sangam House. “No!” my daughter wailed when i was accepted. this was the first time in the four years since her adoption that i would leave her.

i landed in Chennai and did as instructed by my husband, he of the eye roll and ‘we’ll be just fine’ sigh: i got in the prepaid taxi to the Kathipara Junction to there board a deluxe Volvo bus for the three hour journey through tamil nadu’s countryside to arrive at Sangam House, where the beds was no doubt as strange as, well, any bed not my own. Yes, i was uneasy, and furthermore i was uneasy with my unease.

An hour into what was to be a 15-minute drive, the taxi driver convinced me on the strength of our newfound friendship that he need not continue braving the vicious traffic, that if he pulled over and hailed the first bus going my way, i’d be at my strange bed that much quicker.

i managed to squeak, “Deluxe. it has to be a deluxe bus.”

“Amma, for certain i will put you in a deluxe,” he assured me as he tossed my luggage and then me on board a metal wreck that rattled its way from one village to the next, taking me on a journey of not three but seven hours, in the company of those with whom i don’t often share space.

After the first hour my fellow passengers stopped staring at me. i sympathised with the staring. i was doing my share. Outside the bus the landscape of tamil Nadu shifted from dust to dusk. i wasn’t paying attention to tamil Nadu. it’s always people i am most interested in. the woman who nursed her child next to me and handed the child over my lap, and across the aisle to her brother and his wife, who played with the child and handed the child back to be nursed, this woman fed me from her collection of snacks. i made up life stories for all of them.

the couple across the aisle played with the child as those who long for children sometimes do—fretfully. When the young woman grew tired of her longing, she handed the baby back across my lap to its mother. the baby latched on to the mother’s breast, stretched his little legs and finding my lap kneaded his pleasure there. Across the aisle the young woman looked with reproach at her husband. He looked uncomprehendingly at her, and then with the light of intelligence just awakened. He turned to put his back to the bus window, and she slid into his arms to rest her longing there. Once at Sangam House their story found its way into my novel.

Next came three young men whose late-journey entrance into our bus dispelled not only our collective ennui but also the dark that had crept in the windows. they were that beautiful. At each jolt from the bus their hands shot up to hover solicitously above the lacquered gloss of undisturbed hair. We looked askance at their pleasure in themselves, even as we reached above our heads, our hands in sympathy with their beauty, searching for our own. the bald headed man reached for what was not there. He shrugged and we agreed: vanity need not be limited as beauty is to the beautiful.

i would like to say i learned something on that bus ride. But i did not. i did not for example learn to be a better traveller by becoming easy with my unease. two weeks later, i made the journey in reverse. it was easy sharing a taxi with a writer from New York. in Delhi i was my unchanged self; but my daughter, i found, quite changed. She had travelled a long distance in my absence, to the country of her abandonment, to find her entry within barred by her father.