India Chronicles: #2 – Roots – Kapurthala

Previous India Chronicle – Amritsar

Kapurthala. 100, 000+ people rich. ~68 km southwest of Amritsar. City of Palaces. Born, bred, loved, never left.

It was a dark and foggy ride right before the fog was lifted by the lights of Kapurthala, where I was born, made friends, grew up. We made it home.

December 24^th was a rest day to prepare for our long-winded agenda of exploring India, introducing it to our children. First order of business was to relax on the terrace where Dua enjoyed a lavish massage and a hair-do, courtesy Nani’s love.

My husband took the kids to the khet (crop fields of Punjab) near Kanjli on a scooter.

I? I had official business to take care and spent it in the confines of a bank where cultural differences presented themselves. A couple of times a car alarm went off and all employees rose and went out with their keys. “Meri gaddi?” Translation, “Is that my car?” Twice.

We had tea, courtesy the bank. The employees multi-tasked, not pretending a 1:1 customer service interaction with the person sitting right in front of them.

My enlightenment moment came when I noticed daughter of on my Indian ID. At the time it was made, I was a new adult, so it fit. It’s just when asked to see my husband and update my ID to say wife of, my mind’s analytical side crumpled. I am me. I belong to me. Not a man, my entire life. Despite being a proud daughter and wife.

We ended our day at our aunt’s place, where we were showered with a four-course fiesta from Daal soup, to aloo methi, chicken, palak paneer…the list goes on.

We rode the short .1-mile trek on a scooter because smack in its middle bustled a dangerous, blood-taking, curvaceous crossing with a blind spot and lots of buses and trucks.

That night, my children slept with butterflies in their bellies, thinking of their cousins at Chandigarh and all the games they would play. I? I could not sleep listening to my littlest wheeze and wake himself up every few minutes. He had gotten better from cold in the US, but after coming to India, his demising cough had strengthened into a wheeze. I worried about the immediate future; if we stayed healthy, especially in Delhi. Remember the California fires that deteriorated the air quality to the extent that weather department told children and seniors to remain indoors? Well, that is a norm in the capital of India. And my child already had upper respiratory. Not one more grain of the pollution, please.

Stay tuned for more of my chronicles of India.

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