Country roads, take me home

When I left Delhi for my village in Kerala three years ago, a friend remarked that I would not last more than a year in the village.  I quipped, “You’ve given me a whole year!  I’ve given myself only 6 months.”

I never thought I would fit in my village.  The fact is I haven’t – not in the usual sense.  I live as solitary a life as possible in the village and the people are apparently happy to leave me alone.  My fear was precisely how much solitude would be granted me.  As I’m completing three years of my existence in this village, I’m more than pleased with the whole-hearted cooperation of people in leaving me to myself.

The plain truth is that there are no villages in Kerala.  Villages have undergone much change with most people living alone in their big houses, some of which look palatial, travelling by their own private vehicles, and mostly avoiding meddling with other people’s affairs.  In addition to all that is the fairly large migrant population in the villages.  There are people from Bengal (both West Bengal and Bangladesh) as well as a few other North Indian states even in my small village.  There are hundreds of them in the place where I go to work everyday which is also a village though it looks like a small town with its infrastructural developments.

One of the things that I would have loved in the village is a more peaceful atmosphere, a slower existence than what I’m actually getting.  Everyone seems to be in a hurry like in cities.  Everyone rushes at the topmost speed possible on these narrow roads.  Some of the narrow roads are being widened into state highways.  The rate at which development is rushing into my village alarms me.  Where do I go now? 

Occasionally I go for a ride on certain interior roads which have almost no traffic.  I love the languid vacantness on those country roads through villages which are apparently more remote than mine, much more pristine at least.  I find myself humming with John Denver, “Country roads, take me home / To the place I belong.”