For 20 years, I believed H hated me.
I had never met her.
Had never spoken to her.
And yet, because of circumstances, I believed this completely.
And then, in the last week of 2024, I somehow found the courage to visit her.
We drove from Bangalore to Chennai, bumping along a highway that seemed to have more potholes and diversions than even the streets of Bangalore.
Every time I thought about finally meeting H, my heart gave a strange little bump, and I could almost feel my blood rushing faster.
She probably hates me.
And then—BUMP!
Swerve.
Brake.
Rattle.
Speed up.
NH 4/48 was like being tossed around inside a particularly violent spin cycle of an angry washing machine. The one upside? I achieved an almost Buddha-like state of no thoughts.
The sun sank behind a dusty horizon, giving way to the blinding headlights of oncoming traffic.
We reached the outskirts of the city, warmly welcomed by a sea of cows of every size and shape, strolling leisurely down a narrow road.
I cannot swear to their colour. Squinting past headlights is not the ideal way to identify bovine shades.
We slowed to a crawl… swerve… stop… crawl…
Eventually, the cows cleared.
The road widened.
And widened.
And widened.
And suddenly, we were adrift in a sea of traffic and commercial buildings decked in serial lights, blinking lights, racing lights, white lights, multicoloured lights…
Chennai at night was a bewildering, brilliant chaos, as I searched, a little wistfully, for the Madras of my memories.
Finally, we reached H’s home.
Numb.
Exhausted.
And desperately needing to pee.
“Come!” H’s warm voice greeted us.
Mr. H and Master H helped us manoeuvre and park.
Miss H smiled and called, “Come, Krishna!”
And my son promptly leapt off my back and into her arms.
An absolute first.
Over the next few days, H and I talked.
And talked.
And talked.
Over cups of green tea and cinnamon coffee…
Over rice and sambhar…
While doing dishes and cooking up a storm together…
And then, finally—
Me: “I thought you hated me!”
H: “And I thought you’d lock your house to me!”
A round of sheepish laughter.
(Do sheep laugh? Laughter is human, isn’t it? Point to check.)
And just like that, twenty years of imagined distance dissolved into something warm, easy, and unexpectedly familiar.
Now, I find myself surrounded by a sea of affection that H offers generously, without hesitation.
Twenty years.
Missed.
Because I did not reach past my own assumptions and simply talk.
It is odd, isn’t it, how the mind builds formidable stories from fragments of circumstance—and how convincing those stories become, even when they are completely untrue.
PS: A rare smooth stretch on NH 4/48, under the last few hours of the 2024 sun.
