4 days, 5 nites, and a New Tolerance Level - Part IV of IV

Anantapur-to-my grandparents’s place
-After going through the 7hr long journey from Bangalore I was looking forward to a normal incident-free car ride to my grandparent’s village from Anantapur. Well, when the poo hitteth the roof it hitteth more than once!
-We drove about 120 KM incident free with the a/c purring away when suddenly our car driver decided to get adventurous and navigate a heavily flooded part of the road by driving right through about 1 feet of water. Well, our rental car had a relative low road to car floor tolerance and voila the car stalled right in the middle of the water pool!
-Dang it! Two consecutive days of travel adventures were not what I had in mind in the middle of an Indian summer. Our car driver seemed shaken, more worried about what his owner would say about this rather than worry about our situation. I guess to each his own.
-When he turned the ignition there was nothing, so I knew it was a serious problem. He would not listen to me and was confident that if someone could pull the car out of the ditch and give it a push it would start. Off he went and recruited a passing mini-truck and convinced the driver to tow the car backwards out of the ditch.
-Mind you this is in the middle of a main thoroughfare road and we are by now a spectacle for all the locals to watch, comment, and laugh. The car got pulled out of the ditch rather adventurously after which I asked my mom, sister, and aunt to get out and wait in a nearby store. I then went along with the driver and we recruited a couple of bystanders to give the car and push backwards first and then forward to start the car.
-I was bitching internally as my new sandals were ankle deep in muddly water! Well, no choice. After a couple of attempts it was clear that the car needed serious repairs.
-I went back to where I had left my mom and others and in the interim a bystander had started chatting with my mom and by the time I walked back to them he told me that there were rental vehicles, heavy duty landrover types even, not far away. This is one thing about India that is special, people are always willing to help out random strangers. Maybe this is the case in other places as well but I find it refreshing that people actually approach YOU when YOU are in trouble even if YOU don’t make the first attempt.
-We successfully then negotiated a new rental vehicle contract and off we went. Of course we went in a non-air conditioned vehicle. This part of the journey would last 2+ hrs under a scorching Sun. My little nephew cheerful through most part of the trip finally gave up at the end. It was brave of him to withstand it so far anyway.
-By the time we reached our grandparents village and offloaded I was in no shape to even talk to anyone. The thing with heat combined with dust and humidity is it saps you! I did not even have the energy to shower or wash my face.
- I had slept 2h in the last 48h and traveled 15h in hot metal boxes with dust blowing from all directions in 110C temperatures.
-I have to say though, seeing my grandparents’s place, the place where we hung out all summers when we were children, was a bit of a relief. I took my nephew on a little walk to the lush green grass fields. He did not stop being transfixed at the sight of a cow and goats grazing in the fields. A bit of my energy returned.
-Of course there was no power when we got to the village. Regular scheduled daily outage apparently. Which made me wonder how the Indian government is going to deal with the never ending purchase of air-conditioned units everywhere. Where would they get the power from-historically India had always been short of the power it needed to run smoothly. Anyway, back to my situation, I just laid out in the open under the trees in the village and dozed off.
-I remember being awoken for dinner at some time, and I sleepily ate (cant remember what) and quickly went back to sleep.
-The next morning was better as we had all recovered. I chatted away with my grandmother and grandfather and uncle and aunt. It felt good to be seeing them. My grandparents (mom’s side) cant travel due to health issues so to see them happy when we went to see them was good. It is always cool to speak to my grandfather as he is one person who is absolutely in his own world. In a cute way. For example, when I was leaving to the US for grad school (I was 20-21 yrs old mind you) he had asked me how I would manage on my own. “Are you not going to be scared by yourself?”. It was so cute I had to laugh out. He was not doing well but recently had recovered. It was good to chat with them. My aunt prepared my fav meal and it was a great time.
-My dad’s family is also from the same village and in fact they used to live a stone’s throw away from my mom’s family. What used to be a relatively large area of four homes lined next to each other and that used to house 16 kids is now crumbly and un-occupied except for one person. Everyone had moved away or passed away and it was a disturbing sight to see. My sister, aunt, and I walked through what we can call ‘ruins’ and felt sad about it. Plush green agricultural land lied unused and destroyed as there is no one to take care of it now. We could only sigh and reminisce the good times from our childhood. My aunt who was born in one of those homes and had grown up there told me that at one time people wondered if these four homes were large enough to hold all the families that were supposed to spring forth. Well, I guess not.
-We left early that morning on another car to catch a flight back to Hyderabad. And luckily the car-ride was un-eventful. We returned to Hyderabad at 6pm the same day. I had managed to survive what turned out to be an interesting 4 days and 5 nites.