'Takes a village to raise a child...' - Eight life lessons that small towns teach you

There is something about a certain place in every person’s life. I am sure that there are many of you out there like me who look back at a specific block of time?that has passed and find it stationery, like a scattered wad of color visible from the wrong end of a kaleidoscope, opening into an idyllic world of a small town whose doors waited to be kicked in by us and where each door would in turn, lead into other doors inside a never ending labyrinth called youth where time pauses and swings to the unending music in our hearts and makes us believe that we were time itself, that we were forever.

For me , it was the 90s – a generation envious of the 70s, bored with the 80s and impatient for the 21st century. When I look back today, despite a lack of something spectacular about the 90s or the small industrial town I grew up in?, there was something special in that space that permeated?into me and stayed.?

Like every small town, ours too began with a robust signboard, while its finishing lines were a little blurred, a little disputed, because the only prospect scarier for the temporary settlers in our town than of not being able to return to it some day , was that of not being able to leave it ever at all. And yet, when we left, we always yearned to get back there one day to sigh in dismay at undone strangers in our own mirrors. Our neighbors lived in modest houses with generous verandahs and large gardens, their hearts mostly choosing empathy over ambition. We kids grew up listening to never depleting bedtime stories read by patient mums, or narrated by impatient grandmas. Rush hour traffic, including motorbikes ridden by rowdy youngsters, would pause on the pretext of a cigarette break, just to let a string of ducks cross the road, without scaring them off. Diets were still unheard of and families loved to have large uninhibited meals, together, seven days a week. People often got friendlier after their first drink at our neighborhood bar, unafraid of occasionally passing out after one too many, confident that someone will always lend a hand and install them into their own bed at night. Births and funerals used be less lonely, and people would show up with generous smiles to welcome you into the world and shed real tears while bidding you goodbye. Science was still a little scanty, philosophy was still a little dated and religion was still a little tolerant in our town.

And then, like every small town dweller, we too reached that fateful day and stepped out into the real world, leaving behind our broken guitars, our heroic poetry and our idealistic martyrdom in that enclosure of the past that serves as a custodian of our myths and dreams, our heartbreaks and folklore, our love, our lust and our loss. True, peering back at the journey so far, hedging the regrets of missed turns and unmet dreams, some of which may be attributable to the limitations of our small town paradigms, I am sure that I would not have traded my small town childhood for any worthier alternative. The merits of growing up in small towns far outweigh the defects we inherit. Here are some of them –

1. To belong – In her growing up years as the daughter of a corporate gypsy , my daughter has been to eleven educational institutions across nine cities. Hers has been a typical urban childhood that comprised of learning, unlearning and relearning her tribe over and again. In contrast, my tribe is frozen for this lifetime. While I made a lot of acquaintances and also quite a number of friends in my life , curiously, as I noticed the other day, most of my thick friendships are archived in my years in my small town. In a world where geographical boundaries have become irrelevant over the past decade due to the digital thunderstorm that’s hit it?and brought forth all the connectivity across all those platforms, our world but , has become a lonelier place with each passing day . Somewhere, beyond all that chatter of fake networks, we all need to belong. We all need that coveted corner in our hearts where we can stow away our memories . And we all need that one trip in our bucket list that takes us back to that bend of life where a wall stands wearing graffiti. A graffiti that bears our story.
2. To dream – “Wait for me at this place one year from now and I shall drive back in an S-Class Merc”, exclaimed my indignant best friend while boarding a bus after being thrown out of his house because he had dropped out of college. True to his word, he came back one day. Okay, he couldn’t manage his S-Class, but the 19 year old boy I saw off a year back , came back a worldly-wise 20 year old man who had taken his shot, learnt his lesson and returned to base camp, stronger and wiser. Every small town boy has a Rocky Balboa inside him and a dream to slay his own Apollo Creed in the world out there. Sometimes we manage to get the better of Apollo. Sometimes we get clobbered by him. But that doesn’t stop us from dreaming. Because we know that whether we come back without our Merc like my friend, or with a world cup like Dhoni, we will have friends waiting for us back home to cheer for us either way.
3. To begin – Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. While our end is opaque and our middle is what consumes us in our daily grind, life often tosses us the periodic curve ball that stops us on our tracks with existential dilemma and makes us question its meaning and sigh at the futility of it all. That’s where one needs a Page One, a beginning, to turn back to and to pick ourselves up. Today’s fast paced urban life offers you a deal of free flowing adrenaline and easy dopamine. It however fails to give you your story and a pause to sit back and reflect on it, to map back the route you came about to become you. Most small town folks treasure their beginnings. That’s where they settle down after their second whisky. And that’s where they fall back on for strength when life comes calling, as it often does.
4. To laugh – “Doesn’t he resemble S’s dad”, whispered my friend in my ears, loud enough for our Jesuit principal ( cane in hand) to hear him, and making?the four of us, who have been lined up after the school assembly for being caught smoking outside the school, burst into uncontrollable laughter. The principal is furious. He canes us mercilessly for fifteen minutes,?threatening to expel us from school. Fortunately he doesn’t. Twenty five years later, rummaging through an old album, I remember this incident and write it on my Facebook page with an old pic . In an hour, I have triggered off a hilarious thread of comments below it, including those from a dozen ex-teachers, and ( surprise, surprise) the now-octogenarian principal himself. There is something liberating about laughter. It loosens you and makes you a better human being. As life unfolds, warts and all, we all need anecdotes to stitch together and laugh about when life tends to get messy. Today, as a middle aged man, I am ready to let go of all my trophies, but I cannot let go of the stories that make me laugh at life whenever life scowls at me.
5. To bounce back – Till date I cannot say if it was my love for life, my fear of death or the desire to see my family for one last time, that stopped me from jumping off the speeding Gitanjali Express train that dark July night in 1993. I, the multi-tasking self-proclaimed maverick from our school, had flunked in three papers in my second year, thanks to my new bohemian lifestyle and my new company at university. Even today I remember my dad’s heartbreaking indifference, my Ma’s crestfallen face, the sullen birdless sky that refused to let go of its rain and a scooter ride to my old school where a conversation with an old teacher and her comforting words thereafter which changed my life. Two months later, I went back to the university. Two years on, I topped it. I buried the ghost of failure, the old school way.??A small town community teaches you to embrace failure and learn from it instead of hiding it. Till date, whenever life corners me, I step back to that afternoon in our school staff room. And I know I will bounce back. The small town way.
6. To remember compassion – A few days after my 8th birthday, one of my dad's close friends passed away and the family lost its sole earning member. Even at such a young age, I remember being moved by the efforts set in motion by dad and his colleagues to handle the situation. In two months, they managed to find a job for his wife ( nothing great, but something that would pay the bills, ensure continuity of their daughter’s education and give the mother-daughter duo a respectable life that was not dependent on relatives). Many years on, the lady, now retired, and an extended family member of ours, sits and weeps uncontrollably at my dad’s funeral. Like this, we have scores of relationships accumulated over the decades, with people whose ties with us have become thicker than blood. Through births and weddings and funerals, as life follows cycles , we stand by one another, bound by a common past in a common existence we shared in that small town that taught us compassion. When we see people going through tough times, we don’t judge or turn our back. We roll our sleeves and try to help.
7. To have tolerance – One of my favorite childhood memories is going to the church on a chilly winter morning with a friend and helping ourselves to the cakes kept on a platter for visitors . Now,?while I am a Hindu, my friend happened to be a Muslim boy. Funnily our faiths never seemed to matter, or come in the way of our bonding. In our growing up years, we would share our lunch boxes , lend and borrow textbooks, celebrate festivals of all faiths?and occasionally also date between communities without looking behind our backs to check if some politician would approve of it or not. Maybe this gave us the adaptability to move around so effortlessly in this glocal world and the conviction to love mankind beyond the colors of religions, skins and passports.
8. To have perspective – Last December, while visiting Ma at Calcutta, I was sitting and having a drink with two gentlemen who had come over to see me. Strangers to one another, but acquaintances of my late father, one of them is in his early 70s while the other is touching 80. Incidentally both of them have difficulties with hearing. So you can well imagine the conversation. When the first gentleman would broach the subject of the day’s cricket match, the other would be talking of the guest house décor he liked during his last Shimla trip. I guess you can imagine the scene where I, between rounds of Johnny Walker, would?try to connect their conversation threads, in vain. And then, every few minutes, one of them would withdraw into a momentary and private silence. Understandably so. One of them recently lost his high flyer son in a tragic road accident, while the other’s only daughter had succumbed to a cruel cancer two years back. The awkwardness of the circumstances aside, the three of us managed to have a wonderful evening in our own lopsided way, laughing at our own versions of jokes we thought we heard, and occasionally stepping back to reflect on the drama of life and how insignificant each one of us is, when it comes to the larger scheme of things. We have taught ourselves, that this too shall pass. Or maybe it won’t. But we won’t give up. Or give in. We are the long run types. We are small town folks.

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