My Trip To India- Part 1
My grandpa asked me to write this, so I did.
It was early morning when I arrived at my grandparents house. I felt sick, tired, and bored, the culmination of a 22+ journey from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Chennai, India, and then the subsequent 3-hour car drive from Chennai to Nellore, where both sets of my grandparents live. I step down onto the ground, and look up at the apartment in which my grandparents lived. It wasn’t too fancy, nor was it shabby. When it was built, the walls probably popped with their bright baby blue color, but now, it was faded, worn.
When I turned around, the rest of the people who rode on to Nellore with me in a rented van/car (aka, my family) were unloading all of the luggage we brought with us from the US. When I tried to help, my grandpa waved me up and my dad told me to take my little eight-year-old sister upstairs, to the apartment where my grandparents lived.
My sister and I walked through the one-floor parking garage to get to the stairs to climb up to the first floor, where my grandparents’ apartment was. Though it had been three years since I had last visited, everything looked the same, from the rickety old elevator that required you to pull really hard on the handle to open the door, to the (very) old car that my grandpa still drove. The only difference I could notice was the old motorcycle that my grandparents had since I was born had been sold, and in its place was a brand-new electrical Scooty (a Scooty is an Indian brand of motorcycles).
When my sister and I reached the first floor, we rang the doorbell and heard it ring inside. When my grandma opened the door, both of us let out a simultaneous “NANAMMA!”
To explain, the grandparents I’m talking about right now are my paternal grandparents. In Telugu, the South Indian language that my parents speak, we call our paternal grandparents nanamma (grandma) and thathaya (grandpa) and maternal grandparents ammamma (grandma) and thathaya (grandpa). My paternal thathaya had rented a car/van and came with it to pick us up from Chennai. We then drove for 3 hours from Chennai to Nellore with my thathaya (and the guy who was driving the car, I have no idea who that was) to my grandparents’ apartment, where my nanamma was waiting for us.
Once we got settled in and all of the suitcases were in the apartment, my nanamma fed us idlis (which are one of the best things on Earth) and then me and my sister proceeded to take full advantage of our freedom to be as lazy as we want to be for the next month.
During the first week in India, my sister and I switched between two homes, my paternal and maternal grandparents’ home. My maternal thathaya is a doctor, and owns his own clinic, with the floor above the main floor of the clinic being the place where we lived. When we weren’t there, my thathaya, ammamma, and my mama lived there (my mama is my mom’s younger brother and we call him Amar Mama). At both of the homes, me and my sister were coddled mercilessly, constantly being fed our favorite food and allowed to laze around watching TV all day. My parents tried to get us to practice math, but pretty much failed, because no one feels the need to spend an hour practicing triangle proofs on Khan Academy when they are lazing around.
During the second week in India, my family and I traveled to Hyderabad, India, in order to visit my pedamma (my mom’s elder sister), my pedananna (my pedamma’s husband), and my cousins Rishi (who I call Rishi Anna) and Jahnavi. To get there, we took an 8-hour overnight sleeper train, which meant that the seats could be converted into beds where we could sleep. The ride actually wasn’t that bad; the rocking of the train quickly helped me fall asleep. My mom, however, said that the quick jolting and bumping of the train kept on waking her up. When we arrived in Hyderabad, my pedananna was waiting for us. While he loaded our luggage into his car, I looked around the dusty parking lot, remembering past India trips, when my mom would let my sister and I go by ourselves on road trips with my pedamma’s family to Hyderabad, and how my cousins and I would play intense games of Ludo, lying on a blanket in the trunk of the car.
When we arrived at their apartment, my pedamma was cleaning, but she abandoned her broom to give all of us hugs. Jahnavi, who is two years younger than me, hid in her room while all of us got settled in, clearly shy about talking to us. But she came out, and after the customarily awkward hellos, my mom told me that I wasn’t allowed to touch any furniture until I washed away all the dirt on my body. So I went and took a shower. I saw Rishi Anna later, after he had come back from… somewhere.
In Hyderabad, we went shopping. A LOT. We hadn’t been to India in three years, so our Desi wardrobe needed a refresh. We went to shop after shop after shop, and for someone who gets tired of shopping within half an hour, it wasn’t fun. But I think it amused my mom and pedamma whenever a store employee tried to give me directions, because I would look at them with a slightly confused expression and tried to follow whatever they told me to do. (I understand Telugu, but I only understand certain types of Telugu. I can understand movie Telugu and the Telugu my parents speak, but not rapid-fast Telugu spoken by someone who looks like they are very low on patience and would push me off a railing if I didn’t move my butt out of their way.)
But one of the things I loved most about Hyderabad was the food. Once, after shopping, my pedamma went to this street stand and bought us these crisp, hot, delicious samosas that were better than any samosas I’ve ever had in the States. In the US, we would buy frozen ones, which were kind of flaky and had an okay filling, but were nothing compared to these little pockets of heaven, which were crispy and crunchy and had a filling that melted on my tongue. We also went to this Indo-Chinese restaurant, which had delicious food, but I didn’t get to fully enjoy it, because I felt like throwing up once we got there. My cousins and I had just come from a place that’s basically Rock & Jump, all the way down to the playlist. (I have never heard that much Taylor Swift in my life.) I also had a questionable turkey burger for lunch, which resulted in me not being able to enjoy the Chinese food, and me being sick for the rest of our stay in Hyderabad.
But…because I felt sick, I was allowed to stay home and do what I wanted. So what did I do? I watched TV, of course. Rishi Anna had me watch a couple of Bollywood movies, which he said were some of the finest movies Bollywood had ever produced. The rest, he decreed, were “complete and utter garbage”. I also watched my first Mollywood (Malayalam) movie, Hridyam, which was actually pretty good. Jahnavi also tried to get me to watch this Tollywood (Telugu) movie called F3, which Rishi Anna turned off because, apparently, it was also garbage. (When it comes to cinema, he can be a bit of a nerd. Or a snob. Depends on who you ask.) I watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Gray Man on Netflix. (Also, did you know, on Netflix India, they have all three of Tom Holland’s Spiderman movies? I am genuinely upset about this.) By the time we went back to Nellore, my cousins had (kind of) managed to impart some knowledge to me on Indian cinema.
We went back to Nellore by sleeper bus, which also wasn’t that bad. When we got back, another few days of eating cantaloupe and watermelon and lazing around watching TV ensued, until it was time to go to Bangalore, where my athamma (my dad’s younger sister), her husband, (my mama, I call him Kumar Mama) and my cousin, Achyuth lived. This time, my nanamma joined us on the trip. To get there, we took a sleeper bus again, and waited for Kumar Mama to pick us up.
This was my first time visiting Bangalore, because while on past trips I would visit Hyderabad often, we never made the trip to Bangalore. It wasn’t until I got there that I realized that Bangalore wasn’t a majority-Telugu city, but rather a majority Kannada one. (I didn’t even know Kannada was a language until we got there.) The central part of the city, where the bus stop was, was congested with traffic, with cars and buses moving around each other in typical Indian driving style, which meant you have to disregard lanes, look for any gaps between the jumbled mess of cars, motorcycles, and trucks, squeeze your way through, and somehow miraculously not get your car scratched.
By the time Kumar Mama picked us up, I had completed my evaluation of downtown Bangalore, and we were on our way to my athamma’s home.
The area where they lived was really pretty. The roads were a reddish-brown dirt color, and all around us was this beautiful greenery and life. Unlike the US, where plant life seemed planned, organized in orderly rows and blocks to make it aesthetically pleasing, the greenery in Bangalore seemed more natural, untouched. The green there was different, more bright and eye-popping, and the flowers, shrubs, trees, and some things I bet were weeds, flourished, without the constant maintenance hindering their growth.
Once we arrived at my athamma’s apartment, my athamma embraced us tightly. Achyuth hid in his bedroom until my athamma finally coaxed him out. (He’s two years younger than me, and he’s pretty shy.)
While in Bangalore, we went on a lot of walks, just to enjoy the scenery and the idyllic-ness of the neighborhood. There’s this really pretty park near Achyuth’s home, with beautiful trees and flowers. We went there, and while we walked through the area, I asked my dad what the strange structures that kept on popping up were. These structures looked like big mounds of dirt, and I kept on seeing them at the edge of the path. My dad told me that that was where the cobras lived. I didn’t step near those things again.
In Bangalore, I had a much better time than my sister did. While in Hyderabad, it was me who got sick, this time, it was my sister who got sick, after eating a questionable gulab jamun. Whenever she felt better, me, her, and Achyuth would play Roblox, both of them beating me whenever we tried to race, because I never played Roblox. In my free time (which was plenty) I watched even more TV. We saw a Kannada movie called 777 Charlie (pronounced Triple-Seven Charlie). It was a dog movie, and I bet that the dog would die at the end (because it’s a dog movie, all dogs in dog movies die at the end), and I was right. But my mom and sister insisted that I was wrong, because the ending was still “heartwarming”. I also watched two more Mollywood movies, Bro Daddy (which was actually really funny) and Bangalore Days. (I am now under the opinion that Mollywood is the superior Indian film industry). I also tried watching RRR, the Tollywood blockbuster film that my math teacher for some reason likes, but got bored within 30 minutes into it and turned it off.
One of the more fun things I did other than watch TV was trying to fly Achyuth’s drone. My dad had bought Achyuth a fancy drone as a gift, and all of us tried to fly it. I failed, almost scaring the little boy who was watching us across the street, but my athamma was surprisingly steady, keeping the drone level.
The thing (more like person) that I had the most fun with in Bangalore though was my athamma. You see, my nanamma and my athamma have this thing about serving people food (maybe it’s because they’re mother and daughter, I don’t know), but they always serve you more food than you want, even after you tell them you’re good with what they already put on your plate. For example, my athamma made pappu (which is basically dal, just has a different name), chicken, and of course rice. She heaped a bunch of rice onto my plate, then a bunch of chicken, then a bunch of pappu. When I told her that was enough, she just shook her head and added a bit more. And a bit more. She even tried to add more food, but then my adamant refusal made her stop. My plate was piled with food. I still ate everything, but when she came to eat, I noticed that she took only a little bit of everything, while she had heaped enormous amounts onto our plates. So, I (encouraged by Kumar Mama), decided to serve her some food. Even as she refused, I heaped more rice, chicken, and pappu onto her plate, until she finally begged me to stop. She never served me more food than I asked for again.
Once our four days in Bangalore were up, we went back to Nellore by bus, and when we got back, my ammamma and thathaya had some news for us.
Remember my uncle, my mom’s younger brother? Amar Mama?
Yeah, it looked like he was going to get married.
Part 2 will be posted soon.
Links to learn more about Hyderabad and Bangalore:
1. https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g297586-Hyderabad_Hyderabad_District_Telangana-Vacations.html
2. https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g297628-Bengaluru_Bangalore_District_Karnataka-Vacations.html