My trip to Padra

Hello dreams come true,

As I am sitting here without electricity and using the remaining battery power of my laptop, I decided to write about my trip to Padra. (edit: my electricity obviously came back when I posted this-it came back earlier than expected for a Monday! :) )

  Padra is a town on the outskirts of Vadodara. The town is where my dad’s side of the family lived for years. I had been meaning to go visit them earlier, but at least, yesterday worked out fine. My plan was to go in a chagda (a type of Rikshaw that stuffs even more people, but charges less), but instead, my cousin decided to come pick me up in his car while he had to run errends in the city Saturday night. He dropped me off Sunday night on the motorcycle. The breeze felt so nice even though my cousin, his wife (my bhabhi), and I were all on the bike! Cruising through the serene roads (very well built roads I must say!) at night.

  Let me start with when I first got there. I did not recognize the roads at all. They are even better than some roads in the U.S.A! I was amazed at the infrastructure and the lighting that was in place. Padra as developed tremendously in terms of roads. The houses were now all two to three stories tall in my grandparents’ old neighborhood.  I did not even recognize their house from the outside in the nighttime. The house downstairs is mostly the same as it was for all those year I visited as a child. The front patio type room where there used to be a bicycle that had clothes hanging on it to dry is no longer there obviously, but I imagined it there. The paints scrapped off of the walls-ever present. I looked at my grandparents’ photo in my mind and on the wall, and I felt touched by an angel. I wanted to take a video of my grandparents’ house as those walls contain a million memories that tie my dad to his parents. I had to lock my strong desire up inside a future capsule and press pause because my camera stopped working all of a sudden. I ran out of U.S. batteries (Energizer and Duracell), so my cousin got be Panasonic Indian manufactured batteries (cells as they are called here). I tried using brand new cells in my camera, but my camera stopped working after like a few minutes. Now, I am on a new mission to find foreign manufactured cells in India-Duracell or Energizer.  I will probably have to go to some mall of large shopping center. I will find them though- I need to take pictures!

Luckily though, I was able to use my cousin’s iPhone to skype with my parents in the USA. My parents got to see their family in Padra! It was nice. The voice quality was bad, and connection slow, but at least my dad saw his cousin brother, his nephew, his niece, his grandsons, his nephews’ wives, his other brother’s wife and vice versa after so many years. Seven years! I felt so happy to see my parents happy. I hope their hearts were filled with joy. I thank technology at times like this. When my camera malfunctioned, another piece of technology came to the rescue-even better than snapshots are real life video chat conversations.  My nephews are so grown up! They are adorable and very well behaved. I remember them as little children (4 and 5 year olds) who used to run around and do masti of all sorts! Now, they are still goofy, but the way they would sit down to study and do homework on a Sunday impressed me. They have better handwriting than me in English, Gujarati, and Hindi! One of them knows 4 languages already (including Sanskrit), and he is only in 6^th grade! They go to tuition classes on Sunday as well! 

  I went to pick my nephew up from tuition class with my bhabhi. It felt nice walking on the streets of Padra, but the traffic was intense. Then I went with my other bhabhi to the nearby market. At night, we walked to the restaurant and back. I love walking-be it city, or town- walking outside in India is just a whole different feeling. (I don't have pictures to accompany this post, but stay tuned, one day or another, I am developing a photo album just from Padra itself!) Afterall, it is the place that I got my values from-my grandparents passed down to my dad, and my dad to me! 

  Yesterday, I had so much good food in one day that I felt like I was in food heaven. I had papdi no lot and Maggie noodles for lunch! Manchurian and Chinese soup for dinner, and far as beverages go, milk for breakfast upstairs, coffee for breakfast downstairs, mid-afternoon tea upstairs, evening Lemonade downstairs, and right after, dinner at nearby rooftop restaurant called City Heart. To top it all off, on our way to Bhayli (another town), we had roadside soda (soo good, but my stomach was at its full extension capacity!). I had to sit on the bike after that, but I was fine. Then I went to my other uncle’s home since it was almost on the way, and there, they gave me Fanta. I was in function-overload. We reached Vadodara then and video chatted some more with my parents-but this time around, from my laptop, so it was better quality! O what fun- I had an amazing time and absolutely loved yesterday. I met some neighbors from my grandparents’ society too, but I did not recognize them since I was so young when I went to my grandparents’ home, but they recognized me and I wished my parents could be there to see them! …to sit outside at night with all the neighbors and chat.

  Close your eyes and make a wish. See that wish come to life. When it finally does, feel the universe with you.