We always wanted to leave Bombay, but never got the chance. Finally, when the disease came, our parents decided it was time to leave, and began all the preparations: we gave away our furniture and gave away most of our clothes, and sorted out our toys and books.
We were going to shift to Shenbaganur in Kodaikanal.
My parents had put up a calendar on the wall. We were counting the days for our final departure and my brother and I would fight as to who would cancel the day out when it was over.
When we asked our parents how we were going to travel, they said it was a surprise. Of all the surprises, we never expected a caravan.
Early one morning, the caravan finally came. After our parents sanitised and packed all our luggage into the caravan, which was a very long time, we were allowed to enter.
The caravan looked like a big bus from the outside, but inside it was just like a little house. There were folding beds and tables, a microwave, a fridge, and a TV. A gas stove that we could pull out from the side of the van when it was parked. And very importantly, a clean bathroom.
The journey was excellent! After seven months locked inside our house, with the same view every day, it was nice to see the world moving outside our windows. Besides looking out of the windows, we read, slept, crocheted, coloured, sang songs, and feasted on the ‘unhealthy’ snacks we carried. We counted cars, and then cows, until we ran out of numbers. We saw a lake which was so big, at first, I thought it was the sea. We even saw monkeys! We stopped and cooked, and ate on the folding tables. What a picnic it was!
After two nights and two days we finally reached Kodai. The caravan dropped us at the bottom of our road as the drivers were worried that the road would break the caravan. As we waited for a jeep to take us up to our new house, we were so excited to see an actual pear tree, that we danced around it like the monkeys we saw earlier.
When we finally reached home, we were amazed. We couldn’t believe that we were actually going to live in a pretty house with beautiful flowers, trees, peacocks, butterflies and a giant squirrel for neighbours. After we had unloaded our luggage, we went running around the property and felt free like birds.
