• When I got a job, not at Mcdonald’s, I bought chocolates and had a mini-celebration with the Uber driver till home. I picked the ones with berries, he got the ones with milk.
  • When I got my hair colored red, I asked the driver to let me sit on the roof of the car, so I could siren us out of traffic. He didn’t think I was funny.
  • One time, I was lost on a highway, in the middle of nowhere, at 2 am, a driver named Santosh, found me, got me home, and told me to be more careful with my one/precious life.
  • The other time, another one of the same name, told me how a driver has the power and hence the responsibility to change a passenger’s mood for the better. That he must leave passengers happier than he found them.
  • In Bombay, my cab driver told me that his family suffers but is fine, and mine will be too. That he is thankful for my intention to help. The other one told me he dropped Shah Rukh Khan’s son home one time. And Shilpa Shetty’s sister is the other.

We have all had tiny wins in these rides, to/from home.

  • The grandfather on the train (to home) fought for my seat and helped me spread my bed sheet, an act of intimacy often overlooked and under-appreciated. The grandfather on the train (from home) 7 years ago, sends me photos of his grandson and ‘happy birthday GIFs’ on Dev Anand’s birthdays. I hope he is less lonely in the city he shifted to, to be close to his grandchild. Just yesterday, I was a 3-year-old grandchild being taken on trains to meet my parents for the summer.

And just like that, grandchildren turn 4, jobs get retired from, children graduate, Dev Anand passes, we carefully try to find common connections as I go to and fro, fro and to, so many times that I stop ‘going back’ or ‘coming to’. Amravati is home, Pune is home and trains/buses/cabs became home. The bus drivers recognize the girl with a glum travel-face, have inside jokes with me, the bhel guy on Daund station always puts extra lemons on my chaat and I live all the ‘beauty is in the walking, we are betrayed by the destination’s every time co-passengers present their phones to show children, children to show talent, and food to show love, the journey becomes home.

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