http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mag/2005/01/16/stories/2005011600580100.htm

Homeland Magic, Vijay "Bajji" Balakrishnan 1970

“Where are you from, son?” asked the old woman, in a distinctly southern drawl.

I smiled and pushed my shopping cart of groceries closer to the checkout counter. “We moved to Atlanta from Minneapolis.”

“No, I mean where are you really from?”

Ah….a more difficult question. I grew up inside a picture postcard and fell out by accident through a tear in the paper. The mists that rolled over hilltops like lace veils did not follow me through the hole. Neither did the heady smells of eucalyptus and cypress fir, laced with smoke. No, you see, it is their fierce loyalty, or perhaps a spell (I never figured out which), that keeps them rooted in those valleys.

The postcard was an exquisite place. There were gardens awash in color, streams with squirming tadpoles, and lakes ringed with silent trees. The sky had a deep blue tinge, perhaps even purple, that I have not seen anywhere else. It was always cold in those hills, and the air felt like peppermint to breathe.

I walked everyday to a red castle, where a red-bearded man in a black cape started the day by reading from a Holy Book. He had mischievous eyes, that man. They twinkled brightly when he was animated. We heard him seated in rows in a great hall with a vaulted ceiling- the boys in grey on one side, and the girls in navy blue on the other. We did not always understand the holy words he uttered, but felt strangely better as we walked out of the hall after he was finished.

Eight of us climbed to the castle tower with a roof that looked like a pointed hat. Every morning began with a choice to either take the stairway that contradicted itself in right angles, or slither up spiral steps through a very narrow turret with slit windows. We sat at desks while thetas, betas, equations, formulas, and diagrams swooped through the small room in circles and settled on the rafters. Hindi letters jumped about on the lines above their heads like children playing on monkey bars, and Tamil alphabets rolled from side to side on their many curlicues. It was hard to catch them, as they seemed to anticipate every move. It was only when a bell clanged that they all flew out of the arched window to the distant playground.

We often trooped down the hill in neat lines to the playground. A whitewashed shed that smelled of leather and sweat stood at one end of a green expanse framed by trickling streams on two sides. There were always neat, white lines on the grass that marked out great rectangles and circles. At the corners of the markings were waist-high red and black flags. We knew it was the tall man who emerged from the shed in a brown sweater, or sometimes a greatcoat, that made the lines. Nobody knew his name. He was just “Watchee”. Many thought he lived in the whitewashed shed. Others said he walked home every day through a long tunnel to a sunny valley on the other side.

There were many rituals we performed under Watchee’s gaze.  In pouring rain sometimes, we struck little red balls into puddles of water with the curved sticks that he gave us. The sticks were transformed into paddles with which we beat great sheaves of mud onto ourselves. The mud would permeate everywhere. It matted our hair, lodged in our teeth and inside our ears. There was one boy who whispered that within the mud lay formulas and letters that had escaped the tower and gotten stuck in the slush.

We were divided into Reds, Blues and Greens- groups that vied with each other for excellence in letters, music, and sport. Each group had its Leaders, who urged their minions onward with words of special power like Self Reliance, Tojours Pret and Perseverando Vincmus. None of these rallying cries had the strength of Ad Rem, which was as old as the red castle itself. The large hall with the vaulted ceiling often echoed with the voices of four hundred boys and girls singing, “Ad Rem! Ad Rem! Ad Rem! Be this our watchword ever!” I had not noticed the word “ever” then, but I know now that the mystical Ad Rem is still with me.

I have since discovered a well-kept secret. There were more hours in a day there, than anywhere else. I think it was the man with the red beard, and his many assistants, that altered all the clocks. How else can I explain every race run, tree climbed, and song sung lingering on in great clarity, while my life since then seems like a blur?

I remember the day I fell through the crack. I climbed into a silver tube with wings that had great fans that roared. It rose into the air and carried me faster and faster beyond the clouds. I craned my neck and looked through a tiny window to see if I could see anything I recognized, but all I knew had quickly vanished.

I looked at the wizened woman. “Where I’m really from? I’m from a place quite far away now, Ma’am.”

“Must have been a happy place, son,” she said. “I can tell from the look in your eyes.”

“That it was, Ma’am. That it definitely was.”