Roots

1. My Maternal Grandfather, a Brigadier in the Indian Army, was born and brought up in Hong Kong. My Grandmother, was from a small village in Punjab. My Paternal Grandparents spent their lives in Indore, now a bustling town in central India. My Father, a fighter pilot and my mother, a doctor from Lady Harding met since they both were in the Indian Air Force. The fact my parents met, was primarily because my dad wanted to clean his bike on a Sunday afternoon, while the other Sqn pilots decided to go to the railway station to pick up the newly posted in lady doctor.  Little did they know that my mother would arrive by staff car, courtesy her father’s profession.  So while the others were looking out for what they thought would be a helpless young girl on the platform, my father was introducing himself to this Punjabi Kudi in the officers Mess. Well, how and what happened is history as they say, I was born, two years later.

2. I tell you this, since the story of my life has meandered through the forests of never never land. I have reached here due to a series of occurrences that usually need a rare alignment of planetary bodies and the blessings of at least half a million naked sadhus, all along the bank of the mighty Ganges. Divine intervention with out their blessings would also not have had the same effect.  Yet I have lived a life that’s been blessed by the simple joys of  a middle class household and the occasional sprinkling of royalty, all because my parents had a stately demeanour and a liberated outlook.

3. The fact that I was born in a military household is because I willed it in another lifetime, you didn’t. I have been in the military earlier, actually the Air Force, the mighty German Luftwaffe during the Second World War.  Stunned!!! Even you may have been around; it’s just that you don’t remember. The fact that I have the ability to know my past is because I have had these recurring dreams from my childhood, which have reinforced this idea that I was indeed a part of the world’s greatest conflict. I haven’t had time to check out my story by actually going to a small village outside Stuttgart, but then does it matter. Finally what matters is what I believe. This is after all make believe, isn’t it. What you perceive you are. The rest is meaningless.