Wafers and My Journey!

Dad was going to do the final move to Chennai. Mom and I had already moved three months ago and Balaji (my second brother) quit hostel and moved in with us...One week before my quarterly vacations began mom had left for Trichy and I was going to join her with Balaji on the afternoon of my last exam! Yay! I was going to miss Trichy for the rest of my life and I was eager to visit BHEL township one last time before I bid adieu...

Till two days before my trip everything was going smooth when something came up for Balaji and he could not go to Trichy...Which meant I could not...Disaster!!! I was in 7th standard for the love of God and my parents are not used to sending little kids alone on train...But me the Great was adamant that I could travel alone. I beg, cried, hunger strike, everything until it was agreed that I would take Vaigai Express from Chennai to Trichy alone. Balaji was paranoid and very scared and so were my parents...I was just 12 then and you know how safe India is for little kids but I knew nothing about any of that and I wondered why my parents were so scared!!!...Looking back I wonder how stupid I was and I can understand why I had to follow a set of rules laid down by Bal!

So I was made to sit in the train at a window seat. I promised Bal that I will never leave the seat till I see dad in Trichy. Also I could not pee, buy anything from the vendors, or eat anything from others. I could not talk to anyone and could not sleep either. After hearing all the orders for the hundredth time, I told my brother that I might get hungry and what should I do then...Bal told me to wait and after five minutes came back with a jumbo packet of wafers and a small bottle of water. He told me to eat it. I asked him why wafers and he replied because they were his favorite snack...I was mad because I was think more on the lines of Idli, Bonda, Bajji, even Bourbon Biscut but not Wafers...that too strawberry flavor! But the train started to leave and it was too late to get anything else for me...So I put up a silent protest and left for Trichy...

Those days it took about 7-8 hours to get to Trichy. It was the fastest train in South but still it took its time...It was close to eight in the night when I was nearing Trichy Junction and I was hungry, tired, sleepy, and to top it all off I had a fully loaded bladder. I was sick and tired of eating wafers as I had finished almost 75% of it and by this time I had also sworn never to eat them again in my life...When I saw my dad in the platform I got so excited that I might actually get to pee...

But the hygiene freak that my dad is he told me no peeing till we got home...Home was 13 miles away from the nearest bus stop which was about a 10 minute walk!!! Which simply meant that no peeing or food for another hour or more before we reached home...God only knows how I survived the nine plus hours of no peeing with little food (I do not put wafers under the food category!) and no sleep...I was just a little adamant girl of 12...

So I did make it all the way to Trichy from Chennai safe and sound, in one piece, with a busted bladder...And more importantly I was not kidnapped! So Good! But I remembered this incident when my friend picked up a packet of wafers at Taj Imports last week...I realized that I have come in contact with it very rarely till date after the train episode. Even if people offered it to me I would take one and nibble on it before I could politely dispose it off...

But I was eating one last week and it was not so bad afterall...But impressions formed about certain things during our childhood are so strong that we tend not to notice them until we look back and reflect on our past!