On the Road with Mum
6 May
I write this at 1am from the bus to Maesai — mum is sleeping beside me. I’ve just taught her how to exchange her VIP bus ticket for 2 packets of green tea, and 2 packs of yuzu juice, and that’s after the free chicken drumstick and two cakes, orange juice and fruit yoghurt they gave us.
The only time I was this overwhelmed by the food and drinks a ticket anywhere included — I obviously travel budget airlines only — was aboard the Shatabdi Express from Ahmedabad to Mumbai.
Mum’s sole epiphany so far: it is difficult to use the toilet facility aboard a moving bus.
On the road together, we’re practically invincible. She is the source of my navigational abilities — no, she’s what GPS systems need to prove they can beat. Together, taxi drivers fear us. We know the backroads of Bangkok — and other cities — better than they do. Turn left here, she’d say. How do you know that? You’d never even been here. Keep right, I’d say, don’t go onto the bridge. How do I know that? I’d never even been in this neighbourhood. I think we need to join the Amazing Race, but she’d probably say I’m too ‘nua’ to be any good at it.
In a way, I’m pleased she’s here with me. This is my world — my world of 20 min bus stop breaks, when I know every song on the tv and the music video sequences, and even know what each stall by the road sells, the moment we pull in. I’ve been here before. And I’ll probably be here again. This is my world, one I’m finally sharing with her, though a part of me feels as though I barely need to introduce it to her. I travel this way because she first made me: dragging my lazy, sorry 10 year old ass out of sleeper trains and walking, just endlessly walking, across strange landscapes she called home, and which I now know to be my education.
