Dilleshwari

I remember the names Bhilai and Bilaspur. Bhilai came randomly on days when we enquired about Mom and where she was born and brought up. She more often mentioned the names Bhilai, Rourkela, and Lucknoor, named Lucknow in layman's. When the Naxal-affected Chhattisgarh was to be travelled for a week, I mapped my tour plan and fortunately didn't land up in Bastar. I was more fascinated with the names that came up on the map, I remember Bilaspur as a major junction for my early life rail travels from Delhi to Vishakapatnam, and Bhilai as a name in the air for a reason always. My grandfather, young and tall in the photographs I saw, I was briefed every day and out that he worked at a steel plant, he got some government quarters to reside in with her wife and two daughters, one being my mom. He got posted to places, school fee slips reimbursed, family allowances, health, a pair of hard rock shoes, and a hell lot of a pension, the major flex my mom could ever have. Now I talked about the steel plant, my grandfather, my mom and the cities I mapped on a map, All I was ready was to see through my lens. Delhi - Raipur, Raipur to late-night trains, Tier one class, cars, cars and cars dare somebody track my expenses. I saw quarters, human settlements, and large and long twisted pipes. Here, Bhilai steel plant. With one in my head and the other through my window, I am living in two worlds in a place I listened to more often, through the stretched national highway, Palash flowers along the route, Bilaspur, Raipur, Bhilai, Durg to Rajnandgaon
My mom talks more often about her father, Next to Station Road where they lived in Andhra Pradesh, She was not admitted to school in Rourkela and continued her later education at ZPH High School just next to the house which was mortgaged when I was young, the only house which we could ever say Naani house and visit to. She got married at a young age, mother, my grandma converted to Christianity later after her(my mom's) marriage. When I was born, now I only remember stories, pictures and frames and my teenage with only Chandramma