Someone one said that you forget what people say to you and you forget what people do to you but you never forget how they made you feel. I could wax lyrical about that statement all day long but what I want to use it for right now is to try and prove that taking a 4-year-old child travelling to India – or anywhere else for that matter – is not something that can be easily forgotten … and I mean for the child. There are details about our trip that I can’t even remember but my child talks about them often. He’ll tell me that we caught a train to Siliguri after Varanasi; he’ll tell me about the place in Kalimpong and the one in Jaldaphara, where we had to fill up a bucket before pouring the water over our heads from jugs to wash. He asked me where we got lost when we found that nice taxi driver to take us to the Science centre, which he remembers was closed. He’ll tell me where we only had cold water, where we didn’t have a shower at all and where there were only squat toilets. He tells me in detail about his swimming in the Ganges and recognises the names of the places we went to when he sees India on a map. Someone may have said something to you several years ago, something that had a profound effect on you at the time – you will probably have forgotten what it was a few days or weeks after the words were spoken but the effect will live with you – possibly forever. Memory of the detail will fade … maybe … but what he will always have is the memory of how the trip made him feel. He will always be that uber-cool kid who went backpacking around India when he was four and that is sure to feed who he is and work its way into his makeup. He is changed because of it … I suppose we both are.
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