Long Drive with Periyappa!

My periyappa is one of the people I admire and look upto. And I had the opportunity that many of our family members didn’t have to spend about three months with them in the US. I was going onsite and by luck it was to Chicago where Periyappa was working in a University. I remember the first day of reaching there and periyamma had made fish fry for me. Until then, from childhood, I religiously followed my mom to not eat Non-vegetarian on Saturdays. I couldn’t resist and I had and there started the never ending habit I loved, loved and loved spending time with them. It was just like back home, I would work through the week and spend the weekend with them. Out of many days, the thing I loved the most was a long drive from Chicago to Madison. We were supposed to go to an Indian event, but as usual periyappa turned up late at my hotel and inspite of periyamma repeatedly telling us to take the high way, we took the country road. Periyamma is all high fashioned, get it done quickly type of person. But I and thankfully periyappa also preferred driving through the country roads, apart from all the traffic. We drove through every possible small road and honestly the best drive I ever had. I was and am still surprised that periyappa shared so many of his stories with me. There, he was a great professor, having done lectures for so long and meeting so many important people. And I am a 25 year old girl, who had no clue about many things in life. But I could see he enjoyed talking to me. On the way back to Chicago, we did the same, taking the country road. We stopped over at Mcdonalds (that’s one of the things they both did, whenever we went out, even for a small drive, they took me to Mcdonalds because I enjoyed it very much). We lost our way and the GPS didn’t work as I thought it would. For some reason, I managed to find the office I was working in, and reached our hotel from there. He started calling me human GPS and would share that story to whomever he spoke to. There was a eat out we went in the middle of our way and periyappa was talking to me that he would sponsor me to take a H1 and come to US. They had never said that to anyone in our family, but he went on for a long trying to persuade me to do it. But I had a good life in Bangalore and I didn’t want to do anything of that sort. And I didn’t think I could stay away from my parents for years together. What life had in plan for me is a different story, but I was very adamant that I would never go abroad. Even now, periyappa always says that when he sees that place where we sat down for a long and spoke, he always thinks of me. They still talk about my visit there, periyappa more than periyamma actually. I am not a very special person, but I could see that they saw me as a special person from that trip onwards.