It was a long time ago: 1975 – July 1975, to be precise. At the end of summer, a sweltering hot time, especially as middle-class Indians like my family at that time rarely owned devices like air conditioners and lived in urban dwellings not designed to cope with North India’s extreme weather.

I was a bearded gangly 16-year-old, wondering what the next step in my life would be.

It had been a tough summer, and my mother had suffered her first heart attack, which meant that, by July, she was just struggling back to normalcy. As the oldest child that technically put me into a position of responsibility, though in our small-town culture, close relatives on all sides had stepped in to help us out. As a teenager from a small town who had just finished school, I was of course dying to get out of the small town, go to a ‘big’ city, explore, and build my own life. But now, I was being advised by the larger family to change my plans and study in my own town due to the changed family situation.

I could see all my dreams of the future going up in smoke, from being the English-medium educated son of educated parents, who could do anything and study anywhere, I ran the nightmare of being pinned down to my small town for the rest of my life.

The Emergency had just been imposed upon the country, and my socialist trade unionist lawyer father was expected to be arrested anytime. This put further pressure on me to forget my adolescent dreams and to face up to my reality of being in the small town forever or at least in the foreseeable future.

I had my parents and grandfather as my backers – they wanted me to study in better places than where they had been educated, though my hometown of Meerut has been and is one of North India’s premier educational centres. But life, like the lingering, hot, and long afternoons of North Indian summers, didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

Then came July, bringing the first showers of the monsoons – that lovely smell of parched earth receiving rain, Dushehri mangoes, and a letter for me. I had been given admission to a prestigious college in Delhi University. Relief.

The family celebrated. Dreams came back to my nights.

In those days, universities opened on schedule on the 15th of July each year. So, I had to be in Delhi a few days before that to pay my fees, etc. Except that, I had been given admission to the college, but there was no hostel accommodation. So, my family and I had to figure out where I would stay in Delhi. In those days, off-campus accommodation for out-station students was offered by relatives and family friends. My father seemed to have a few ideas about the matter and told me not to worry about accommodation; I would go to university at the right time.

I was sent to Delhi for a day trip with my father’s assistant to complete the formalities of admission, and then, my father would accompany me to Delhi a day before my college opened. I was excited and thrilled – the future was finally here.

I packed my belongings the night before we were to travel to Delhi, picking from the present and past in my cupboard and room what I thought would be useful to my future life: clothes, books, pens, and other essentials. While packing, I could sense the tension in my mother’s face and that of my father, though my father never showed his inner emotions to us children. I don’t think any of us slept that night, though we kept trying to do so.

Next morning, I was up and ready. My father’s assistant came by nine o’clock to open the office, which was the front room of our house. At around ten, my father’s assistant came inside the house to tell my father that the police DSP had come to see him. This seemed to be someone known to my father, as he was given tea and asked to wait while my father got ready. When he was dressed and ready, my father told me to get ready to travel while he spoke to the DSP, and then, we would leave for Delhi. I was of course more than ready to travel and promptly put on my shoes.

A few minutes later, my father returned to the family part of the house and announced that the DSP had his arrest warrant, and they would be leaving for jail right away. Stunned silence – our world whirled and shook. My father left, telling me to look after my mother and to go to college. The unsaid question hung between us: How was I going to carry out his instructions? Or indeed, was I capable of doing what he expected me to do?

I was honestly too stunned to think of anything. Thoughts of my mother, the home, and my younger sister filled my brain. True, my father had been in and out of jails in political agitations all through my childhood. But this was the Emergency. No one knew where the country was headed or indeed how long he would be in jail. The journey to Delhi, college, the future – all suddenly disappeared from my life.

Later in the day, we locked up the house, as my mother was in no shape to run the household and shifted to my granny’s place (from our mother’s side). In the evening, my uncle, who lived in Delhi and was home for the weekend, announced that I was to come with him and attend college. It was just a given in the new circumstances. I was worried about my mother, but she and granny assured me that they would be all right. I didn’t know whether to believe them, but 16-year-olds don’t argue with elders of the family in our culture. So, I left with my uncle in the evening with the bags I had packed in a different age, the night before.

The journey to Delhi was a tense, silent one – uncertainties flashing across my mind and dreams about my own future thrown out of the train’s window. My uncle tried conversing with me a few times, but in a crowded second-class train compartment, there’s always life buzzing around. So, silence and isolation is easy to maintain. I kept looking at the group of men playing cards, the families looking after infants, and the dozing elders and wondering if anyone could sense what was going on in my life. At some point, the evening gave way to darkness – images and voices of my father and mother started flashing past in the train’s window frame. I seemed to grow oblivious of the train compartment and its occupants. Or maybe I simply dozed off. As the train reached Delhi station, it was crowded and dark, but there was a steadiness to my walk as I held tight onto my luggage. I knew that I was simply going to do my assigned ‘dharma’: to study further.

Life did change, in more ways than one had dreamt or imagined, but the sheer trauma and uncertainty of that day never left me.

Writing and reflecting now, as a greying man seeing his teenage self, I am inclined to re-state homilies on time sorting it all out, destiny rolling out its path, etc. But the fact is that without the trials or perils of the journey that day, I would not be who I am. Of course, if you’re asking who I am, I would have no answer.