After my graduation, I took a trip to Lithuania with a few friends. It should have been a road trip to a festival but like most road trips, this one never saw the light of day either. So, we ended up flying and headed first to a small town adjoining the Russian territory of Kaliningrad to visit the family of one of us.

There I encountered the long-lost feeling of being around grandparents. Even without sharing a common language, the basic attitudes of that generation seemed alike. I distinctly remember being asked to cross the threshold before being greeted with a warm hug, something that a younger me would have found silly about his grandparents. They have their own quirks too; here we were offered brandy to remedy a hangover.

I also got the impression that everyone was dedicated to tending to their gardens and ponds, fruits hanging aplenty just at an arm’s reach, just like how the summers used to be at home. Life, at least in that town, loitered at a pace of its own, oblivious to the bustle and demands of the city.

It felt good to be away from the grey of urban life

We took the road to the festival which was being held on a remote island; I had forgotten how long it had been since I had last smelled the forest floor or had seen the night sky. Even back home, I could not have seen the captivating Milky Way as clearly as I did there. It felt good to be away from the grey of urban life; even trudging through the muddy campsite was reminiscent of my neighbourhood after the rains.

Lithuania, as I discovered, was the last pagan nation in Europe and, keeping in line with the old religion, the festival tried to include that charm in its activities, with the theme revolving around the Baltic god Perkūnas. On the last day, I found myself sitting on a tree stump listening to Vedic chanting in a familiar language. Lithuanian, as it turns out, bears some resemblance with Sanskrit, one of our oldest tongues, and one I had despised while in school. But that day it was different; I was scanning the sheet of paper with the verses, looking for words, something known, something I’d grown up with.

Two weeks later, I was at last on a flight home. The journey had been planned much earlier but it was only after Lithuania that I was actually looking forward to it.