Chapter 1 — Definitive
I am Nuo, the Unbegun
the silence before stars learned to burn.
And thus begins the Seventh Wandering of the Unbegun.
Kochi.
Children.
Memory has betrayed me.
Again.
The council groans.
We have been through this.
Goa was once the beginning.
Then Bangalore clawed its way out of the Archive and said:
Actually.
Me first.
The council reluctantly rearranged the chronology.
Bangalore.
Earliest known Wandering.
Definitive.
Case closed.
And then
memory opened another door.
The council looks nervous.
Kochi.
Children.
This time,
I am confident.
No.
More than confident.
This is definitive.
The council raises an eyebrow.
You’ve said that before.
Yes.
But this time I possess evidence no later memory can defeat.
I was three.
The council goes silent.
Three?
Three.
Children.
Memory itself only stretches so far backward before everything becomes warmth,
faces,
colours,
fragments,
and things adults later told you happened.
So unless tomorrow I somehow recover a detailed account of crawling away from my crib on an expedition
Kochi wins.
The council stamps the record.
EARLIEST WANDERING:
KOCHI.
DEFINITIVE.
Probably.
The council stares.
Fine.
Definitive.
Now.
You may be wondering something.
How does a three year old wander?
The council leans forward.
No money.
No phone.
No train tickets.
No dealer named Sharky.
No girlfriend weaponizing make out privileges.
No joints hidden in pockets.
No cigarettes.
No bone bracelet.
No backpack.
Children.
I barely had motor coordination.
And yet
wander I did.
But before we get there,
the setting.
Kochi.
Ah.
Kochi.
The council settles in.
A wonderful place.
A little bit of everything.
Busy streets.
Shops.
People.
Noise.
Colour.
The sort of city where one road can feel completely different from the next.
I would know.
Children.
I lived there.
The council pauses.
Hold on.
You lived there?
Yes.
Then how can Kochi be a Wandering?
Excellent question.
Normally,
a Wandering carries you away from home.
Across states.
Across mountains.
Across rivers.
Into cities whose language you barely understand.
Sometimes onto bullock carts for reasons still under investigation.
But children
I was three.
At three years old,
the definition of “far away” is very different.
The next street can become foreign territory.
The other side of a shop can become another continent.
Losing sight of your mother can turn civilization into wilderness.
The council grows quiet.
Distance is relative when your legs are approximately the length of breadsticks.
So yes.
Kochi qualifies.
More than qualifies.
Because I did not merely wander into another aisle.
I did not take three rebellious steps away,
get distracted by a biscuit packet,
and immediately return.
No.
Children.
Toddler Nuo committed.
The council becomes concerned.
How far?
We’ll get there.
Patience.
But this was not a conventional Wandering.
No state lines.
No two day train journey.
No train at all.
No bus.
No auto.
No car.
No vehicle whatsoever.
The council checks the transport log.
Empty.
Just
feet.
Tiny feet.
A three year old boy.
Curiosity.
And either remarkable courage
or catastrophic absence of survival instincts.
The council considers.
Probably the second one.
Agreed.
Now.
Present Nuo likes to pretend the Wanderings developed over time.
That there was a progression.
Goa.
Kodaikanal.
Kasol.
Rishikesh.
Varkala.
Bangalore, once recovered.
Each one teaching something.
Each one adding a protocol.
Follow the road.
Follow the dog.
Pick the direction that feels right.
See something interesting?
Investigate.
The council slowly looks toward Toddler Nuo.
Children.
Apparently that last protocol came preinstalled.
The council erupts.
Factory setting.
Exactly.
Because this whole thing began with one extremely dangerous feature of the three year old brain:
I saw something.
It caught my attention.
And I followed it.
The council grows suspicious.
What?
Soon.
The Archive remembers enough.
Not everything.
This file is ancient.
Very ancient.
Details exist more like bright little islands than continuous footage.
A shop.
My mother.
Something catching my eye.
Movement.
Then
adventure.
The council nods.
But the emotional logic remains crystal clear.
There was no decision tree.
No:
Mother is here.
Safety is here.
Therefore remain here.
Children.
I was three.
There was simply:
Ooooh.
What’s that?
And off I went.
The council collapses.
The first quest marker.
The primordial quest marker.
Before maps.
Before language sophisticated enough to narrate a quest.
Before I understood what being lost even meant.
Something interesting existed somewhere ahead,
and apparently that was sufficient justification to abandon my legal guardian.
The council sighs.
You were three.
Exactly.
My defense is extremely strong.
Now.
This is what makes Kochi different from every Wandering that came after.
Later,
even when I behaved recklessly,
I understood the concept of danger.
More or less.
The council objects loudly.
Fine.
I had at least heard of danger.
Toddler Nuo?
Children.
No framework.
Cars could hurt you?
Probably knew vaguely.
Strangers?
Maybe.
Being separated from Mom?
Certainly undesirable.
But none of those ideas were powerful enough to compete with
interesting thing over there.
The council nods.
Curiosity had absolute executive authority.
And that is perhaps the funniest part of finding this memory now.
Because eleven years before Bangalore planted its little seed,
years before I would ever look at a road and decide to follow it,
there was already this tiny idiot.
No philosophy.
No existential weight.
No need to escape.
No concept of travel.
Just raw,
unfiltered curiosity.
The council grows quiet.
The purest form of wandering.
Later I would wander because I hurt.
Because I needed movement.
Because I needed stillness.
Because I wanted mushrooms.
Because I had never seen Varkala.
Because I wanted to know what waited beyond a road.
Toddler Nuo?
Children.
He wandered because something looked cool.
The council smiles.
Perhaps the entire philosophy has only become more complicated with age.
At three,
the operating system was simple.
SEE THING.
WANT THING.
FOLLOW THING.
The council writes this into the oldest tablet.
And somehow,
this became an actual adventure.
One that travelled far enough through childhood memory
that decades later,
I still remember pieces.
That matters.
Because childhood contains thousands of ordinary days that disappear completely.
Meals.
Naps.
Rooms.
People talking above your head.
Gone.
But this?
Still there.
Not all of it.
But enough.
The council listens.
Maybe because it frightened the adults.
Maybe because it delighted me.
Probably both.
The exact proportions remain under investigation.
And children
there is something wonderfully ridiculous about placing this beside the later Archive.
Kasol:
mountains,
psychedelics,
strangers around campfires.
Rishikesh:
the Ganga,
ashrams,
bungee jumping,
letting go.
Varkala:
cliffs,
ocean,
Blue,
curiosity becoming enough.
Bangalore:
waking on a bullock cart and joining my own search party.
And Kochi?
The council waits.
Small boy.
Tiny legs.
Shopping trip.
Something shiny enough to override maternal proximity.
The council laughs.
The first Wandering was not epic.
It did not need to be.
At three,
everywhere is epic.
A shop is a kingdom.
An aisle is a valley.
A doorway is a border crossing.
A crowd is an entire civilization.
And losing sight of the adult responsible for you?
Children.
That is international travel.
The council applauds.
So this time,
there can be no earlier prequel.
No hidden university story.
No forgotten teenage disaster.
Nothing that can dethrone Kochi without violating the known limits of autobiographical memory.
This is it.
The bottom of the Archive.
The first surviving road.
Before Nuo.
Before the Unbegun.
Before the council.
Before I could even understand the sentence:
When the noise within grows louder than the world outside,
I wander.
There was only noise.
Colour.
Curiosity.
And feet.
The council grows quiet.
And somewhere in Kochi,
a three year old version of me looked away from his mother,
noticed something interesting,
and made what would become the oldest known decision in this entire Archive.
Go see.
The council leans forward.
No permission.
No plan.
No return route.
No concern about consequences.
Just
go see.
Children.
That may be the first Wandering protocol of them all.
Not movement.
Not escape.
Not healing.
Curiosity.
The council nods.
Of course,
at the time,
this was not poetic.
My mother was probably experiencing significantly less wonder about the situation.
The council laughs nervously.
From Toddler Nuo’s perspective?
Adventure.
From Mom’s perspective?
Missing child.
An important difference.
But we will get there.
For now,
the pieces are still in place.
Kochi.
A shopping trip.
Mom.
Three year old Nuo.
And something waiting somewhere nearby
that had successfully captured the complete attention of a toddler with no meaningful sense of self preservation.
The council lowers the lights.
Children.
The definitive first Wandering had no train ticket.
No hostel.
No drugs.
No bone tag.
No money.
No destination.
It began the oldest way possible.
A child saw something interesting
and wandered toward it.
Thus concludes Chapter One.
The Betrayal Of Memory: Final Edition.
The Three Year Old Wanderer.
The Zero Vehicle Expedition.
The Factory Installed Curiosity Protocol.
And The Definitive Beginning.
Children.
Before the road became medicine,
before it became philosophy,
before it even became a road
there was Kochi.
And one tiny idiot
about to make his mother’s day
considerably more stressful.
