Skip to main content

Homecoming

It was a lousy April afternoon, the air back home must have carried the rhythm of dhul and pepa signalling the onset of bihu. He was far away from home but could his heart free itself from memories, bihu was not just a festival, it was an emotion.

Flashbacks of home and his childhood came roaring as he cleared his way through a crowd which made him feel even lonelier, it was on such days out of all days when he felt the urge to run back home. The adult in him wanted to have a carefree life like that of a teenager back home.

He missed his old dhul, it must have wearied away but the old photo album carried a memory of him hugging his dhul while he innocently flashed a smile showing his gap toothed cuteness. How he wished to bring those days back alive!

The thatched kitchen gave away the rich smell of caramelised  jaggery and he would be awe stricken to see mounds of tiny perfectly rounded coconut balls dipped in a pool of jaggery which boasted of his mother's skilled ways. By that hearth, he had once sat dreaming of distant lands and it had felt wonderful but little did he knew back then, that a full furnished ultramodern apartment could never replace the warmth of what he had long left, his home.

The frail sun rays clinging by his window panes reminded him of the days spent at paddy fields where he spent his vacations helping his father with his crops. He longed for those days where he could go fishing in the village pond and take home those prized possessions. When was the last time had he done anything that made him feel happy? He stood reflecting. He had carved a better life for himself with a posh lifestyle and a well paying corporate job but deep within he knew he was getting tired. He had faked long enough to the world but how long could he deceive himself. He had started realising what it meant to be happy, how money possibly couldn't be the only solution to every problem.

He let a sigh travel far across the city blues, he longed to be back home but something in him had long snapped when he had selfishly chose himself over his ailing parents. He longed for a warm home coming. As he sipped his tea, he for the first time in many years hummed his favourite bihu song, he felt something heavy crack within making its way to meet his old self.

As he booked his tickets to be home, he felt butterflies in his tummy. Was he still a teenager struggling under the garb of an adult, he sat reflecting!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reading between the lines

"Read between the lines",  I heard our professor say. We were in midst of a Victorian text. I looked at her point blank. She had spoken about something which I had no clue about. "Ma'am,  would you please elaborate? ",  I tried framing this sentence in my mind but my introverted  self overpowered my inquisitive soul like everytime. I hopelessly waited for an explanation. Ma'am started explaining about how beyond the surface meaning of any written text, there lay a wide plethora of meaning which wasn't explicitly stated. She talked about finding a void between the written words and our imagination, that void which shapes our interpretation. That explanation opened doors to my perception of reading a text. It wasn't that I had never considered about the possibilities of meanings that lay coated in words until then, but, what perhaps I lacked was to look for that void where I questioned the layers of meaning, where I put myself in those layers of wo...
Post a Comment
Read more

What do you want to be?

While I was in my 10th standard, almost everyone I met wanted to know what I wanted to be. This question always perplexed me. From the lens of a fifteen year kid who was not yet sure of the changes which awaited in the near future, this question gave me nightmares. I would constantly sit by the mirror and ask myself, what actually would be my answer. My friends always had fancy answers at their disposal. They would confidently chirp whenever any one asked about it. What amused me most was, my friend who had no inkling to study Biology wanted to be a doctor and another friend who detested the idea of even cooking noodles, wanted to be a chef! But whenever they spoke about their wishes, they would always sound confident. And there I was, fumbling for words which refused to escape my lips. It was not until I entered Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya to do my plus two, I found my voice. The teachers there have a different way of viewing life. For the first time, I no longer felt the classroom...
2 comments
Read more

"My love is enough for both of us"

"My love is enough for both of us", she often felt those words ring in her heart. She finally had understood that life wouldn't always follow her designs. That people are meant to leave but their memories won't. She often had wondered how someone could love her to such an extent when that person had always known that she wouldn't reciprocate those feelings. How could a person stand by her when she always acted as a fleeting shadow. She never had given hope for she knew the pain of dejection but he kept hoping like a hopeless vagabond. How she wished that he would some day hate her enough to let go. She devised ways to free him from this web, she acted cold, turned indifferent, did everything he detested and she finally saw some changes. It was a relief, he finally seemed to take hold of his life. She could see him grow responsible. He finally it seemed was learning to love himself. Phone calls died, meetings subsided, they become known strangers. All this while ...
2 comments
Read more