ghar|घर (ii)
It's summertime.
I am home now, unexpectedly
I have been home for some time now,
Granted everything that I yearned for?
Everything I was always reminiscing about.
At 5 pm, every afternoon
I drink a hot cup of masala chai,
The perfect balance of milk and tea.
I eat a mango most days,
I've decided to stop slicing them.
I just peel , and then go in with my hands.
Fingers wrapped around, teeth biting in.
I can wear my block printed cotton,
without worrying about the cold.
Yesterday, I took a walk in the evening.
It was short, but by the end of it I was sweating.
Tiny droplets scattered over my back, above my lips,
underneath my arms.
It was warm.
On my way I collected some flowers from the street
Scarlet Red flowers, from the gulmohar tree.
They made me think of other flowers that now sit miles away,
Arranged in wine bottles of different colors,
Also, on the living room in a newly purchased ceramic vase.
Those flowers, are probably dead now,
Once vibrant, bursts of color,
Now dried, dull tendrils, falling apart.
No one to change the water,
Or save them in between the pages of a black notebook.
It's been three entire months, I realise now
Three months, 12 weeks, ninety days,
I've been home though,
The same home I always write about,
The same home that I carry with me
The one that lives inside of me.
I am home, yet why do I feel echoes of another,
Why do I feel echoes from inside, screaming out?
In my dreams at times, I'm walking to the beach
The endless, sea in front of me.
It's 8 pm, but the sun is still in the sky,
Extended, eternally, that moment, the golden light.
Sometimes, I pretend that I'm a bird,
No, not an evil seagull,
But a bird flying through the town of blue
Bright blue skies, bright blue seas,
The wind making me sway,
The trees speaking to me.
I pretend that I'm one of the birds,
Which I can see from the window,
Sitting at my designated corner seat.
Pink and orange sunrise,
A midnight blue, purple sunset,
As I walk up the staircase to the top floor,
peach walls stare at me
Inside of a yellow building.
Why does my cup of chai, remind me of the hours spent inside a small shoebox café,
Sitting upright for hours on a high chair,
In the evening sinking into the couch,
As the conversation and music attempt to drown each other out.
Why haven’t I worn those yellow paisley pajamas ever since?
Or the golden jhumkas, that lie on my nightstand?
My suitcases they remain stacked up, semi-full in my room,
I haven't bothered to unpack,
But maybe I should.
It's strange, because I'm home now,
The same home I always write about,
The same home that I carry with me
The one that lives inside of me.
Is there just one home inside of me?
I may have been saying this all wrong.
I don't think I belong to one place only now,
Belonging, I've realised, for me is two-fold.
We always yearn for what we don't have,
The minute we have it, that yearning ends.
There is appreciation, there is joy, there is love,
But you can only yearn for what has been lost.
It's summertime.
I am home now, unexpectedly
I have been home for some time now,
But there is a yearning,
A reminiscence for what has been left behind, somehow.
This, was written as a response to a piece I wrote about 3 months ago, when I was in Scotland, reminiscing about summertime in Delhi. Read the first part here.