Goodbye Home

All of us leaf through an old album in very much the same way. We search for ourselves in a group, and then look at the others around us in the photograph, think and at times comment on how gross we looked. Some of the friends in the photograph have grown with us while others have been replaced in our latest albums.

I have a 30-seconds-delivery Polaroid pinned at my workstation. Taken in 2006 at Juhu Beach when the Monsoon was at its peak, it has fossilized six guys’ giggles at the black box. Suresh’s standing like a broken umbrella with the will but no cover to guard against the drizzle. Deepti styling in an old fashioned orange blouse – old it was even two years ago. Jaspreet in her corporate attire and an elegant handy bag – the hardest working member of the clan, she had to rush to meet us all after the day’s work with no time to change into her jeans and tees. Ankita, with the tight jeans up her calves and yet soaked in the saline juice – well she could do anything to look good, even if that means putting on a pair of size 5 shoes for her size 6 feet. And Anjali…

Sure, two years has changed her a lot. Or is it my perspective that has changed? I look at her handwriting on the pink envelope that says “Happy Birthday and Goodbye” and then look at her autograph on the polaroid. Hardly any difference. But the Anjali in the Polaroid has no semblance to the one who has just bid adieu to Mumbai. It is like the boulevard leading to your home, wearing a different color every season. You do not need to recognize it if you walk up and down its chest everyday- the changing color becomes too insignificant. But a traveler of the seasons will search for signposts and marks on the barks of trees for his aid. I wonder if I have been the traveler who has left for many seasons without setting any signposts. So far and so long that the road back home seems alien and festooned by ferns and fallen leaves that have turned from chrome to brown to pitch…

Home?

I wonder what home is. Is it a harbor of our emotions or the roofs that restrict our dreams from evaporating into the skies? Is it where our mind is at peace or where our body rests in peace? Is it something which is unvarying, like the picture of your mother in your heart or the image of your God? Leading a modern day nomadic life, the roofs I’ve slept under have changed every time I’ve started looking at them like everyday. This change took the love away from me for any place where I have dwelled and I started looking at things other than the plaster and the concrete structures for my home. I looked for it in the vast stretch of sunny slopes and faraway valleys when I had set my foot on the peak of Kalavintin, so distant they were and yet so obvious were their features. I looked for it to flare up in the depth of my most dismaying nightmare, the memories of which never last the night. I looked for it in the solace of the sight of the Milky Way from a primitive cluster of houses that had yet to grow into a village. I asked the evenness of the tea-gardens on the uneven slopes of Ethelwood Tea Gardens if it had an answer. I looked for it in a handful of sand from the Thar Desert that slipped between my fingers when I tried to possess it and clung to my hand when I did not want to. In a space of bright colors that had no true shades of black or white, imbibing into my life-canvas a surreal flow of emotions that were neither sad nor happy. I stood my ears for its presence in an intriguing song of the distance that grew into me from a frail sound to a farewell song, to a somewhat familiar tune, to the song I was humming the other day.

I journeyed across unknown dimensions and its never converging directions. I had my emotions condensed and also let them precipitate in a random cycle of foolishness and sensibility. And in the end, I found myself waking up to a mosquito bite with a half open book bridging my chest to the bed. My neck pained and so did my spine; I’ve been sitting and sleeping in this awkward position for… oh, I didn’t even have my dinner. The clock looked hazy, but both its hands had crossed 12, it must’ve been around 3. I reached out for the switch from my now comfortable sleep-able position and in what did not seem like a change to me, I was engulfed in the darkness.

I see tea gardens in the sands of Thar. It is daylight. I look up and see no Sun, instead it’s the heavens—the Milky Way lighting the world. A cumulus cloudscape plays in the superseding space, letting out shafts of light that creates wonderful patters of shadows in the valley. In the distance someone is picking up tea leaves and putting it in a basket hung on her back. I keep looking, my eyes improving the focus on her every moment. She is wearing a color of no emotions. The clouds are rushing away from her towards me. In its carry, it brings me a frail sound, her song, which refuses to stay for me to be able to recognize it. Then it grows on me, flooding through my mind-gates into recognition. I hum the song and feel surprised at how familiar it sounds. I look at the clouds that have just passed me; it seems to hold a nightmare inside its cottony outlier. Far away, towards its direction, I can distinctly make the last valley and the last green dune, so obvious are their features. I keep humming…

I woke up when both the hands of the clock were nearing 12. As I was preparing my brunch, I switched on the radio. Alanis Morissette blared about her presence…

It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought... it figures

I switched off the radio and stood the kettle on the stove, a hum on my lips. I kept humming for sometime, and then froze all of a sudden.

Who hummed that to me? I thought.

A smile gripped me as I remembered Anjali singing out to the waves of the Arabian Sea. The waves were wild, and she was soaked up to her thighs. Her hair was ruffled and she had a funny jacket on her. She called out to me, and I ran to her, to the waves. That was home.

Leaning on the kitchen cabinet I stood for sometime with this last line thought until the kettle whistle brought me back.

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And I still hold your hand in mine
In mine when I'm asleep - James Blunt (in Goodbye my Lover)