Homesickness for a home to which you cannot
return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief
for the lost places of your past. (Welsh)
Apart from
the dirt and garbage all around, everything about the city was deeply altered by
time. Five years old flyovers which appeared aged and used, shopping arcades
where nothing existed, open spaces taken over by cramped up shops and houses
and apartments instead of friendly houses and gardens. My sense of distances,
still threaded with the experience back then of the languorous pace of cycle
rickshaws got a jolt when we reached an hour’s distance in just 20 minutes.
When the
flight landed, my feeling of anticipation of seeing the city after 23 years got
muddled up with my sense of identity. Was I here as an outsider who had once
called the city home or despite the years, I still belonged to this place? Streets
and colonies went past in a blur as I struggled to find and recognize the
familiar geography of childhood. Senses were overloaded with the transformation
to even recollect those innocent fun-filled days. Till I reached my school.
As I walked
down the path leading to the main gate and overlooking Mother Mary’s statue, my
pace slowed down. The school was exactly how it was so many years ago and like
waves the memories came crashing. Memories and nostalgia of a carefree world
which I had put inside a box and kept sealed. I asked the gatekeeper if I could
go in as the school was shut that day. Something in my face must have softened
him as he allowed me in. As I walked down all the familiar areas, somehow I
felt taller and bigger and the school smaller. Life has played out its many
chapters since then and this is where it all started, this is where my
character began to take shape. When a knot began forming in my throat and my
heart got heavier, I decided to turn back.
The house
where I had spent the best decade of my childhood and the one which still comes
in my dreams sometime, has been razed to the ground. The garden which I had so
loved was a concrete area waiting to metamorphose into another cold apartment
building. The orchard and the pond where we had spent thousands of happy afternoons, was now only a part of my memory. There was
nothing left in this mohalla which I could remember or call as home.
