I sit precariously and expectantly on the edge of a long weekend, as people around discuss and plan how they intend to spend the long weekend and couple of holidays, beautifully interspersed in the week to follow.
Thoughts are varied and incessant, where can I travel to? to mountain as I always do, with family in the tow; travel alone on a trek or to the home our as it lives and breathes in a wistful world of my thoughts.
I have toiled, and waited, till such time when some modest success would be there to back an attempt for a well deserved time off, to some far off land, where a river flows in the middle of a land clothed with shiny sands with silver spread across, with Nonu playing around in knee deep water as splendid, clear, boisterous and naughty as her eyes, through which my future shines, and Sun descends off the mountain, and bathes in the waters, as her mother, in peace, stretches her feet under a tree, reads, sometime, lifting her head, wrapping the shawl around, looking up with casual indulgence, and I settle down in the shade to write down. For some reason, such outings have become a struggle of spirit against usual blame of searching off for luxury as a round about way, to avoid house hold chores. I remember, from my childhood, some moments which I could gather as hinges on which my life hands, are rare outings, numbered not more than fingers on my hands, minus the thumbs. I want to give my child such moments, more than all fingers can count at one go, glass pieces on a long wounding desert rode, shining in the bright and cruel Sun in which an individual lives and grows, and wilts and dies. Out of this connection which connects an individual who grows into his solitude, grows a sense of belonging, so I believe. When the Sun settles, and a mellow moon, envelops the sky with a kinder milk spread on the horizon, and sweet breeze pulls the arrogant trees from one side to other, like obstinate kids hanging on to their parents in glittering city malls, these glass pieces will less her back to the home.
We all have those guiding signs to take us back to what we have in our mind, a small corner of kindness which we call as home. I also had left home, score of years back, or something like that, beyond a while distance is not in miles but in the emptiness which creeps, and a coldness settles in your spine, cruel shivers running through the bones. I had read somewhere, home is the place, where they have to take you in whenever you go there, and as a young man who had grown delusional by too much of reading and little bit of love, believed this precious looking thought, only to find it fall into pieces as truth painfully hit me over the years. I had left home, dizzy with a love that was young in my heart, with nothing more than a hint of wound, small enough to effect the youthful swagger of idealism, believing that the love which was holding my hand as I was being thrown out and the permanence of the love which was throwing me out of the door of a home which to me meant of summer noons with yellow Dal (pulse) with curd liberally mixed into it, both in turn liberally mixed with rice, being eaten by three people having the simple lunch together, and sometime meant a 21 inch cycle, on the rod of which I would sit carefully to avoid the pinch of the brake.
Anyway, for each individual, home is represented by distinct tastes, flavours and sights one carries from the childhood and there was nothing peculiar about mine except that for most people, the step from those days of love and coziness into a cool brutality of loneliness, the two poles are connected with a continuum, in my case, the two were separated by an abyss deep enough to be crossed over. The doors, from which I was once thrown it, I did come back to, not because of the resurgent love, though I always wanted that to be the reason, it was merely because we both got weary of continuing animosity. So I came back to the place where once home was with a condition of passing through the ritual of proving my home worthiness at routine intervals. But I suddenly knew no faces there, each face was more of a question asking me to show the identification, run through a ritual, each more demanding than early one. The one I walked out with, contested for claim with the one who was left behind, and in this heartless tug of war I was left as a no man's land, gravely contested by two nations but cared for by none. Disillusionment was so total when even a near death moment could not bring me into the home I left years back, nor could it bring back an embrace which withered away years back.
It is challenging to live a life with no time to go back to the home which represents a time of innocence and love, but it is not heart wrenching and desperate as making time to go back, but not having anywhere to go back to. Not having time is something which can be addressed with amends but a home which no longer exists is a misfortune that knows no resolution. Every off time reminds me of the home that was and the lack of space that is, where I could retire in the warmth of love. It is a strike which never goes blunt and hits me every time with new found vigour. The helplessness is paralytic in effect and makes me think with deep sympathy of those homeless as me, even though with house, and makes me swear I will never quit loving my daughter even when she refutes my authority with a wilful spirit, swear never to deny her of a home, and never to ask her to prove her entitlement to my love. Such loneliness makes one do absurd things, I did mine, called a friend who did not return the call and it did not help. I have one friend now, and that is my four year, my only shelter, and only salvation in the brisk winds of time.
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