I am back at Faridabad for a little more than a week before I head to Palakkad for the AIS 'Topics in Complex Analysis in one and higher dimensions'. I was last home in December, so it's almost half a year. I arrive with a migraine, a cold and a fever, which I caught by spending Sunday all drenched up in rain, and also perhaps the less than regular spelling "schedule" I recently have been following. I was quickly and sternly nursed back to health by my mother.
Back here, I feel just a little bit out of place, the meal times have changed slightly, Papa has started taking BP and sleeping pills, the clock seems to have jumped walls, chargers are now placed a little bit here and there, the caladers are all new (well its 2025 now), neighbours have changed, the plants are different in the balacnoy. My rack was the first change, even when I came home just after 2 3 months of first leaving, it had been overtaken by my brother. Now, after two years, the rack over which I had the sole sovereignty feels so alien, so paraya. I am getting a feeling of बहुत दिनों के बाद, but not in the sense Baba Nagarjun meant (or at least how the Key to NCERT's interpretation of it, ND Samrat is the best Key for Hindi by the way).
I feel like a guest in a house I have lived in all but two of my conscious years, needed to be guided about the switches and the routines of the house. My new "home" (at least as per the Election ID card address) feels like a temporary hotel, no, more like a wartime garrison in the enemy territory. Our office 333 feels much more homely, but still not As Taylor Swift said, "Home is where the Heart is, but that's not where mine lives" (Great song btw, Anuska's recommendation and my gateway drug to being an almost Swiftie).
In the end I think I am a Dhobi ka Kutta now, just as Mummy said I will be when leaving for the first time.
No comments:
Post a Comment