Homecoming...

It looked as if the sky had wrapped itself with an expensive, sequined velvety black shawl. As we whirred off on our bike, I couldn’t help but fall in love with the beauty that was delightfully spread up right above my head...The sky, the stars, the moon, they commanded my attention, and I obliged, happily. As I was gazing at the sky, awestruck by it’s mesmerising beauty, I noticed a couple of flickering lights. “Is this some heavenly body,” I wondered, still in the trance that the movie Gravity had left me in. As I observed it for a while, I realised there was nothing heavenly about it, after all. It was more of an earthly object; it was a flight…

“It must be someone’s homecoming,” I thought, as I saw the flickering lights incline towards the horizon. “Someone would have returned home, someone would be rushing into the arms of their loved ones. Someone’s wait must have been over,” I thought, the lights disappearing from my vision. What a joy it is, to see the faces of loved ones, we have been away from for a while. The butterflies begin to flutter with new-found energy; the heart becomes an Usain Bolt, racing away...

I was back home, with my parents, for the first time after my wedding. A year. I had been away for a year and I just had a week’s time at my disposal. One week for one year. Unfair, isn’t it? And while I was getting fatter and lazier thanks to all the ghee-laced miracles that my mom and grannies whipped up for me in the kitchen, the dreaded Mr Time made an unwelcome appearance. He was looking at me, raising his eyebrow, wagging his fat finger at me saying, “Pack up, buddy, it’s time to go.”

“Time to go, already?” I protested, unable to bring myself to pack my suitcase. But, pack-up, I had to, for home, hubby and duties had come calling. He was alone, eating unhealthy stuff that the curry-points dished out. A part of me was longing to see him, while a part of me was crying. A part of me couldn’t wait to land in Hyderabad, while the other part, she dreaded the take off…

And Mr Time showed smirking face again. It was time to say the teary-goodbye. I tore my eyes away from my parents as I dragged myself into the glass structure, thinking, “Why, why? Why can’t I stay back?,” trying to gulp down that lump in my throat that threatened to snowball into a big one. My phone beeped; his picture flashed on the screen. “Haan ji,” I said, and I could trace the eagerness in his voice. “Done with your boarding,” he asked, and I said, “Almost.”

I looked behind, and I could see them, ammai wiping her eyes, appa, fidgeting. I wanted to rush back to them, but the eagerness in his voice was pulling me away…The duality in me couldn’t have been more profound…

As the houses in Guwahati became tiny dots from up there, the clouds eventually shielding them from my view, I suddenly couldn’t wait any longer to be with him. I touched down in Hyderabad, my ever-smiling husband ready to whisk me home. As we drove back, I realised that a bit of me lives here and a bit of me will live there…I was a daughter, a wife at the same time...

Homecoming, it was, indeed...