Coming Home!

I packed my bags with trepidation and a few clothes. My mother, more confident of my cooking skills than I had ever given her reason to be, packed yet another sachet of her homemade masala. “Anu, are you sure you don’t want to take a mixie with you when you go?” she asked me again. I assured her that the kitchen appliance was the last thing on my list of worries. I then sent her on a quest to find my long forgotten pair of jeans. I had been in Kerala for over a year, and I could count on one hand the number of times I had decided that the day called for a pair of skin tight jeans. A comfy pair of Patiala bottoms, a loose top and a chiffon dupatta was always the better choice. The pair of jeans were finally unearthed, held at arm’s length to judge if I had had one too many biryanis to actually fit in them and stuffed in the suitcase a tad vehemently.

I was ready. With tickets, passport, worried parents and a heavier than allowed hand luggage, I had all the signs of flying to foreign lands. I had grudgingly left USA, the year before, after having stayed all my visa-allotted 6 years. Lawmakers, in their infinite wisdom, had mandated that the likes of me had to be exiled for a year before being allowed back in the country. Now, a year later and armed with a brand new visa, I was headed to the country where, I had been sure, I belonged.
Chicago in February is, there is really no other way to put it, very cold. The sudden chill you feel in your bones is not the realization that your parents are no longer a 4 hour train ride away. It is the kind of deep freeze that you, living most of your life in a country straddling the tropics, couldn’t possibly fathom. The winter and its trials are painful but fleeting. Spring rolls around and you realize you have clean forgotten how deathly cold it had gotten mid-winter. Cold, white and relentless, that’s how Midwest winters often are.

A year had done nothing to the country I remembered. But I wasn’t quite the same person who had left its shores a year ago. I now missed home, terribly. It was an unsettling feeling, with all the subtlety of a tooth ache. I missed the drama that had been in every little corner of my day when I was back home. I missed the people who made me laugh, the people who drove me stark raving mad and even the ones who broke my heart a little at a time. I had forgotten how lonely it was to away.
The bland days, the sterile conversations, the dizzy sense of days running into each other finally drove me back. If I had given it a few more weeks, the sights and sounds of home, branded in my mind, would have dulled. Phone calls and Skype would have rubbed away the smell and the touch of my own. Mindless routine would have stupefied me enough to forget the noise, the crowds and the heat of where I belonged. My happy days would have soon filled with the ache of a long run down a trail, the smell of a just mowed lawn and the clink of a wine glass toasting a day well spent.

I chose not to let that happen. As I packed my bags, with the sachets of homemade masala only half empty, I couldn’t help but smile. I had come a long way, and now home beckoned. Home was where the dust covers my sandals-clad feet at the end of the day. It was where a crispy masala dosa is never too far away and the people who make my world brighter are right by my side.

These, to me, are just not worth trading in. ​

 

Thank you GG. I have missed being here. Yeah, its so easy to not realize what we have till we lose it.

 

Indeed Syamala, i think we humans have an incredible amount of resilience. We can adjust to any situation, but we are also blessed with free will to make the choices that will make us the happiest. I think we forget that sometimes!

 

Srama and Satchi
I have rarely been writing these past few months. I hope to get my groove back pretty soon Thank you soo much for the kind words.