Homeless in Homeland

“Didi tum to yehan ki nahin lagti, tumhara ghar kahan hai? ” (Sister you do not look like a native of this place where do you hail from?). No this was not the first time I was facing a question like this. In my almost forty years of life I have been subjected to similar queries innumerable times and every-time it has left me pondering. India is a country so intensely united and yet markedly diverse. It's diversity in language, food, clothes, festivals and etc need no elaboration. It also has diverse races of people who are identifiable and can be attributed to specified geographical regions of the country. Thus the question to a wheatish complexioned north Indian from a fair looking Uttaranchali must seem natural to most local inhabitants. Yet it leaves me reflective and contemplative. I have spent almost two decades of my life in a beautiful town in the southernmost part of the country. Me and my siblings identify more with the people from there than with people from our own native land. Our familiarity with which is only limited to stories of their days there, from our parents and our annual summer holiday trips. Which were later not even annual thanks to the board exams…competitive exams…, and holidays that could not be synchronised as amongst half a dozen siblings some of us in college while the younger at school would have exams and vacations alternatively, leaving our parents no choice on their annual trips. They had to be content with my father making the mandatory trips and my mother would stay back and ensure we did our exams well.
We still enjoy south Indian food, invariably wear south silk sarees on all family weddings. Fondly remember our days there and look for an opportunity to go back there.

After my marriage I moved to my husband’s home, right from the seashore down south to the foothills of the Himalayas up north. Personally for me it has been a beautiful journey, the ups and downs on the ride up the hill have been memorable, enriching and learning experience. My husband is often surprised when he hears me humming the kumaoni folk tune (no I am not much of a singer although) as I make his favourite rawa dosa for a sumptuous Sunday breakfast.

We love the hills and seem to have never got enough of it. Having spent more than half of my life and more than a decade of it here when I am still asked this question by a curios salesman “didi tumhara ghar kahan hai……” I almost feel homeless and abandoned and wake up to the reality life is temporary and my permanent home perhaps lies elsewhere.

The Lonely Leaf

Dark was the night, a few people were still on their way back home after their day’s work, a cyclist was trying hard to make his way out against glaring lights from the trucks on the opposite side, a car full of young boys were whistling their way to a late night movie, a young lady was hurrying up home may be today she had to attend a meeting before leaving her office,….the air was chill she pulled her scarf tight and made her steps faster, the leaf had begun to shake even more vigorously as the air blew……standing by the side of the road this old tree had been there for ages……nobody in the neighbourhood could really tell how long it might have been there but the leaf certainly knew how long it had held its stem and watched life’s play. Sometimes just an onlooker sometimes part of the game itself.
It seems just a few days in a beautiful rainy weather, when the sun shone so pleasantly and the neighbouring puddle was so full of small children jumping and splashing muddy water on each other when the plants around the puddle had fragrant flowers blooming, the leaf felt as if it had been sent to paradise with young fellow-beings on the same stem and the tree was full of many like itself.
Soon the rains were heavy the leaf dreaded the sound of thunder and shivered when there was lightening. A few of its fellow-beings simply fell off, it watched helplessly and silently.
There was a slight chill in the air, fragrance on its own tree, and the flowers soon turned to fruits, ripe and juicy they gave birth to many new saplings around and the leaf felt a mad sense of joy.
Few seasons of rain, sun, snow and spring and the leaf loved every hue.
Today it had turned pale, some of its veins had broken and some felt a crackling in its fold, a portion of it had already withered and the leaf was quiet, sad and lonely.
The cyclist was gone, the car had sped far ahead, the young lady had found her husband who had come looking for her…………………………….there was a gush of strong wind the leaf could no longer hold, it had given up all its energy it just slipped off the tree.

Monkeys in the Mindland

Science has not been able to physically mark where the mind is situated in the human body although it places a lot of importance to the mind and calls it as the central seat that guides all our actions, beliefs and thoughts. There is a lot of research on the human brain but the mind remains an area only discussed by spiritual leaders.
Just like the monkeys in the wild forest jumping from one branch to another and often from one tree to another our mind also keeps wandering. It traverses time from past present and future in nanoseconds and geographical distances in a butt of an eye lid. One moment I am reminded of the snow capped Himalayan mountains which were breathtaking view from the Kumaon in Uttarakhand next moment I feel the wet sands below my feet at the Pondicherry beach. The fragrance of Jasmine in the plaits of women in the buses in south India gush in and the next moment I am transposed to the manikarnika ghat at Banaras where I can smell the burning dead human flesh.
The chirruping of the maina on my terrace, the rustling water against the pebbles in the stream ring in my ears as I close my eyes, the sound of the dhol during the durga pooja opens my eye wide. As I savour the kapoor mixed laddos of tamilnadu, the taste of the chicken momos I ate on my way up to Gangtok from Jalpaigudi fill in my mouth.
Pictures of my maternal grandfather and me in my childhood days at his farmhouse on the bullock cart are vivid in my mind and is flipped just like an old album by my nephew's photo I just saw on the facebook yesterday .
The train pulls to a halt at the station, my husband asks "where were you lost, what have you been thinking looking out of the window all the while?"
"Monkeys in Mindland" I tell him unsure he smiles at me and leads me out of the compartment.