What I miss...

You’re only so much away from home when you realize that the thoughts that occupy you have evolved into a strangers’. When I return, the dust on the glass, the soot on the curtains, and the shadows in the rooms, are all uncannily poised, observing me as distant relatives of a past life. Suddenly, you begin to notice your prints around your room – clothes, papers, cosmetics, little trinkets – that were invisible when you lived here, but now stand out in your temporary presence. It is as if my house wants me to know that I’m not to be sheltered as family, but as an estranged tenant.
Your possessions at your place are the first to tell you that they don’t remember owning an owner, however dearly you want you cling on to them. Then, there are the streets. I look at the scenes that appear on the road from the railway station to the Collector’s Office (near to where I live), and I see the local commerce carriers, school children, panwallahs, traffic policemen, hawkers, and the other pedestrians, perpetually going about their determined businesses indifferent of my story – my nervous farewell to Indore, my tumultuous affair with Mumbai, and my fleeting returns to the city where I’ve loved much and lost some.


That’s okay though. I’ll take a smile. Because there are these little things, that never change – conversations.

When my dad cribs about the dinner and mom defends its nutritive value, when my Dadi shouts at the maid till the plates are sparkling clean, and when my friends whine about my not giving them enough time, I feel what home is supposed to feel like.

It’s hard to find people who get you. Harder to find are those who can carry compassionate, mutually-respecting, humorous, and loving conversations with you.

It’s not a violent revelation, but a steady truth, when I say that all I remember of a home are the people who have held me in their curious to-and-fros. That is what I miss of Indore, and that is what binds me to Mumbai.

Conversations make people. They make me.