Home

The more things the more they remain the same. I was going through old pictures of myself today and realised how much I used to travel earlier. Realised how much leeway I had during my Bangalore days. Looking at the pictures of my treks to the western ghats made me so nostalgic. But even more nostalgic were the excerpts of the gmail chats with my close friends. The chats reminded me how miserable I was in some of my jobs and how happy I was doing my own thing whenever I could. The best find undoubtedly has to be the audio recording of the pilot that I did for my radio audition. I don't sound half as bad as what my selector made it out to be . I was so hungry for life. So hungry to experience things and just lap it all up. The smile on my face in my old pictures is so genuine. But after reading my chats on gmail which date back to the last 10 years, there is one thing that is common and hasn't changed over the last decade. I have been so homesick. I have longed for the familiar and the known. Longed for the sights and smells and the food from my mom's kitchen. That longing has never gone way. The longing for home is trapped in the memories of my books , my study table, my small collection of posters and other memorabilia.
I realise that I have moved apart from so many people and so many connections over the last few years. I dont know if my choices have been all right. I dont know if I should have taken the more conventional road of marriage and family life. I just took the options that life threw at me. The last one year was very very tough. Dad fell so sick. And I took so much time to adjust to my own personal life.
The dynamics at home are very different now. There is a lot of overt politeness and righteousness that has to be displayed.
Reading my old texts on gmail chat reminded me how closely I was attached to my school friends and how much further I have now drifted apart from them now. The need to move to new cities and having to reinvent and make new friends and adjust to a new city life has taken its toll over the years. I feel as if some corners  have been chipped away.
The last 1.5 months have been spent in a lockdown. I know that I am going crazy.  I miss home like never before. I have daily phone calls with my parents but it just never seems enough. I get tired of doing the same routine over and over everyday. These days I long to see more people on the road who look like me.
The city feels very alien. Especially when I have to maintain a distance of 2m from the other joggers and walkers.
I guess what I miss most in this city is having friends. Especially girl friends who I can talk to and share everything with. There is no community here and sometimes it feels as if the burden of living is too heavy on my shoulders.
I looked so young and chiseled in my photo from 2016 when I had just come to london. I feel as if so much has changed since then. Except for one thing  that I  still cry when I leave home...

Recap

Few things happened.

The brother got married. I am not the wise elder. I have a designated duty which is to be seen and to be present but not to advise and offer opinions. I am the one who could not get it right on time. But I must be bared with. I got so tired from the effort of not showing it, from the effort of keeping it up. It was so exhausting.

I underwent a minor diagnostic procedure . Alone with a oxygen pipe for comfort. I was naked and cold and scared. I had to come back home and pretend that I was ok.

I was dating an Italian. He ghosted on me. It is tiring. I am tired of selling myself, tired of being cool. It has such a high price. People disappearing hurts. And men think of me as an exotic experiment. I am a brown skinned person from the Far East. How cool it must be to friend me or date me. Gives so much of credo to the person doing it. Except that it sucks for me. I am so done with telling the same stories over and over. I don't know what is worse, having a voice or just silent assent.

My grandmother died. I was millions of miles away. The house won't be the same again. I dream of my grandparents. In the early morning waking hours. An association with home is lost. I am homesick. I long for stability. I long for a home of my own. I want my parents embrace. For someone to say that I am doing ok. I have been so tired lately.

The summer is back again. The days are long again. It is green everywhere and this pressure to be happy and sun tanned and of holiday plans to be made. I am tired of fitting random people into plans to make them work.

I see people around me getting settled more and more. I am caught up in this existential trap where I don't know if what I do is worthy enough to justify where I am right now.

these torturous summer days

i hate summers. i hate watching couples walking hand in hand. i hate this sultry summer heat which makes me sleepless at night and makes me long for someone to sleep next to. i hate watching couples lie next to each while soaking sun in the park. i hate watching them kiss. i hate watching them enjoy the proximity to each other bodies. i jog next to them pretending as if i cant see them. as if in front of me lies nothing but an empty road. empty road lined with trees that hide everything. but these trees provide shadows and comforts to the couples lying under them. i long for the winter days when these parks would be empty again.

i lived vicariously for a month. now it hurts. it hurts so bad.

On the plane to delhi

This is a trip back home after 7 months of moving out of my home country to London. It feels strange to pack for journey back home. Strange to embrace the old "normal" life. in the plane I saw the movie Lion again. It made me cry again. I could identify with the young boy in the movie running around to find a place of comfort and security. I feel lost just like him. Running into nothingness. Trying to embrace strangers. I am an outsider in the city that I now live in. My language doesn't help in building any bridges. The men that I meet have nothing of interest to hold me back.

I am flying back to the hot land. While in the flight, I am making a list of things that I want to see in Delhi . I am now on my third glass of vodka. A bit tired and have a headache. I met a French guy before leaving for home. I like him. But I don't think he is interested in anything other than the mere physical act. I want to tell the French guy about the French movie that I am watching on the plane. I liked the part where the female protagonist asks her husband, who she thinks that she is in a loveless marriage with, " why didn't you tell me the truth" and the husband replies saying "because I wanted you to live and see it through". That's what my life seems to be about. To just to be able to see it through. I like it when the French guy hold my hand. He is white and I am brown. Indian brown he says. His hands are always warm and mine are always cold. He has inspected every inch of my body. Intimacy can be funny. We measure the pressure points by massaging each other's shoulders. He is familiar with every curve of my body. But lines are drawn the moment that I exit his apartment.

Musings of an evening

Yet another evening. The cloak of music helps to feign ignorance about the happenings around me. They say that destiny happens when you least expect it. At this moment I could long for nothing more than a warm hug and an appreciative smile. 

I have been thinking about the loss of language a lot off late. The only language that I know and feel competent about is now an impendiment to making conversation. It doesn't matter how many ways that I know to express myself if all that does is to draw a laugh from the people around me. It feels odd when the jokes are not funny enough when said out aloud. The effort taken to enunciate every vowel out loud robs the joke out of any remnants of humour. At times it feels like being back in the high school.

I am sitting in a coffee shop reminded of the conversation that I had with P. She mentioned her friend who would go to coffee shops and cry from loneliness. At least I am writing and not crying.

I remember saying to a friend that I alway keep a 30% margin of going wrong with what I wear. Though sometimes it goes more wrong like it has today.

It felt very strange and awkward to sit across a friend and watch her as she got ready for a date while I got ready to pack up and go home and sleep alone. There was a pinch in her infectious energy. I felt very odd when I saw her make out with a boy who would have asked me out if I had not pushed my back to his face. At that moment I wished if I could just disappear. I felt like th outsider that I looked. 

The choices of meal options to be chosen in my last trip had to be the trickiest. I know that I have never cared about meat but when the whole perception hinges around how well I order food and distinguish one form from the other, It made me feel so out of depth. It made me realise how much I missed travelling alone . It is lonely but it gives me so much freedom to choose the form of food that I want to have and the places that I want to go to. 

Singed

I wish we had never met. I wish that you had never responded to my messages. Why did you have to remind me about what desire felt like? Why did you have to show so much interest in me? Why does distance have such a big role to play between two individuals? Why does distance have to determine the course of the future? Why can't you and I unite under the open sky and walk as one? It is unfair that I pine for your attention whilst you drink away with somebody else. Your melodious voice still rings in my ears. I long to hear your voice again. Why did you always have to call me an hour too late? An hour which is so difficult to spend now. I had forgotten what this fever had felt like. What this unending pulsation of the heart had felt like. I threw you off but I can also cushion your fall. If only you would give me the chance to do so. Why did you have to paint those words into my head? I can forget the voices, forget the names, forget the faces but these words stick. These words have occupied the vacant space in my head. These tenants won't vacate so easily. This languish does not leave me. It has me in in thrall of you. What do I do about songs in my head? The songs that I wanted to play for you. What do I do about the smile that came on my face with the mere mention of your name? What do I do about the longing desire to run my fingers on the nape of your neck. Yes, I m good with my hands. And they ache to act. I am smitten. And I had forgotten what it felt like to be like this.

Alas! I continue to burn.

Home

what is home? a bunch of keys that i have been in possession of that open a lock which i know is home. the bunch of books which lie stacked neatly in a corner on my book shelf is my book mark for my home. the building of mortar and bricks changes after every couple of years. the bend of the street leading to the home changes after every few years.

the lack of permanence is unsettling. My memories are divided over the cluster of years that have been spent in each house that I have stayed in. I sometimes get nightmares about the room where one of my landlords used to stay. It is a recurring image of that house.

My home is not a memoir of my growing years. It is more a marker of where I stand in the present. I feel more affinity towards the suitcase that carries my things each time I go back to my city and to my  house.

Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like to watch the tree grow that my mother had planted in front of our old house. I wonder what happened to the eucalyptus trees outside one of our houses. Would they still sway with the wind? Would they still cast their shadow above everything? Those trees have long been chopped off. But my mind still holds the memory when I tried to touch the silvery bark in the hope that I would never forget that those trees existed. Those trees were home for me.

In my current rented accommodation , I scatter familiar objects such as my lamps and books acquired over a period of time. They are my anchor. More than the building of bricks and mortar which houses me. As I get ready to vacate yet another house and and move to yet another dwelling, I will carry these same objects to maintain the string of continuity.

My house will change again after the past 4 years that I have lived in this city. I will carry with me my memories of these last few years and my collection of paintings. Move to a new place and create yet again a semblance of home.