Coming Home

Dec 19th, 2005.

It was clearly one of those dates that I would remember and smile even through my locust years. I was now to work at Maersk Logistics, Bangalore in a sales job. As I entered, a tiny tear trickled down my cheek to think of what I had been missing for 1 year and 8 months of my most impressionable years. As much as I loved that I can claim some ownership rights over certain possessions at home, I would be missing so much of the city that strengthened me. In 20 months I had probably seen more of life than the 21 years at home. Love and hope; rivalry and revelry; death and sickness all came in various proportions.

There was a banner titled – ‘ Welcome Home Adi.. We missed U’. In a jiffy it made those 20 months of distance simply vapourise into thin air. I had never seen anything so endearing before. The first few days I spent in hard labour. Cleaning up the room, arranging my stuff and most of all making my sister give up sole ownership rights to the room. I did miss everything of Mumbai and my office at Nhava Sheva, old friends, not being answerable to anyone, tiffs with my landlady and even the cockroaches in the kitchen.

Here are some of what was and what is in a time gap of 20 months –

Food: Staying alone has given me the inspiration to embark on a crash course on learning to ‘cook for survival’ programme. Taste buds become less fussy. And when I got home the craving for outside food had reduced considerably. The spice in my life still remained the same though and home food still seemed piquant. It’s often a heady feeling to suddenly start fending for yourself when the last thing that one thinks of at home is the day’s next meal.

Sleep: Staying alone gives you enough freedom to sleep long hours. The risk of being poured cold water on early in the morning is eliminated. The bigger fiasco is of course not having a back up for the most reliable alarm clock on earth a.k.a mother. Also sleep cannot be avoided if roomies are having heated arguments with boyfriends with background music and lights on.

Study: In one of those rare treasured moments when the desire for work and study dons, the ambience never seems to be conducive. Then poor victimized room mates are asked to buzz off or postpone their gossip sessions till sleep over powers my eyelids.

Schedules: Getting used to waking up on time and eating at the right times was unheard of 2 months back. Suddenly body has to recharge the clock. Having some one care about timings of meals etc. is definitely coddling my ego. At the same time it does a world of good in terms of systematizing everything.

Space: Every body needs some personal space to rip that façade of well-behaved ness and shed that garb of courtesy. Home is the only place that allows that - Whether it is a dismal effort of an imitation of the moonwalk or sinking into the sofa in a reverie to reach out to the moon…