Going Home

19th August 2010

Dear Journal,

It takes a lot to be someone different. Someone special. Someone worthy….and someone responsible. But it takes little, to be someone happy. I’m happy today, amongst the clouds, flying—with both my heart and all the rest of me. And it feels like I’m too light for anything to matter. Anything to matter at all. They do that to you sometimes, the clouds….don’t they? Poets write so much of them for nothing, you know. They are worthy of emulation. Of imagination, of utter wonder.

The clouds.

And they’re clouding my mind…as they traverse, moving all around and into me, punishing clarity as they weave into my dreams, thread into the fabric of my stories causing such an extraordinary magnification of a sunny mood. They leave space for only one thought—that I am going home. The idea that I am going home, that I am going to be seeing my friends, that I will get to talk to them, that I will get to belong, and glancing upon all those people I hold close, that I love, that I would wish to meet, all the rest of my family….this time, I’ll be there. Among them. Belonging.

It brings back a warmth, the sort of half-forgotten warmth akin to the reminding love in old grandpa’s oversized sweater or the delight in finding loose change that you never knew was there in a pocket. Accomplishments have come and gone. I’ve worked harder, tapping motivation in the most bizarre ways, and surprisingly found that I do foster an incredible amount of self-contentment for everything that occupies my life. I’ve moved from eighteen to nineteen, I’ve trained my legs to be more nimble, learnt to endure the hot sun of California knowing of hidden respites and new possibilities, to leave estrangements behind to laugh like everything is just a joke. Despite every occasional tantrum I throw and my unkindly longish whines…I am satisfied here. Happy, loved and striving. There is so much to find, so many new things. There is cheer, there is hope, there is the passion for working hard for my dreams….but it doesn’t mask the fact that I’ve missed them. They’re a part of me that I could never quite leave behind.

Every time I talk to them from behind a screen, or through mute pictures, or in the pages of a diary…..I feel that I am just skimming the skin, just a little bite of the other side of the globe. Although I have tried, with painful consistency, to reach out and bother myself with what happens in their day to day lives—to live both here and there…it has been difficult. Sometimes, I have done this at a cost of forgetting my beautiful present, sometimes even at the cost of my time and patience. But I have still held onto them. Adapting to a new place, to new people, to new ways, doesn’t mean that you have to forget all that life was, all the people who were there and all the people who still are--All those who have tried to push you through, to be your shoulder, to help, to advice, or yell at you through a headphone when you’re doing something wrong….all those who are deserving of your gratitude.

And today, everything seems to fit in so well. Everything feels right. Flying home again, to where I know that I can feel the monsoons moist my skin and invade me with a favorite glee, where I can barge into a darshini and savor a filter coffee for an affordable price, where I don’t need fancy chairs to sit on, when there’s that old Jamakhana on which I could stretch my legs, where I can scoot into random bazaars and side lanes in search of fancy earrings, where I can travel the polluted and jam packed roads, back seated and talking to a cousin, not really minding on all the jams and the honking, where I can hear my name pronounced correctly, , where some relatives try to approach me in English instead of in Kannada assuming that I would have forgotten, where I can bustle about at important marriages feeling the weight of many eyes on me, where midnight dreams come alive as the coconuts sway to august winds outside the window next to which I grew up, building more dreams and staring at those very same trees, where all my childhood books stay intact and reachable, where illusions are flesh and blood, where I know that I will be absolutely surrounded, sleep-deprived, pampered, pinched, overwhelmed…..and still be very very happy.

I feel like somebody happy.

Like somebody among the clouds.

I can see that silver lining—both outside my window and within grasp of an invisible future. New Horizons are emerging.

Something tells me this is going to be an adventure.