Homecoming

It took me a lot of time to just write the first sentence.

Why is it always the hardest part? Why can't the first thought flow like a river, like you can bet it flows for Terry Pratchett and Stephen King? Is it because our thoughts are way too jumbled and we can't separate the signal from background noise?

Fun to think about your mind resembling this vast black sightscreen (like the ones used for day/night cricket matches) and thoughts like millions of random light bulbs going on and off. Its hard to focus on one thought and its difficult to hold on to that one bright spark which you need to write that one brilliant line.

The Marine Drive breeze carried the scent of home. Not the physical one, which now houses my ageing parents. Not that one which still has one cupboard full of my old clothes and books. Not the one where the air is still damp with expectations of their son returning one day and reclaiming his place in the household. No, not that one at all.

It wanted to take me to the place where I seldom go. The one in which I can run to school without being out of breath. Where the grass is always greener on my side and not the other. The place which still holds all the smells of my childhood. The place where I can be the greatest left arm bowler India has ever produced for one lazy afternoon. The one in which she is still thirteen.

Well, the breeze had to try real hard for my attention. The blaring horns and the traffic snarls were not helping its case much. It must have caught me at an unguarded moment because I rarely let down the guard now-a-days. Oh no, letting down the guard was not a good idea at all. After all, who wants to show all those bruises to the world? All that hurt and desperation and rage will not make a pretty sight either.

Going home ! That's all I could think of after the initial wave of euphoria.

For me, home will always be that purple coloured cupboard which used to house my dad's drawings. More precisely, those three strips of markings with yellow crayon in front of it which only I could equate with cricket stumps. Or was it that half-broken badminton racquet which used to double up for tennis? Or that red diary in which my biggest secrets were kept. The one which had her writing in big letters "I will never marry you, even if you are dying, because you are a liar." Are those things still there in that house, lying somewhere, waiting for me?

The breeze was definitely waiting to take me home. And this time I was ready. Was the lamppost ready when my Ikon crashed into it at 60 mph? Even in case it was, it sure did a great impersonation of acting surprised.