…and sometimes you turn back to look at your past, it looks right back at you, there’s a smile of understanding, and you decide to move on…
As i looked around the room, i could see the images flash – hunting for the missing single white uniform sock which was mocking me from somewhere on the stand, climbing up on multiple stools to nail that Ash poster on to the wall, numbering new cassettes and arranging them on the cupboard shelf, skeptically viewing the computer when it was brought in, and then spending hours browsing, adjusting the angle of lying down on the bed to watch TV in the other room while pretending to be studying, gazing fondly at those hard earned trophies and remembering the exploits that earned them….an almost endless stream…
There has been at least one occupant since then, but ‘I’ can still be found there, after all i spent close to a decade there… memories buried amongst books, clothes, and all those assorted things that are part of the everyday existence… forgotten heroes… part of a story that once used to be called home…
As i left the room, there was an uneasiness that gnawed at me… it happened during every goodbye, but somehow this time I felt it was different.. and a few hours later, as i opened the door of our current place of residence in Bangalore, and gazed around in affection at the familiar settings, I sensed an understanding of the uneasiness, and remembered the words from ‘Garden State’ that I tend to quote often
You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone
… You’ll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it’s just gone. And you can never get it back. It’s like you get homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. I mean it’s like this rite of passage, you know.
… I miss the idea of it. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.
….for even as you smile in understanding, there’s the pain of moving on, of losing touching with the ‘you’ who once were, of acknowledging the paradox of Time – which caused you to change, and the room to remain relatively unchanged..almost frozen in time….perhaps a keeper of memories that you couldn’t find space for…
until next time, a room with a point of view
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A post that articulates what many feel but can’t say!
A friend’s mother keeps his room as a shrine which makes him wonder if he is dead and gone.
But as reality in India stands – for my generation – many friends’ parents moved from the houses, where the friends had spent their childhoods. In such a case, one just has to relive childhood in one’s mind. What they call ‘home’ for fear of offending parents is really their parents’ house. This rapidly leads to the brutal acceptance of that ‘home is where the mortgage is’. 
Its homesick for a lifestage i think.. and one always feels a sense of wistfulness and heaviness for things that were and no longer are. as if a door has been shut on something and it can never be recaptured.
smiled in understanding all through the post! It reminds me of my home where I grew up and sometimes when I walk past it, I turn to see if the new occupant is at ‘my’ study table next to the window …
On Shefalys comment: A comment that articulates what many feel but can’t say!
Maan:
That is a nice comment on my comment. I think.
Thanks.
Super !
Home these days is a mental construct. A mental construct with nostalgia, hopes and wishes ! Throw in some hope and some despair…it beats the real life architect, plumber and mason hands down !
Lovely.
You still have sepia memories.
They’re exclusively yours.
shefaly: hmm, i can imagine that!!
cynic: yes, that too..
Maan:
)
kavi: at different lifestages, we have different ‘homes’, each of which is a symbol of a lot of things associated with that time too..
austere: yep, have written a post on memories.. shall post soon
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