It is a cold night outside. Here I am sitting on a bed, with my laptop in front of me. The way I always have for most of my adult life. Outside my window, tall green trees shiver in the breeze, and rows of neatly stacked houses tempt with the promise of warmth. The road looks desolate - bathed in a golden orange from the street lights which stand tall, seemingly ignorant of the chill in the air.
"A tree has bushy green leaves sitting tight on top of a scaly brown bark". This is how I was taught to draw a tree, and that is how the trees are, outside my window - tonight. Cars look like boxes with donuts for legs, and the houses like boxes with cones for hats. On a drawing I would be content with what I saw outside my window.
Except for one little thing, My home is far far away, on the other side of the planet.
In the lap of warm humid sticky Chennai, in one buzzing little locality, with dust in the air, and the sound of vehicles - announcing their existence at every turn with a honk. People milling on the roads, lots of colorful people. Talking, multiple languages. Maybe even loudly. Living lives, on the roads -on their doorsteps just off the roads. Haggling with vendors, markets. Temples, mosques - all sounds in the air. The smell of a hundred distinct Indian things. Life flows through the veins of my home land.
And here, in this white clean room I write, of images, sounds and times. From a memory that helplessly fades too quick, but wants to hold on to as much as it can. Of people who are no longer a part of my journey. Of people whose memory will always make the heart grow fond. And of times that are simply no more. Of hugging, and laughing. Simply being in the same room as some people.
"A tree has bushy green leaves sitting tight on top of a scaly brown bark". This is how I was taught to draw a tree, and that is how the trees are, outside my window - tonight. Cars look like boxes with donuts for legs, and the houses like boxes with cones for hats. On a drawing I would be content with what I saw outside my window.
Except for one little thing, My home is far far away, on the other side of the planet.
In the lap of warm humid sticky Chennai, in one buzzing little locality, with dust in the air, and the sound of vehicles - announcing their existence at every turn with a honk. People milling on the roads, lots of colorful people. Talking, multiple languages. Maybe even loudly. Living lives, on the roads -on their doorsteps just off the roads. Haggling with vendors, markets. Temples, mosques - all sounds in the air. The smell of a hundred distinct Indian things. Life flows through the veins of my home land.
And here, in this white clean room I write, of images, sounds and times. From a memory that helplessly fades too quick, but wants to hold on to as much as it can. Of people who are no longer a part of my journey. Of people whose memory will always make the heart grow fond. And of times that are simply no more. Of hugging, and laughing. Simply being in the same room as some people.
