I was on my way home after a long time and this time it was for a serious reason. I packed light and boarded the place with an anxious mind full of queries. But I had to go home anyhow and there was no escaping from that trip. The first night was full of anxieties and the following morning my mind was rather willing to reconcile with the anxieties. I was able to do so and that occurred when I was at the airport much earlier than the departure time. Finally I had arrived at a point in which I could vividly sit down and recall the mental picture that I had long been nurturing and sharpening in my mind. It’s the picture that can make anybody call one place home and without that picture one would also become empty person, who could easily be consumed in a diverse environment. It has been with me though it was something I had ignored in some remote past.
Upon my arrival in a different setting and in the beginning of the certainty that I was going to be in that setting for sometimes I was confronted with a gripping fear that the starry-eyed personality of mine could easily be consumed by the setting. I was not willing to let that happen. There had to be an attempt and that it would be a self-initiative one; recalling the untainted past and then the boyish days which most people of my age had lived out years ago and now those days had to be revisited and after having brought that up I would have to polish with a different kind of intelligent observation which became an identity. Once I had it with me I was convinced that anyone could see me miles off as a man wearing a distinct hat in any melee in that foreign setting.
The identity that I now had in my mind was a product of my past and that product made me able to carry out certain yearnings. That was recalled and it was allowed to influence several aspects but what I was not aware was that I had long been away and upon my arrival the present picture would be placed beside the past-made picture. Everything that I would be doing would have to live up to what I had done before and obviously when that hadn’t occurred I would be deeply disappointed.
That was suppressed in the tumult of running from one counter to another, the constant incoherent and disturbing announcements on the plane, then again there was the waiting to be done at the carousel and the run that I had to make to the domestic airport. The domestic was packed and the noises were rich so were the indulgence of the people. In a while I found myself in a long line where I could hear people talk in Hindi. How comforting it was to hear another language after a long time. I focused on the sound and later on I was automatically drawn into the conversations. Two young ladies before me in shalwar kameez and their foreheads marked with vermillion powder were talking about their houses in some big city and how it would be so difficult for them to converse at home in their mother tongue, Meiteilon. Behind me was a couple who, from their conversation, seemed to be some people doing well in another city. Their conversation flitted between Hinglish and heavily Sankristised Meiteilon, of which they sounded easily capable of and also bore the show-offish intention like most middle class people in major cities who had just shot out of the recent hard time and now had earned a means to be flamboyant yet without knowing that theirs was a fragile one.
To be continued...........
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