The Day the World Stops

When all else fails, I go home! First written with an Ochre Sky writing circle.

Recently, my writing mentor

Natasha Badhwar

wrote about coming home. And so I hesitated to put out this very literal interpretation of the concept. But then, she and

Raju Tai

of

Ochre Sky Stories

have taught us to be brave with our writing! And I feel truly blessed to be able to share this.

I have quite a large collection of go-to things for a fix of happiness – coffee, food, music, old friends, new friends, more food, bookstores, sunflowers, seashores…I guess I am not very difficult to please! But at the top of the list is Going Home. To my parents’ house in Pune via the Mumbai-Pune expressway. I lie back in my seat in the big, air-conditioned bus and the world passes by in greens and browns, with a continuous stream of vehicles flashing past my window, making the opposite journey. I am in a glorious limbo – available neither to my husband and daughter in Mumbai, nor to my parents in Pune for four or five hours. And as the bus picks up its rhythm, the thoughts in my head come out to play. Some mix and mingle and play together. Some straighten themselves out and vanish altogether. Some stay in their corners and ask not to be disturbed. I let them do as they wish – it is their special day! They have waited their turn patiently through weeks or months of daily chores and a myriad of responsibilities. 

When the journey ends and it is time to ring the doorbell, I know exactly what awaits me inside. The curtains will be drawn against the late afternoon sun, and what little filters through will take on the curtains’ hues – blue, yellow, lavender, lime green. My parents will hover around me like I am the world’s most valuable citizen. The little dining table will be laid out with a late lunch for one, with everything I most love to eat: steamed rice with Shukto – a Bengali vegetable medley with the perfect balance of sweet-salty-bitter, and a fish curry perfectly flavoured with nigella seeds and green chilies tempered in mustard oil. A kind of heavenly sleep will start to take over while I am still licking my fingers at the end of this meal full of love and re-union and delicious gossip. And before heading to my siesta, I will pick out a book or two from the bookshelves in the study – something light – an easy, joyful read just till I fall asleep.

Tomorrow, my mother will call me lazy, and my father might scold me for ignoring some bank work. Tomorrow, we might discuss health issues and dental check-ups. Tomorrow, we might talk about why it is so hard for me to lose weight and why I should walk for at least half an hour every day. Tomorrow, the neighbour will say in the lift that they are glad that I have arrived – my parents have been waiting for my visit. R in the medical store will have the time in the middle of selling medicines, to talk about how my parents had attended his wedding. Then we will discuss the weather and he will remember how Pune was never this warm. We will both remember how the old buildings in Fergusson College did not have ceiling fans because none were needed there a hundred years ago. We will talk about the vegetable burgers at Vaishali Restaurant that we both ate in the nineties for the princely sum of five rupees. And G, who used to drive us around thirty years ago will come home to take us out, even though he has a different full-time job now. He remembers some things from all those years ago that the rest of us have forgotten! How we had visited some friends when their new house was built or how we had driven some way out of the city for someone’s wedding. G remembers it all – he is the custodian of our memories!

But not today. Today I will sleep till my body wakes me up. Today I am protected from important conversations, big decisions and wistful reminiscences. Today is the day the world stops!

PS: My father is no more, but still when I ring that doorbell, he is there to welcome me home. I can hear his footsteps following my mother’s and I can hear his voice saying the special name that he called me. And I can hear the happiness in his voice that I have come home safe and sound once more.