My days are so frantic that my roots have started to disappear. We outgrow our mother’s laps, the clothes, the tricycle and then the house, language and the city. I have been running endlessly towards nothing ever since my mother died. I feel some parts of me died that night with her. Life has never been the same. First Kolkata. Then Haryana. Mumbai. Nottingham. London. Amsterdam. Now Thane. I got a big girl job now. My next two years are rooted here. I shop my own groceries, clean those dirty utensils, go on dates and workshops, hang with my friends. Life’s good. But sometimes when I pause and look back, I really feel I haven’t been myself even for a second in the last few years. I moulded myself, fixed some traumatic parts and created a version to cope with it all. I didn’t cry the day my mom died. I was numb. I cried silently, in my room, after three weeks. Never in front of anyone. Not even my dad. When we got the news that Covid had my mom, my dad, sobbing, said, “You have become an orphan.” Guess he was right. It’s been six years since I lost her and four years since I lost my dad. No, he is alive physically. But I can’t recognise him anymore. Ever since my stepmother came into our lives, everything has changed. I do meet them on occasions but it’s not the same. Me and my father have drifted apart too much to be reconciled, at least in this lifetime. It’s okay. I have made peace with myself. And I’m doing well. I do feel alone, abandoned and betrayed but hey, that’s life. I can either mourn about it or fold myself to the situation. It’s been almost five months in Thane and at my new job. I got a weekend off after a while and found myself reflecting on the days of my past. My childhood is beginning to fade. Where do I wanna be? London, where I spent the most fun days of my life. Mumbai, where I made the closest friends. Thane, where I have found one of the best colleagues ever. Or Kolkata, in my childhood home, where I grew up. But to my own surprise, the answer is neither. When I close my eyes, I see mustard fields. Miles and miles of them, spread even beyond where my eyes can reach. A train going by at some distance. My mother, with a towel wrapped in her wet hair and wearing a red saree, calling me from behind to come and have lunch. Rice, fish fry, ghee and dal. The time is autumn. Durga Puja is just around the corner. The wind smells of kash phool and the sky looks blue with white clouds floating all over. At a distance, there is a mud house with Durga idols receiving their final touches before they are sent out to the pandals. The lanes and bricks, the ponds and the trees all sing the stories of my childhood. I was in Barrackpore. The Barrackpore I knew was an underdeveloped military town. Most of the people around us belonged to lower and lower middle class families, and we were happily one of them. Once a year, we used to go for a five to six day trip to Barrackpore where my father’s maternal home was. The house was small. A two storey cement house with a roof, three bedrooms, one kitchen and one common area. In the backyard, there were jackfruit trees and a swing, in which me and my cousin sister used to take turns to enjoy. Right beside the trees, there was an open well. My mother and my aunties gathered water from there to cook and clean. The house also had a small pond in front of it. A coconut tree bent and drooped into it because of a heavy storm. The local kids, obviously including me, used to sit on it and have raw mangoes. Bhodu, a skinny boy whom I befriended, used to bring us the most savoury raw mango chutney his mother made. Bhodu was from a tribal family. He lived in a mud house very close to ours. His parents, his younger sister Loti, his elder sister Mampi and his grandparents all stayed together in that one floor mud house. They didn’t have electricity. A small lamp used to always burn outside their house. In small towns like Barrackpore, casteism was still prevalent at that time. They were shadowed by society. Most people ignored them and refused to help them. Most kids were warned not to play with Bhodu, Loti or Mampi. My family members were not like that. We were always allowed to play with them. I remember we were invited to Loti’s birthday and the food was delicious. We celebrated Diwali together and many other occasions. Unfortunately, Bhodu’s mother died of anaemia a few years later. She was brought home from the hospital as they had lost all of their money and could no longer afford her treatment. Her pale skin and yellow eyes still haunt me to this day. We tried to help her but, being financially unstable ourselves, we could only support them for so long. Nobody else in the town helped them. This makes me wonder how many people have lost their lives to societal discrimination. When you see someone you care about go through it, only then do you realise the horrors of this world. I have not been able to go back to Barrackpore. After my mother and the grandparents at Barrackpore died, that house haunts me. I went there for two nights in 2021 and it was a nightmare. I couldn’t wait to leave the town. I haven’t been there ever since. But I intend to. My cousin sister is a medical student now. Bhodu is a factory worker. Loti and Mampi live in Kolkata after their wedding. Their mud house is still a mud house. They do have electricity now. I will go there one day. I need to. I have been running from my past because it’s filled with the memories of the people I have lost. But I guess that’s the closure I need to finally move on. I have to face the pain. I have to face my childhood. I have to face that house. Because even after all these years, when I closed my eyes today, the only place I longed for was Barrackpore. They say it right. Home is not where you are. Home is where the heart is. Perhaps my roots never disappeared. I just kept forgetting where they began.
Please log in to comment.
