24th Apr 2021
Dearest Palak,
How does it feel like to be back home after so long? Do you feel any different?
The place. The people. The things. They haven’t changed, have they? It’s still the same. A lazy and slow-paced town that sleeps off at 8 in the evening. Shops are closed. Restaurants pull down their shutters and start cleaning up. Due to Covid, many of them probably do not even open their businesses. But that doesn’t matter, I guess. You probably didn’t go out even once.
But Covid or not, one thing that never stops in our small town is the late night ruckus of the Kirtaniyas. It’s summer and probably you turn on the fan at full speed. So, you probably can’t hear it. But they are there and you can hear them the most, singing on top of their voice, out of tune, post dinner time.
At home too, things have been more or less the same since your last visit. The bed is the old one but maybe with a new bedsheet. The furnitures have been rearranged a bit. There’s a new coffee table maybe. Or maybe they have changed the electric chimney in the kitchen. But otherwise, it’s the same. It even smells the same way as it used to. The sickeningly sweet smell of medicines? The aroma of the food cooked by your mom? They do bring back old memories…
And yet it feels different. You feel good, at least for the time being, to be back to your parents. But that feeling doesn’t last long. There’s nothing to look forward to. The crowd and cacophony and the hectic city life (even with WFH) that you are used to is missing here. But it’s not just about missing the city life. It’s more than that… Missing your life in the city shouldn’t have been a good enough reason for this lack of attachment to the place you grew up in.
There should be, at least, a feeling of nostalgia. But it’s not there. Maybe once in a while, you remember something from your childhood with fondness but that feeling too is volatile and it vanishes into thin air, thereby, pointing out the pointlessness of it all.
It’s disturbing, isn’t it? Or maybe ‘disturbing’ is too strong a word. You just feel uncomfortable which eventually turns into a certain kind of numbness. And then you wonder what’s wrong with you.
And then you realize that your lack of any strong feelings for this place you grew up in and for the people here stems from the fact that it’s you who have changed. And then you feel good about it, do you? I do…
Upper middle class comforts in small towns could have disastrous impact on your personality. It’s a good thing that we escaped it and never turned back. It has made us into what we are today, free, independent (financially and otherwise), unapologetic, minding_our_own_business types…
Our shared disgust for the place we grew up in made me wonder if you too feel the same way as I do.
With love, hugs and other things,
P
