Home Coming.....
I came back from Kolkata on the 4th of June, after a fifteen day stay which was absolutely relaxing, fruitful, enjoyable and perfect. But isn't that how a trip back home to mama after a year of being married and taking on all the responsibilities of a new household is supposed to be.
I would love to recount the incidents of my visit but I will take it one at a time and start with the day I reached.
I landed in Kolkata Airport on the 21st of May at 6.30 Pm to a thundering sky and lashing rains. It seemed like the perfect welcome and respite from the immense heat of Chennai. I felt like even the Gods were blessing my visit or was it Dad showering his love from the heavens because it is there that he lives, in the heavens over kolkata.
I had asked Ma not to come to the Airport as the driver was on leave and so I proceeded to take a pre-paid cab home but not before nostalgically looking about the airport which once not so long ago used to be my second home. I was working with one of the premier airlines of today from 1995 to 2001 and looking after service quality knew every part or rather nook and corner of the airport like the back of my hand. Most of the staff of the airline except the loaders have changed but the airport authority staff as well as the guys in the snacks and coffee counters and the very loyal Indian airlines staff remain the same.
Most of these people still love me and consider me an integral part of the airport and flash me the most welcoming smile when I pass.The pre-paid Taxi counter guys give me my token out of turn asking why I bother to queue. I stopped and said Hi to as many people as I came face to face with all of them asking me where I now was. Now wouldn't you call all of this a real home coming.
When the Taxi reached our gate our twenty year's old watchman whom we lovingly call Darwanji came and took the bags from the car dickey and handing the taxi token to the driver as well as beaming a broad smile at Darwanji and asking how he was rushed upstairs to the second floor where Ma lives. She has let out the first two floors as it helps her maintain the house and provides some company in the huge house where she is all alone except for a full time maid.
Looking at Ma I was both happy as well as sad. Happy for the very obvious reason but sad because each time I see her lately she seems to have aged more. One reason being the sixty six years she has lived but more so from the loneliness and sadness of living in a house which just a year and more back was inhabited by the family she loved. My sister moved to Bangalore and got married three years or so back, then Baba passed away about a year later and then I got married and left a year back.
Often I wonder at life.....one has a family and all when one has the strength to live alone and believe me Ma is one of the strongest women I or rather the world has seen and then just when you need a family the most you ironically are left to deal with time alone. I was so happy to be home and happier that I would be staying for sometime. I quickly took a walk around the house to see whether everything was like the way I left it and believe me it was intact. Ma does not move a thing since we all left, not even the things she should, somehow all that makes things at home just the way they were even twenty years back and that's what I love about the place.
The familiarity, security, warmth and the memories all frozen in time as if nothing had changed. Ma has not thrown away even the bed clothes and table cloth that were there a couple of years back when we all lived there, though they are immaculately taken care of. At the dining table I sat at my usual place at the head of the table which I had shifted to, the day Baba passed away so that the emptiness of that chair which Baba had occupied for years would not haunt me and Ma.
I still remember the moment when I sat on that seat after Baba's death, Ma looked at me with a strange look which I have not been unable to decipher till date. Was she relieved that it would not be empty after all or was she uspet that I had sat at his place. Somehow I could not bear to see the place vacant as it would constanly remind me of Baba's absence and that was the reason I had shifted there. Our housekeeper whom we call "mashi" (auntie) had prepared an elaborate meal with so many items that I had to skip the rice and roti to be able to taste them all.
I kept all my stuff in my room which had been mine ever since we moved into the house in 1987 and though I wanted to sleep there that night for old time's sake I slept with Ma on her side of the bed as she had since the night of Baba's death shifted to his side of the bed for the very same reason that I had taken Baba's place at the table. Somehow I could never get my-self to garland Baba's photographs at home or allow anyone to do so. All of Baba's photographs, even the portraits we had put up after he passed away were never ever garlanded. All the pictures stand till date like he were still alive and alive he is.....in our hearts and in our home. My mother says she feels his strong presence there and stongly believes that he wathces over her........ I am sure he does and its still feels like when we all lived there.
