Home.
There is something about it that draws you closer - friends and family, people known and unknown. It is a familiar place - place where you know things. Where (sometimes agonizingly) things don't change. The familiar sights and sounds - the smells from the kitchen. The crowded streets. The monsoons with rains that never end. The green campus where my heart almost always skips a beat. It's time to meet it all. And goodbye to the kitchen for a few days makes it better still.... ;)
After months of hoping and planning, after weeks of shopping, and after days of back breaking work - that day is almost here.
Now with my bags all packed, I am distracting my mind from the excitement just to numb it a little. A little, not too much. I check and re-check. I weigh the bags over and over. I think and rethink. Am I worried ? Yes. Am I excited ? Extremely.
There are people with whom my unknown(s) are greater than my known(s) but when they say they want to meet me after all these years, It feels wonderful. It makes you realize that those few conversations, that the afternoon's coffee one day, the random chit chat on the streets - was meaningful. That it left a mark somewhere and that it connected them to you in ways stronger than what a year's absence could tarnish. And now suddenly a 45 day trip that seemed "maybe long" seems like it will just fly away in a blink just as good times always do. There is so much to do and so little time. There is so much to assimilate all with the constant fear that it may not happen for a long time again or perhaps even ever... ?
But for now... I imagine - the hugs, the smiles, and chit-chats, the multiple gallons of coffee that I plan to drown, the hot dosas, the bajjis and bondas in the rain...
Life will be good !
