Its 11 pm and I am alone in my hotel room in Accra and I find that I can’t sleep. I am home-sick. But this is a different kind of longing. Oh yes, I miss being away from home, miss my parents, miss my phone conversations with my nephew, the sheer physical togetherness with A, but what I miss the most is my Indian existence. It’s just not about missing the food (though I don’t think I can have one more day of Ghanian food), but missing all that that makes up India for me, the sights, the sounds, the craziness, the chaos, the contradictions, the sheer force of life unfolding itself in all its possible forms around me all the time. I remember when I was in London, even though it was only for a week and even though it was lovely, I was craving for the warm sunlight back home. I was hungry for some contact with life. I felt that London was too ‘sanitised’ for comfort and that I would be divorced from reality if I lived long enough in that environment. And this is why I wonder how I would cope it ever means for me that I would stay away for a long stretch of time from my country. Yes, in contradiction I often contemplate that it would be nice to stay outside, to contemplate order instead of chaos, to view life as it should be and not as it is. But I do not know how long will I last.
As I listen to Gulzar songs on my cell phone I am suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to set foot back in my country, and just to breathe in that warm, musty air of Delhi, which will tell me that I have come home.
2 comments:
You make me miss India..evn though I am here 24x7... I guess all of us living here are a bit twisted inside to really like order
hey...that echoes exactly what i felt wen i landed in SA....i ws just soooo dying to get back to the crowds n dirt n grind of living in India.....really what they say is true-u need to get out of the country to realise the beauty of it! ok now dont i sound super patriotic1
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