Home is, where the heart is.

Not so long ago, I used to wake up to the sounds of M.S. Subbu Lakshmi’s Venkateswara Suprabatham or M.S.Rama Rao’s Sundarakandamu running on a Phillips stereo which was strategically placed in MY bedroom to wake me up by the time my parents were ready to get to their work. I finally had a complete, what is now known as, King size bed for myself, after two pesky elder sisters had made their way into USA one as a dependent, other as a student and had finally given me all the space I wanted at home.

No longer would anyone convert MY room into a storeroom within hours of me proclaiming that no one was supposed to enter it without my permission, the first was a stack of old text books that made in, for fear of hurting the goddess of wisdom I wasn’t allowed to protest, next came in sacks of seasonal fruit, and then tens of coconuts from the trees in my backyard. “There’s no place for them elsewhere“, I was told. Six rooms, and only the one I chose had to be a store room. Now being the lone child in the house, one was my bedroom and one was MY COMPUTER room, the same computer I wasn’t allowed to touch or install games or invite friends after it was bought in 1997, for nearly four years.

Sipping milk while sitting on the parapet wall of a 20 year old well in my backyard or on the terrace, overlooking the same school bus that I used to board a decade ago pass by gave me a nostalgic feeling. With kids in the same type of uniform I wore for 12 years made me think about how fast the time was going. Initially, There would be lot of familiar faces as I moved from 10th standard to 12th. As the years passed by, there wasn’t a single person I could recognize among the tiny little faces peeping out of the AECS-3 school bus, route number 6. The driver and the ayah remained the same for a few years.

Once I started driving my dad’s two wheeler I was assigned the job of dropping my Mom at the bus stop every morning at 7:55 AM, right in time for her office bus. For the sheer fun of driving my Mom while I was still a school student, I was eager, then later getting up early just to drop my Mom so Dad could finish his puja leisurely made me miss my precious 20 minutes of sleep. And once I had my own two wheeler, Hero Honda Passion, I was expected to relieve my dad of all driving duties, which made serious damage to my own plans of picking up college friends or joining a bunch of them at a specific spot at a specific time. In final year, the college campus was 50 Km away, one way. Ramanthapur was 18 km away, or kukatpally another 20 on a different side of the city, for some reason I always had to go to either of these places and join another friend(s) before a bunch of four guys started to college on two bikes. Daily travel distance nearly 120 km. My parents worried about me everyday, not one day. If I wasn’t home by 6 PM, I had to have an explanation ready of where I was delayed, they just wanted to see my face once at 6PM and then later anytime before 10 PM. Reasons started of with a change of plan in dropping a friend or stopping at a road side eatery, then they became so routine, they were part of the original plan and truth became a lie and lie became a truth till I lost distinction between why I was actually late and why I told my parents I was late. I got through somehow.

Almost everyday, I hopped on to my bike to get to a friends house and then drive to a nearby roadside eatery where he would have pani puri and I would watch and make fun of him about reports of cleaning fluid(phenyl) being mixed in what he was eating, while I had my mirchi bhajji in hand. I detested pani puri, especially the way the bandi wallah put his entire hand in a container of the spicy masala pani. For some reason, there was no way one could mess up a mirchi bhajji, in spite of having experiences with bad cough because of the cheap oil that was used and reused and reused, to fry the bhajjis.

My average conversation on the phone would be 6-8 minutes to a friend I had last seen an hr ago and we would discuss all the day in those 6-8 minutes, though it was always the case that we had spent most of the day in the same group of friends. An occasional call from a girl would be longer (*snicker*) and have my Mom worried about who the girl was.

Over all it was a fantastic life I had, or so I thought. An occasional thought would drop in about the real future, JOB, money, love, marriage, life. But it wasn’t worth thinking about for more than 10 minutes and I felt content that I had done something useful that day and I could peacefully go to bed with my fantasies.

–

I now rarely get up before 9AM or get out of the bed earlier than that. Breakfast is non-existent. After a long shower, I go out through my back door into the patio that overlooks a small alley, the alley that the Centennial Olympic bomber “Eric Rudolph” used to get away after bombing an abortion clinic in Birmingham. I find a parking spot and walk back towards my office while on phone to my Sis, who is 2 hrs behind my time, or a cousin one hr ahead of my time, who’s preparing food for her husband. I pass by Confederate Motorcycles which occasionally has a black bike in display, the same black bike Tom Cruise rode in M.I.2 (How do I know, I read Black & White, Birmingham).

Lunch is usually at a restaurant around south side, Thai, Chinese, Italian, Mediterranean, Greek, Indian, American, seven types, five working days. I never run out of variety. And occasionally Home. Heeding to my Sis’s advice of not eating outside “too much”. For all I know, the veggie subs, or the pita roll up is probably healthier than my tasty and oily brinjal, chicken, turkey, or other cooked items the Indian way.

I work until I want to, on Mondays I cook, Tuesdays I occasionally cook, Wednesdays I meet my friends at the wildlife center and feed baby squirrels by hand, hold an injured red tail hawk or a barn owl or a tiny screech owl, while Greg administers baytril or eye drops. April will be the baby bird season and scores of baby birds will come in and it would be really fulfilling to take care of them and release them back in the wild once they are fully recovered.

Thursdays are back to routine, with work on the mind. Fridays are fun, moderately competitive volleyball, movies and possibly dinner with friends over an occasional red wine or beer. Saturdays and Sundays pass of as if they were one day, friends and their wives and places around Birmingham that never change anyway. Meditation, maybe a new book or a piece of work in pyrography. Variety is the spice of life.

–

4 years 7 months later, I have changed. I desperately look forward to visit home for the first time after long. I know there’s no route no. 6, AECS-3 going that road, the dry 24 year old well collapsed into itself two years back, there’s a little underground tank in its place. My Mom’s retired, my Dad now drives my bike, and I’m a little worried about if he has maintained it well or not. And there’s an occasional chauffeur to drive my Mom, Dad and Sis if they are going into the heart of Hyderabad or Sec-Bad. Job and education, don’t bother me. Money sometimes does, but I don’t loose sleep over it. Personally I wish I had taken care of my Sisters in a better way when I was a kid. The fights over a TV channel, the volume of the television, fighting over control of the phone, computer, each others lives, wasn’t worth it. But my nickname REALLY ticked me of then.

I have seen very little of my family in the last 4 years, hardly spent a week in all. And I haven’t seen my Dad in 4 years 7 months. My cousins and relatives, who I cherish the most, some have left me in grief, never to come back again. Others have made themselves busy and rarely available. Few of them have come to the US and we develop a new bond in a partly alien, partly adapted land, where virtual communication somehow covers the grief of missing one’s family over years.

I see Google Maps and I notice a whole new bunch of high rise buildings all over in the area I once lived, one of my best friends and my neighbor for 26 years mentions that nothing would seem the same, “even the metal rod, you hang on to for dear life in an auto, it’s now thinner“, Vivek said. My neighbors have moved, most are in US, a few left back home, their children however are here. Google Maps bought tears to my eyes the first time, later they couldn’t satisfy my desire of wanting to know more and see more in a limited vertical view. I haven’t received a single pic of my Mom or Dad or house or new car in the past 4.5 years, webcam somehow sucks big time.

Some worst moments have been hearing death of relatives, grandma, uncle, cousin’s son, some good moments have been seeing the progress of little cousins into mature men and women. New families, new members, new careers - time passes on. I have changed. For years marriage sounded like a joke and suddenly one friend got married, and the reality became vividly clear. Damn! decision time. In case I’ve to take a decision myself.

At the most postponement for 6-8 months, for what? It seems inevitable, no out of the box approach perhaps. Sight seeing, Match fixing, dom dom dom. Babu bhajantreelu.

I hate it(?). I don’t know. I see two friends and restore my faith in letting my relatives introduce a girl to me [ not my parents ]. Maybe the typical Indian way isn’t too bad, however there are a lot of personal obligations to fulfill. I know what my heart aches for, career wise, personally and spiritually. I remind myself, one step at a time. I have fallen, picked up my self, well enough to start again in spite of knowing I might fall again. I’ve won, I’ve lost. To realize what I can do to win again. I’ve a whole pack of new friends, I know these ones are for life too. I know I’m meeting my best friend after 4 years 7 months.

One month later I’ll be back to this life. I was born in a home. I’ve made this another home. I was born in a family. I helped create a family of friends here. I’ve moved from existing to living however,with living comes joy and pain. Joy makes it worth it, pain tests it. To flinch and retreat is a failure in itself. Because being hurt hasn’t killed me, being hurt again probably won’t kill me. It’s worth taking the risk. At least it’s still better to LIVE that way than exist any other way.

I love life, and everything that comes with it.