Going Home

by admin

July 24, 2019

271

The approach from the plane is not quite as green as before. The water tanks are drying up. There have been no rains again this year. Still, it’s pretty enough, no squalid slum in sight. Friendly one-storey houses and coconut palms still dominate the scenery, at least in this part of the city. The mindless high rise buildings are mushrooming elsewhere. The bay is a still blue, a frozen watercolour from up here. The hill looms ahead suddenly, making the landing a little bumpy. We went drinking up on that hill. There is a holy place there but that didn’t stop us. We sat watching the planes and the stars, drinking cheap rum, making out. It was lonely and deserted in those days, a little creepy and very silent. Now the houses crowd the hillside.

I look away as the car passes old haunts. There is nobody left to share these with. We are shattered apart as much as we are scattered around the world, the old gang that hung out together. That beach, this cheap biryani place, that first floor house. There is no going back. No one remembers or at least they claim to have forgotten. The reluctance to come back home is partly a resentment of this careless abandonment, partly a sense of being lost in the city of my dreams and nightmares.

The house is hot as hell, always, always. Bereft without her. It’s clean though, there is time enough to look after the housekeeping now that her demands and needs can be safely ignored. He is getting old, a little worn, a lot shaky but he puts on his brave face for me. I return the favour. Two people who have been pretending to be many things to many people for many years now. He is my last link to this city.

The air smells greener here in the house. There are gauvas on the neighbour’s trees, mangoes too. Her ardeniums are flowering beautifully…but today, the neighbours are chopping down a full grown jamun tree. It has dropped sweet little fruit into our compound for as long as I can remember. I wonder what horrible wrong led to this ruthless electric saw hacking of a shade giving, fruit bearing beauty.

There is no getting away from the solid wall of heat. It burns the skin and sears the air from your lungs. There is a sense of an inferno, the blood boiling in the veins. Is it a dehydration of the spirit that makes the heat unbearable or just 25 years of hiding in gentler climes?

I can remember walking down the long barren stretch of road behind Gandhi Mandapam 30 years ago. No umbrella or cap, no water. I wore my mum’s hand me down red Scottish kilt mini skirt, my favourite black top. I must have looked a right fool. But in my teenage mind, I was cool and hip. I don’t recollect the heat of that afternoon, only how surprised I felt to reach my destination without some stranger brushing against me or trying to grope me. Fair skin was always fair game in my home city. A woman (whom I didn’t care for) couldn’t or chose not to remember my name back in the day. She would caustically refer to me as White Girl. Her son sure liked the contrast of our skins against each other. She prayed for his soul when his heart was handed back to him in pieces. Back to the present. No one brushes against a middle aged, greying, plump woman with angry eyes.

There has been a rediscovery of friendship. Where once I thought I had all the friends I needed, I know now that you don’t always get what you need. In hospital corridors and such airless places, the unlikeliest people showed up and never left. Some brought food, others a hug, still others abandoned their own birthday parties. Some brought hope, others hard headed help. One held her hand and sang favourite songs as her mind rambled in the distant past and cats walked on the hospital walls. Another gave to the dying woman her strength and laughter and jokes about MRI machines and pantyhose. Going home is that much easier because of those acts of kindness. I seek these people out, they are the balm to my spirits and solace for an unravelling mind.

Don’t Look Back is my favourite song. The lyrics speak of something I aspire to, not something I’ve achieved. Going home is always going to be about ghosts and lost causes and broken bridges. But it could be about other happier things. It’s just a matter of opening my fist and letting the sand trickle out. The fist has been tightly clenched for so long now that it is painful to pry open. Each time I go home, it gets a little easier. One day soon, all the sand will be gone, the ghosts laid to rest and home will never be home again.