Away from home.

As a word itself ‘HOME’ is contradicting in nature. It combines the spirit of the bonding and separation together.

Being confined in very homelike environment always keeps from essential exposure to the reality outside at the same time it just not leave your heart, it keeps on spreading over the body, mind all the time you are away.

All the years back home created the suffocation, contracted the flavor of the experiences. I felt locked in the shell and over protected and now I want to go back all the time. Why do we leave our native if we cannot accept the distance in first place?

To find the unknowns, to feel the loneliness, to value them better, to earn some money on your own, to get the feel of the venture, To find out all the strengths and weaknesses in self…there are thousands of sundry reasons and then the sense of separation propels.

May be only those can realize, how it feels, when you crash in the bed after a long hard day and close your eyes… “Eight more days to go home”, “Seven more days to go home”… who stays far away from home? There will be lot of illegal immigrant staying in foreign lands for decades…they cannot come back. They would have been left with memories of the memories…the turn of the street in the town, the group of the friends in the cold night, all the relatives who came to airport to say goodbye… They leave all of them just like that as it was. Exiled people also must have felt that strong affection for the native land. A Goaen poet was expelled by Portuguese government during freedom fight wrote “What all I left for love of Goa?” It extends the list of wonderful pleasures in homeland including the red sand remained on poet’s hand. Surly the girl’s departure to in-laws house also would be raising the same sentiments of “leaving home”. A moment of separation from father, all the garlands offered to late relatives, Grandma’s glasses, younger sister’s comb, and elder brother’s towel, smell from mother’s sari…everything is left behind. Last Mogul emperor Bahadursha Zafar was exiled to Rangoon, Burma. There he wrote in his last days…

Lagtaa nahii hai dil meraa ujRe dayaar meiN, kiss kii banii hai aalame-naapaaidaar meiN

umr-e-daraaz maaNg ke laaye the chaar din,do aarzuu meiN kaT gaye do intezaar meiN

Cannot find peace, this heart of mine, in this wrecked land

Who has succeeded in this, transitory world?

Having asked for a long life, I brought back four days

Two passed away in yearning, and two in waiting.

You can hear the whistle blow A hundred miles

Lord,I’m one, Lord, I’m two

Lord, I’m three, Lord, I’m four

Lord, I’m five hundred miles away from home, Away from home.

Close up:

“Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.”

~Yogi Berra