O Hometown

O tiptoeing hours of pre-dawn and snail paced baggage claim. O impatient fellow traveller, the dew laden white winters of Pune await me as well! Dear old sweeping lady, I like the sound your red glass bangles make as you sweep golden dust against the sun.

Good morning, roadside pottery shops, your earthy creations must adorn my balcony!

O floating aromas of breakfast in the air. Tea stalls with sooty copper kettles and fresh pea curry with bread. Smiling head nodding neighbours.  Young scooters, old trucks, mini vans and broken red buses. O wooden hand cart selling parrot – green guavas. I like them sliced with a dash of chilli powder!

O shaded uneven brick pavements and crisp newspaper cones on a weary peanut seller’s cycle. Half grassed backyards with slate tiled paths, many a red ants lined underneath! Dear old car under the leaking tin roofed shed. Hello ginger furred sleepy cat yawning amid the chickoo tree branches. O smiling washing lady, I love the colours of your sari.

O big shopping malls right next to old stone buildings. Quaint little snack shops selling Indianised Chinese treats under the bridges along the dying river. And multi coloured vegetable markets. Ever bright printed fabrics, buttery cookies and cake at the Irani bakery. O mum’s home cooked biryani.

Dear green hills in the middle of the smoked city. I know your foliage hides many a peacock! O enchanting Goddess with a pearl nose ring, seated calmly in the orange temple on the hill.

Hello giant Peepal tree, rooted deep on the edge of the footpath right outside my college. I might still have your dry leaf neatly pressed in my notebook.

My dear university roads and landscapes! It’s here that I have waited for him every apprehensive teenage evening! I can sniff my adolescent monsoon escapades in the wintry wind. I recall my mind’s moods at every bend of this jogging path; my missed heartbeats of that time must be scattered somewhere here!

O Hometown! What is this magical spell that you cast over my soul each year? It makes me go around the world, searching for something that, in the end, I find in the soothing shadows of your shelter.

: : just too homesick today, I guess!