" Country roads take me home
To the place I belong"
No.No.No.Mine is not a country place boasting of serene rivers and breath-taking ridges. Yet this John Denver number strikes a chord with me for the sheer pangs of nostalgia it evokes.This post goes down the MEMORY LANES and travels through vivid memories to recollect the whiff of some beaten roads that will always be special no matter where I go. The home roads!
As I child, unlike most of the children, I relished staying indoors and making most of TV (You bet if you have watched more cartoons than me!!!), frolicking from one room to another and yes, playing and fighting with my sister. Yet I loved playing cricket and would often go to the nearby park and stand there-waiting for BADE BHAIYAs playing there to offer me to play. Still I haven't played as much cricket in my childhoodas many children of my block have, who thronged the park in mornings and yet saved energy to be there in evenings!
But the home streets couldn't have eluded me ever. My school being a walking distance away, my tuitions being a walking distance away, the markets being a walking distance away-I sauntered by my adolescence and late childhood through the streets of my home place. They aren't fancy Delhi places nor are these despicable shanties-they are clean medium sized roads full of vivid life, full of activity-buses, people and vendors.They are tableau of colourful life-of people briskly rushing for offfices, of noisy children, of zooming youth. 'Deserted' and 'marooned' are appropriate antonyms..No one has time to stop and think-it's almost 'Criminal' to do that in this hectic life!!
I have walked so much on them that they have become an indispensible part of my life.Rushing for school everyday, chatting along with a good friend on return from school, with another friend while returning from tuitions, going to Mandir and Gurudwara on that road ,ambling down a small yet lively market on the busy corner of that road, for purposelessly strolling in labyrinthine and maze-like streets that interconnect the blocks ....these have timestamped themselves so gradually that I didn't ever realize their significance till I went away!
It is a clichéd saying-" Absence makes a heart grow fonder". I realized the literal implications entailed with it when I left the streets for pursuing my graduation. On my first visit to home after going there, when I 'promenaded' back to those streets, a kind of ecstasy embraced me-reminding of the moments that I've spent here. Till now, whenever I come here, I feel very relaxed and nostalgic.A familiar whiff and familiar environs give a kind of security-
a security that some things never change with time, a security that I am in the lap of the known, a security that some precious moments haven't been lost in hullabaloo,a security that convoluted life simplifies here.....a security that I am home.
These certainly are not tarmac things for me. The moments I have spent here have animated these. And why not? These have seen me grow from an introvert child to a puerile teenager and to a much wiser grown up.
Yes,we aren't done yet. We aren't done.
