I don’t like the cold.
Winter makes me sluggish and often keeps me under the weather.
It’s normally that time of the year when I take my annual leave and head to the unknown. However, this year I made the mistake of making plans with some unreliable friends and ended up at my parent’s home.
My folks couldn’t have been happier, while I discovered and practiced hibernation to some extent.
I hadn’t stayed at home for more than a couple of days after the time I left home for College.
Coonoor has changed a little, or maybe I have. The extended stay at home revived a lot of old memories.
Like your average kid, I daydreamed in class, read every possible piece of literature apart from my school curriculum while I was pretending to be studying, imagined I’d die for my friends, talked endlessly on the phone and believed my parents had no clue what was best for me.
As cliché as it may sound, over the years I’ve sheepishly realized that I was clearly wrong every single time.
On hindsight I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do for most part of my life, but today my problem is that I always know what I want, always.
My brother says that I plan and execute my life meticulously. When he first passed that judgment it really got to me and then I realized that he was right in some sense. I had made up for the lack of focus from my younger days yet stuck to my reputation of radical extremes.
Funnily, when I was younger the only thing I thought I knew was of my conjugal future.
Stereotypical scheme of things….I’d marry a Thomas or Chacko, or a more obnoxious mallu Christian name and name my sons…John, Paul, George and Ringo after the Beatles. Turns out I have changed so much!
All my life I left I never really had a choice.
My dad made most of my decisions and my mom stood by him.
I had the longest hair in comparison to all the boy in the neighborhood and that’s as good as it got, while the girls I knew ran around looking pretty with long locks of hair.
I was forced to play cricket and was never bought a Barbie doll.
I had no choice but to learn to play the guitar over my personal preference towards the piano.
I had to take science group after the 10th grade over my choice to pursue the commerce stream.
Today, the same parents have let me independently take the biggest decisions of my life and my stood by me whatever my decision maybe.
This trip made me realize that living with the parents wasn’t as suffocating as I had anticipated it to be.
I had a laidback holiday, indulging in absolute gluttony and eating every meal like it were my last, exerting myself with postprandial exercises such a channel surfing, text messaging and rummaging through the fridge for in-between meal munchies. I felt like Garfield, the only thing active about me was my imagination. A stark contrast from the routine hectic holiday schedules I set out on year after year.
I enjoyed watching movies and debating with my dad late into the night.
Evening walks and sporadic grocery shopping trips with my mom.
I spent hours poring over old photo albums and rearranging them, listening to some good old music that I grew up with….the salubrious mountain air, the traffic free roads, the spectacular sylvan surroundings-I realized how much I had taken these things for granted all these years.
I felt like a baby and definitely slept like one…i lose track of pretty much everything…until I realized it was time to pack my bags
I felt like a child returning to school after a long summer break. This trip had brought me so close to my parents that I didn’t mind living at home for the rest of my life.
As that realization dawned on me I was shocked at how differently I would have left about this a few months back.
It was finally time for me to leave, I pulled my nebbish self together and tugged at my luggage unwillingly.
My dad called out from the main gate, we were running late.
The drive to Ooty was a blur and I before I knew it I was sitting on a bus to Bangalore after kissing my parents goodbye.
The lights were dimmed and I turned up the volume on my iPod. Coincidentally, the track that was playing was mama, I’m coming home.
Tears streamed down my cheeks and I realized this was the first time in twenty five years that I had cried while leaving home.
Home is truly where the heart is…
