This was written while waiting for my connecting flight to Bangalore at the Mumbai airport, in the wee hours of the morning , having just landed back from foreign shores. I was so excited and so unable to sit still that I needed something to occupy myself and I took out the laptop and started writing what I was feeling, it is incomplete of course, since I was more interested in hearing the call that 'The Bangalore flight is ready for boarding'.
The first thing that I see as soon as I land in India is the dis-obeyal of rules. Made me smile.Then there was the queue to get through migration and we had the usual jostling and 'breaking of queue', people slipping in left and right and the concept of personal space totally violated.There was this lady who seemed to think that shoving her bag into my back was a way to move faster.and hence my first irritated expression which I haven't felt in the last 10 months, at least not for the same reason.Then there was the airport security check, they had just one row for a few hundred passengers and having said that I must mention that it moved very fast.security did seem lax for there was a water bottle in my bag which almost always resulted in a personal human baggage check and me having to lose 15 mins extra coz of that, but here, the bag was just kept aside and I could just pick it up and go my way.The staff was helpful though, turns out the metal detectors that are used for the ladies, seem to pick up the back pocket buttons also! that was a little weird , the lady kept trying to check what made the beep and it was quite some time before I realised that the pockets had buttons on them.
and finally !! most importantly, the first thing I thought of when I landed was "Yeh jo desh hai mera , swades hai mera" and that put on the biggest smile on my face.There seemed to be not as much excitement as I expected considering that I spent the last 7 months waiting to get back home, but honestly , being in a flight full of Indians(I just typed desis and had to erase it and make it Indian, coz of obvious reasons). There is something that totally tugs at the heart strings, the feeling of being back in India, of being back home, seeing all ladies in sarees.. It doesn't seem anything like people warned, I was told there'll be a 2 month withdrawal period before you get back to accepting what I spent 23 years of my life in.Well, maybe early to say so considering all that I have seen is the airport only so far.
But baby, It feels great to be back home! I am loving it ! No more McD's , no more SUbways , plain old masala dosas and vadas and sambars and chutneys ... Yummmmmmmmy !!
Friends, family , familiar surroundings... sigh, what I have been pining for for the last 10 months, almost since the day that I left .... I am home . I keep saying that to myself as I sit here in this airport lounge and wait for the last flight that I want to take in a journey that started exactly on October 25 last year.I think outside of home and office, if there was a place that I spent time in , it was in airports.
I really do wonder if I achieved what I set out to do, a part of me wanted to explore more than the limited pond that I seemed to grow up in , another part of me wanted adventure and something new and exciting... a part that wanted something new ... I wonder if I found all that in the last couple of months, I know for sure that when I got my tickets in hand to return to Blore , the first thought that ran through my head was "Is it 10 months already, what have I done in all of these months, I am going to go back home and everything is going to be exactly the same, nothing has changed , nothing will, I am probably the same that I was 11 months ago, just feels like the page of a year of my life has gone by without much having happened" but then I also know that I have grown up, learnt to be a little more self-dependant, learnt to be my own person and have sort of formed an identity of my own, I have had to face all my shortcomings in the face, I had to face my worst fears, I had to learn to depend on myself, in the same breath, I also learnt that the actual independance that I was seeking is impossible,man is a social being, nothing can get done in the best possible way if you don't have the support or advice of someone who's been there before or done it.
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