24.10.08

You can deal with the lack of food-stalls on nearly every street corner.

You can deal with the near-absence of decent restaurants that serve food as it really is made back home. After all, there are enough shops that stock everything you need to make it yourself, if the need gets really bad.

You can deal with the ridiculous prices demanded for fruits that you crave for, when your palate demands them, in keeping with its own seasonal-memory rhythm.

You can just about remember that you can't just land up at someone's house without any warning anymore, because face it, you do get more privacy yourself this way.

You can somehow manage to live away from your family and friends for all the months at a stretch, because hey, webcam chats baby! And well, you're making new friends.

You don't really need miss the language, because everyone from back home seems to have got the same idea as you, and we've decide to colonise the world.

You can deal with all this, and pretend you're just on a long vacation. That you can take all the difference in weather, colour, faces, clothing, grammar, attitude, spice-levels, cleanliness, and customs, because it's all temporary and it's not going to change you, because you're still who you are when you were who you were back there. That back home is still home.

And then you realise just how long it's been since you heard crows making their miserable pre-dawn racket.
Since your sleep was punctuated by random canine howls.
Since you drifted to the window to see if what the basket-vendor was selling was interesting enough.

The little things, baby. They kill.

12 comments:

DewdropDream said...

Oh jesus!!!

SO poignant!!! I'm going to save this post.

Space Bar said...

there there! (didn't you just, like come back for a bit in the summer?!)

??! said...

DDD:
You like weepy? Wait till I get really sappy.

Space:
Spring, actually. Still don't help.

km said...

I read "The little things, baby. They kill" and thought you were talking about dangerous, disease-bearing microbes and germs.

Then I read the rest of your post.

That back home is still home.

Ha ha ha. Hate to break it to you but there is no home. Now go write that sappy post.

Pri said...

really? on a friday? i was all happy and shiny a minute ago. i will now have to go make my instant bru coffee and pretend this ridiculously cold office is bangalore in winter.

Unknown said...

ketli chai - nothing i miss more than ketli chai..

??! said...

Km:
Wait...how did you manage to read the last line first? Your feedreader shows posts in reverse order kya?

pri:
mwahahahhahaha. Misery is for spreading. And you have Bru? I got Maggi Hot'n' Sweet Tomato Chilli Sauce. It's different.

Anki:
What are YOU cribbing about? You're a 2 hour flight away from home. And you got crows. AND you got howling dogs - especially on your campush. AND you got rickshaws.

Unless you were giving sympathy. Which is fine.

The saint:
We will not talk about chai, and all the assorted piping hot snacks that go with it. We will not!

DewdropDream said...

Ummm.. weepy works, no sappy please.

Haha! @ KM's comment. And he's very right... there isn't a home. We modern gens are going back to caveism with our constant wanderings.

Anonymous said...

um... my sympathies. would have dropped in earlier, but had to go chase those damned crows away...

Mudra said...

Aww... Makes me want to never leave here.

??! said...

Brin:
Don't chase them! You never know when you might start missing them.

Mudra:
No no, travel is good. Just try to get into a situation where you can return every three months.

Anonymous said...

Don't be such a crybaby. Home is where you pay your blessed mortgage, not where your parents did not let you worry about rent ;-)