Bitter Homecoming

Homecomings aren’t always as rosy as the movies paint them to be. “The greatest journeys are those that bring us home”, went the tagline of a movie I had seen a few years back. True, I know of homecomings that totally justify it. But then again, I also know of the other kind of homecomings.

I left my home of 14 years in defiance of the wishes of almost every person I know and love. I went to a college 3000kms away. Single child of my parents, it was tough to leave. My best friends all decided to make their futures in the city where we had grown up together. In a class of 150, I was one of the five or six people who decided to fly the nest. But I had my reasons, and I stuck to my guns. Even though it meant tearing myself apart.

But I still come back twice a year. Comeback to everything that had sent me away in the first place. It’s almost funny, in a twisted, sadistic kind of a way. 

Here’s the thing. I like coming back. And I hate coming back.

I will be honest.
There are lots of good things. I have always been a well-loved person. And I am still welcomed back with open arms, by friends and family alike. It feels good to know that I am missed at least by a few people. Truth be told, I miss my people too, specially the kids. Who doesn’t? 
And I love the city. For better or for worse, it is an indelible part of me. Anyone who has been to Calcutta for a single day will agree that for all its drawbacks, it still is a very different metro. And I am fiercely proud to be a part of it. Maybe it’s a different story that I find it claustrophobic. The people, the ideas, the buildings, the apathy. It all makes me retch mentally.

I don’t think I ever got it right. The entire “man is a social animal” thing. While I was never a disappointment to my parents, I haven’t exactly been the dutiful daughter too. I have taken a lot of shit from a lot of people. I have messed up things with my friends countless times. I was a lousy girlfriend. I haven’t been of mortal use to anyone till now. I never really ‘belonged’. When I left, my 17 year old naivety convinced me that a new place would mean a fresh start, new people and perhaps I would go better this time. Now when I come back, my 19 year old experience tells me that people don’t change, only the faces and names do. And the new start is an Utopian dream that only a lucky few achieve.

For me, to come home is to be reminded of all that I have failed at, of all that I love and cannot have, of broken dreams and disillusionment, of that torturous feeling of being torn between love and hate.

I learnt long back a harsh truth of the world. That wishes don’t come true, and no matter how many shooting stars you whisper upon, you are wasting your breath. Perhaps all I need now is someone who can tell me otherwise. Because I need to make a wish. I need to wish that one day, I can call a place home, in the bestest sense of the term, without anything of past and future to haunt me. I want to be free. I want to belong. I want to come home.


photo courtesy:http://bearlyrambling.blogspot.com/2011/06/norma-macdonald.html