Nostalgia has no other name

That quaint, old social village.

Remember it?

I pray you do.

That small, simple place where we all dreamed our first dreams. That place where we learnt how to write our names. In which we kissed our first inexpert kiss. In which we got our first salaries.

Peter Cat, Park Street, Coffee House, College Street, trams, rickshaws, bandhs, book stalls, dosh takar roll, ek takar phuchka, maidan, adda, para cricket, bharer cha, debates, academics, protests, politics, Hoogly bridge, Victoria. Ah.

That bastion of culture, that mediocre life, the quicksand of politics, the indolence, the price; those purposeless conversations with indiscriminate passersby; and that pace which made us feel so hamstrung, that we knew we had to move out one way or another.

Leaving Calcutta, the mother that grew us up. And without a whisper of protest, made us her own. Always had our backs no matter how we were made. Refusing to ever, ever make us feel alone.

Calcutta. The only place, which in my heart, I know I will call 'home' no matter where I end up in life. The home I heartlessly left behind. As many / most of the people belonging to my time, did. Hoping for greener pastures. Heavier wallets. Fuller lives. And a dream to belong where all the hummers of the world do.

And then, return only and only when we need to, knowing fully well that she'll always be there for us, even if we are not.

Speaking for myself, perhaps it took me a little long [5 years] to realise what that feeling truly is. Of understanding that you've left something very, very important behind. Of bleached memories and family and friends and things. Of skittering and scattering and scrambling to find it back here, hidden somewhere, in this cold, hard city.

Learning to understand what missing home really means. Cherishing the place which made you who you are, to begin with. Of realising that your bond with your mother, at its core is like a banyan tree. You may branch out. Grow your own fresh roots. But that closeness to the trunk will never be lost.

Of silently realising that you won’t quite find her, in any other city, any other life. You won’t. And of coming to terms (perhaps, for the first time) with the fact that you haven’t exactly managed to break that proverbial umbilical cord. Just yet.

So since I realised it late as hell, I'd just request you to do something today.

By all means live away and run through each day on the fly.

And ride through the skies with clouds between your knees.

Living in some athletic, insomniac city, where you make money by the hour, and find talent by the road.

But tonight when you crash on that cushy bed; and the sky slowly plums the earth with dimness – cobalt, royal and navy; before shutting those eyes softly make a promise to yourself that,

"I will remember my mother,

every now and then.

And one day,

I'll go back home."