Returning to Myself
Recently, I went back to my native after almost two years, and I was full of emotions while I was there. Part of it could be because, with age, I have become more aware of my moods, my emotions, and how they change my demeanor. Part of it could also be because I have started reading a lot of books on identifying and regulating emotions at the workplace.
This might come as a bit arrogant but the first feeling I get when I go back is a sense of pride of how far I have come from where my mother and I started. That 1 RK that my mother spent 20 years of her savings to buy. And then the very next minute, I remember all those moments where I just got lucky. The kind of moments without which life could have looked very different. The 20-year-old Niketan would have taken this life in a heartbeat. Suddenly, sulking in Bangalore about my job, my salary, and the constant comparisons with friends feels unnecessary.
This time, I had a bit of free time with me since some planned events got cancelled and I got to spend more time with folks who have shaped my life for the better instead of the rushed visits I had grown accustomed to. That led to me remembering their gestures from the past. Gestures that did not feel small then, but feel even bigger now and left me with an overwhelming guilt of not spending more time with them till now.
Maybe with age, I have started seeing life from their point of view, now that I am around the same age they were when I first met them. And maybe only now am I beginning to understand the kind of love they gave me. A sense of belonging without asking for anything in return. None of these people have any blood relation with me, nor are they my neighbors. If fate had it, I wouldn't even have met them my entire life.
When I got good marks in 10th, a woman from my village (in her mid-30s then) invited my mother and me to her place. She was living in an apartment in the nearby city, and I remember being in awe of it. Especially because they had the biggest TV I had seen until then. A school teacher by profession, she gifted me my first expensive piece of fabric. At that age, it felt like a reward for doing something right. I still remember how happy I was wearing that tailor-made shirt stitched from it, with a peacock design on the front pocket.
I have long outgrown that shirt, but I still have it with me. Even now, when she talks to me, it feels like she is still talking to that same boy in the peacock-pocket shirt.
I also visited my best friend's family and met her parents who stepped in when I was in boarding school. During the first year of my boarding school, when my mother didn't get leave approval from her job as a nurse to come pick me up during summer vacations, she knew a handful of other parents from the same area and one of them agreed to act as a guardian for the day. He drove his daughter and me on a TVS Victor GLX bike for around 2.5 hours. That ended up being my first interaction with him and his family. His daughter ended up being my close friend for life. During the next 4 years, he made regular trips to the boarding school for his daughter, and yet he never left the boarding school without looking for me.
During summer vacations, after returning from office, he would often call me and ask me to meet him at the bazaar, and I would make excuses about being too tired to walk. Next thing you know, he would be at our doorstep. Just like that. Now, after office, there are days when I am too tired to meet my own friends. And that is when I think of him. At that age, I did not understand what it meant for a man to spend his money on restaurant food and cold drinks for someone else's child. Every major milestone I remember from my life in Kankavli has him somewhere in it. We have spent so much time together at restaurants that half of them still think that I am his son, which he had stopped correcting at some point.
Thanks to him, I found my best friend at school. In my boarding school, talking to opposite gender was suspiciously looked at. Since her father picked me up one time and she had to share that tiny two-wheeler seat with me which the entire batch witnessed, I am sure she had to go through a lot of teasing in school. She was home this time around, so I got to meet her. Even though we hardly talk now and I even missed her wedding, we ended up reconnecting immediately because unlike me, she doesn't keep score. She's just happy that I am doing well and knows that we meet once every two/three years so there is no point wasting time on complaints / disappointments. Instead, we just talk about life. And somewhere in those conversations, I could see her father in her. Looking after me since school days and making sure I was in the right space (resorting to scolding at times in school when she found out about stuff she didn't approve of). Without doubt, I have been the weak link in this friendship and found ways to lose touch only for her to brush everything under the carpet and start fresh. And yet, in all these years, she has shared everything with me too without hesitation.
I also met her husband for the first time, and something about him felt familiar. Like perfume in the air; you cannot see it, but once it touches you, it stays.
Those times when I spend time with them, there is only happiness. No anger, no competitiveness, no jealousy. No discussions about how much you earn, short term gains, long term plans etc. At least not there. All of that comes back when I return to Bangalore. These are just simple people who are happy to see me, and people I am happy to see. These are the people who remind me where I come from and I feel content with. And maybe that's why I am emotional around them.