The Kingdom Where I Belong

“The journey is coming to a close, the adventure is about to end, and in three days’ time, we will be going back to our respective houses, where we will embrace our families, see our children, read through the correspondence that has accumulated in our absence, show off the hundreds of photos we’ve taken, tell our stories about the train, the cities we passed through and the people we met along the way.

And all to convince ourselves that the journey really did happen. In another three days’ time, once we’re back in our daily routine, it will feel as if we had never left and never made that long journey. We have the photos, the tickets, the souvenirs, but time – the only, absolute eternal master of our lives – will be telling us: you never left this house, this room, this computer.”

I read these lines out of Paulo Coelho’s Aleph. The words were really meaningful to me at that moment, considering I had just arrived at Hyderabad after a tiring but pensive journey of over thirteen hours. I had gone home to attend the last rites of my deceased grandmother. Returning from home is always a very emotional affair, it always has been, since the last fourteen years. Since after finishing school, I have always stayed away from home. It is people like me who can really appreciate how good it feels to be ‘home’ and also how sad and strange it feels to be a ‘guest’ in your own home.

Having stayed away from home the last fourteen years, I have come to think of myself as a ‘Lone Wolf’. By virtue of having stayed with my family in Bhutan half my life (during school days), and the other half away from my family; I never got more than a couple of weeks or at the most a month to spend with my close relatives, every year. Yet, there have been lean years like the time when I was doing my masters; I came home after an year and eight months. My family and relatives have always wondered with awe (and also some sympathy), how I stay away, all by my own, far away from my own home and my own city. I have always secretly prided myself for being on my own, taking my own decisions and making my own mistakes. But of late I am suddenly finding all of it meaningless.

The fact which I find most funny about my condition, that I also joke about with my friends is that where I stay, I do not belong; where I belong, I do not stay; where I officially belong, I actually do not belong; yet, where I actually belong, documentarily I do not belong there. Is it very complex? No wonder I too find it mind scrambling sometimes. Actually I always feel like a foreigner, wherever I go. When I stayed in Bhutan, I did not belong there; when I came back to India, people thought (and I too thought) practically I belonged to Bhutan, that is I did not belong here. Since then I have stayed in three different states in India, all places where I really do not belong, yet when I go home to my ‘own’ place; other than my family and outside my house, I know no one, no one knows me, in short I do not belong there too.

Yes, I know, it is indeed very confusing.  

I have never really spent much time thinking about my relatives ever, my maternal uncles, my father’s sisters and their families. Not that I am averse to them or something like that; it’s just that it never occurred to me. After my marriage it surprised me no end to see my wife’s numerous relatives strewn across the city of Jaipur, not only her own uncles and aunts, but her parents’ uncles, their kids, the kids’ in laws and such other far off and complicated relations. All these people were there to attend our marriage reception. In the beginning it was really baffling for me, how can people maintain such distant relationships, it is something I never could comprehend at that time. I myself cannot think further than my own maternal and paternal uncles and aunts, forget their families and their further branches. Even among these few people, other than my uncle Boro Kaku, I have never really interacted with the others on a regular basis, since the last ten to twelve years.

My last trip home brought an altogether different realization with it. As I mentioned earlier, I had gone home to attend the final rites of my deceased grandmother. She had passed away last month peacefully, at the age of eighty four. Since she was staying with my parents at that time, all the rituals were carried out at our home. All our relatives, uncles, aunts, cousins, their families came to attend the last rites. It was the first assembly of its kind in our home. Having stayed away from home most of the time, I my sister and our parents have always ‘attended’ such congregations, this was the first time we were hosting one.

The house was teeming with people, relatives of all sizes and names. There was so much activity; rituals going on one side, food being prepared on the other; oldies were catching up with one another, bursting out in laughter once in a while at old anecdotes. The younger ones, my brothers and cousins had their own secret agenda, slinking in and out of the house silently in a group now and then as if plotting some secret mission. In short the house was buzzing with activity. I always shun such large gatherings, unless it is imperative. But seeing my wife enjoying this big gathering, easily mingling with all these people and being happy, I too thought of giving it a try.

Withdrawing my ‘self’ out of all this commotion, I tried to view all that was going on with a purely objective view. I tried to notice each interaction between these 30 odd people, as they were; without any bias in my mind. The kids were having a whale of a time. Seeing them I remembered my own childhood visits to Boro Kaku’s house. I and my cousin Saurabh played cricket in the veranda all day long. Sometimes he would cheat and we would get into arguments leading to stoppage of play. We wouldn't even speak to each other for a couple of hours thence. Sometimes our noise would disturb Boro Kaku’s siesta; he would wake up and give both of us a sound spanking each and send us off to sleep. I remembered the impish face of little Saurabh and could not restrain a smile.

My wife was moving in an out seamlessly from one interaction to another. No one could say that she comes from an entirely different culture with an entirely different mother tongue.  She has already managed to endear herself to all the elders in the family. I could not but wonder how she managed to do so much, in so less time. My aunts, older cousins, all were full of praise for my wife. They patted her on the head, blessed her with all their heart. This interaction, as insignificant as it maybe, brought smiles and a feeling of happiness to all their faces. I understood that this is also something that I have missed most of my life and have been keeping away from, the rest of it.

In the evenings after the day’s work, everybody assembled in the bedroom. There, amidst laughter aplenty, caused by Boro Kaku’s antics and hilarious jokes, we had our evening tea. Twenty odd people sat huddled against one another under a large blanket, having tea and sharing old stories, told and heard hundreds of times. Stories of my uncle’s college life, my father’s bachelor life, or my aunt’s school life. I have heard these stories many times before, yet this particular instant it seemed very special. I suddenly realized, this is where people belong. Not in the city or village, or the work place, people belong in the memories, in the stories that are shared over and over again. I understood I have found the answer to one question, “Where I really belong?”

By the time I realized as much, it was already time to bid adieu. The ceremonies were over; it was time everybody returned to their respective houses, families and work places. The heaviness in my heart due to the realization of what I had neglected all these years, made me very sad. This parting seemed more painful than the numerous such others before. My wife’s parting tears shed in my aunt’s embrace did not help either. So with a heavy heart, we left, for our routine lives. Seven days of pure unadulterated happiness just came to an end.

I felt as if my late grandmother had blessed me with this new realization from the heavens. It is a parting gift she left me, to make me a better person, understand myself better.

I felt very sad for the first two days after returning to Hyderabad. But just as Paulo says, in three days time life has again come back to normal, as if nothing happened, I never left this place, I didn’t go home at all. It is as if there is no change at all. The only change being the realization of the importance of family and relations and where I actually belong. In Paulo Coelho’s words,

“Two weeks? What’s that in a whole lifetime? Nothing has changed in the street, the neighbours are still gossiping about the same old things,………., the latest celebrity scandal, the constant complaints about the things the government promised to do, but hasn’t.

No nothing has changed. But we – who went off in search of our kingdom and discovered lands we had never seen before – we know we are different.”