“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”
Maya Angelou
As a child, I had seen the cartoon Silver Surfer, based on the Marvel comic series by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Silver Surfer, was an astronomer, a common inhabitant who rises to the occasion to save his home planet from Galactus, a cosmic predator, a destroyer of the planets. Silver Surfer, in bargain, offers himself as a scout in search for other planets to draw energy from. He starts on his intergalactic journey arising out of this noble cause, for his planet to be spared, a sacrifice for his own people. As a child, I was intrigued. His silver surfboard and his adventures take him further and further away from home, until he’s totally and terribly lost in space. In his journey, he acquires some of the cosmic power and there comes a time when he starts thinking to get back home. He comes close, many a times realizing too late that the place where he’s headed is a look-alike planet, and not his home. He forever loses his people, in space and time.
As a kid, I was frustrated at the protagonist and after a time stopped watching the series altogether. He was not my hero. He could never get anything done. He had this one job, just getting back home and he miserably failed at it. But today, when I look at myself and all those around me, I realize that we’re all a little like Silver Surfer.
At some point, all of us leave our homes, carrying the burden of borrowed dreams and tall desires and hopes on our frail little shoulders. The wishes of an entire community, village or town and leave behind us, moist eyes, with a promise that we’ll be back soon. We’ll be back having accomplished all that we set out to do. At first, we’re frightened for the world appears big and chaotic and uncaring. It is unfamiliar and full of dangers. It is a bit too overwhelming.
For me, a boy from a small town, I had difficulty even crossing roads. The oncoming traffic was unsparing and so were the people. Either you were quick enough or you got run-over. The restlessness and the rush of the city, was mind boggling. Everyone seemed to be headed somewhere. The people here, were not like the ones back home. They were sly, and for some and no good reason, hellbent on getting the better of you. I, who thought people often meant what they said, took people at their words. I was raised that way. All of a sudden, the teachings of my parents and teachers seemed to fail in the face of what I saw and experienced. What I was told to be wary of, what was unhealthy and unethical, was suddenly all fashionable and cool. I was made fun of, at times out of malice, but often innocuously and I did not fully understand either. I had some street-smart friends from big cities, who helped me navigate the complex new world. Friends, whose words were a gospel to me. They seemed to have it all figured out. Their way, was the right way. Back then, I did not even know what street smartness was. I now marvel, at how the world at large seems to confuse cunning for intelligence and simple for stupid.
After a time, and it always takes time, our scared tentative selves fall off to give way to the long strides of a confident person. A person who’s grown into their own. Time passes, seasons change, we stumble and fall, but sooner or later we stand on our feet. We learn the ways of the world and trade innocence for knowledge. We earn our own hard-earned identity. We may not know where everywhere else is, but with any luck, we get to know where we stand.
At first, the dreams of others, our folks, become our dreams and then somewhere along the way we begin to harbour a few of our own. In all earnestness, we labor our way, through sweat and tears and an unforgiving time, in the hope that one day, someday, we will be able to proudly go back home. Sure, from time to time, we do get back for a few days. Doors at which we’re forever welcome. There’s the comfort of home food and often unacknowledged, selfless love. These are however, short excursions, always with the promise of an extended stay. After all, now that we’re busy and there are plans. Something more to be desired, something more to be done. Always!
Our folks still wait for their child. But this person who comes back is never the same person who left. Now that we have seen the world, we feel we know better. In our heads, we’re wiser. There are unmet aspirations. The house is too small, the roof too low, the thoughts high flying. The people here no longer seem to get us. Keep up with our pace. For these are still simple-minded people, living simple lives. For this reason alone, our stay cannot be longer. There’s a train, a flight to catch. The time will come, we shall return.
And in all of this, we often forget, the home changes too. We get old, our people get older. Some of the hands that held us, helped us take those unsteady first steps, those eyes that waited in our wake, are not going to be there forever. And yet, the elaborate exercise of accomplishments, of wealth and fame, the entire fight that takes us further and further away, I feel, is just to be able to get back home. To get back, for the small child that’s still in there somewhere, for the promises the child kept. To be able to go back to his/her loved ones, with head held high, to friends and teachers, family and mother and tell them, ‘see, I told you, I would do it. It just took me a little longer.’
For me, for some of us, the children of the township, the migratory population, it is all the more difficult. There’s not one place we can call home. We have come far from our roots; we make a place home only to be displaced later. Our childhood is like a castle on a shifting quicksand, all the traces completely erased. There’s no one place to get back to. Those small parks and fields, the sweet smell of grass, the swings and the slides, the old dying banyan tree that caught many our cricket balls, the ever-smoking chimneys, the small school benches, the dimly lit corridors, the blue-doored garages, the small lanes, the old bridge, the temple and the kid peering through the high window, calling out to people. We long to go back to a home that’s never really there, that exists perhaps only in our memories.
One day you pass by the house that you once called home and across the boundary walls and through the window, helplessly watch some other people in there, doing things differently, making different use of the same spaces, living lives different than your own. It is no longer your home. There comes a voice from the inside, ‘Come on everyone, the food’s ready.’ And then, ‘Who’s there?’ The kid on the other side of the window stands still, looking at you for a moment, waves to you and then shouts back, ‘Coming Ma, don’t know. I think someone’s lost.’
And the people, our loved ones, who prepared us for this journey, who first set us on this path, just want us to be back. Now that we made something of ourselves, they don’t desire much from us. They’re simply worried for our health and well-being. They just want to spend some time together, whatever little time that’s left. Only now, it is not that simple.
Far away from them, we’re all stars, in our own galaxies. And at the heart of each star that now so brightly twinkles, is a passionate fire that’s feeding on it. The fire that burns, makes it a star. The fire that’s not going to let up until it consumes it completely. The star wants to show gratitude to the people it loves, but now all it can do from afar, is burn a little more and twinkle a bit brighter. Such is the life of every star. It burns, it shines; it cools, it dies.
Somesh | Katyayan 