Edited by: Malavika Kishore
There is something bittersweet about this time of the semester. In school, summers was always a time I looked forward to. It was swimming with friends, and sitting in the sun and eating peeled oranges as my mother talked to her friends. It was getting to play basketball till 8 pm, until they took the court down. It was running around, getting everyone to sign the petition you scribbled to reinstate the basketball court, thinking that a few random signatures and a strong will could change the World. When you are a kid, life is simpler because everyone around you protects you from the World. Sometimes, I wish they could always protect me.
Summers is different now. When you are a kid, home is a simpler construct. It’s one place. Now, home is in every person I love. It’s in the way my friends would say the most romantic thing on random Wednesday evenings, and in the polaroids on my orange pinboard, and in the lab where the fishes I work with live. Summers is different because it doesn’t just involve getting to go home. It involves leaving a home too. The leaves fall everywhere these days. My friends and I like to crush them under our feet. There is a melancholy to the air as reading week rolls around, everyone is preparing to leave. Earlier, I couldn’t wait for summers to roll around. Now, as I sit on the edge of the world, and it seems to grow smaller with every passing day, as my friends try to squeeze in some last words, anything that will form a lasting goodbye, everything seems a contradiction to itself. I live in a duality of sorts. I wonder how many homes I will live in, how many I will leave.
I am excited to swim with my friends back home, and eat peeled oranges, but what about my traditions in Ashoka? All the late night conversations, sprawled on my beanbag, the runs to greenox right before it closes, the endless trips to MKT. Can you miss something which hasn’t even ended? When I was a kid, and it was time for summers to end, I would lock myself up in my room and pretend summers was just starting and the World would be a happier place again. I would ignore the smell of autumn creeping up on us, the horns of the school buses resounding in the corridors again. It’s different now. But I suppose, a wise man once said, the only thing constant about life is change. I am not so accustomed to the idea yet. I rewatch the same 3 tv shows so they never have to end. Eat the same 5 things to feel home.
Although, then again, I suppose sometimes I underestimate the human spirit to adapt. Leaving home for college seemed like the hardest thing to do at first. But I did it. And now, I am actually sad about leaving college. I missed my mother’s cooking, I still do, but now, I will also miss the coffee at fuelzone. I missed my dog, I still do, but now I will miss Toofan, and how seeing him felt like a celebrity encounter. I missed running to catch the school bus at 7:28 a.m. in the morning but now I will miss waking up for my 11:50 class at 11:55. I missed my mom’s scolding, and now I will miss my friend’s concerned disappointment whenever I don’t sleep on time, or go to the gym too late at night. I missed my mom’s breakfast poha, and now I will miss how I never had breakfast in my 2 years at Ashoka.
I am going to Vancouver for a semester after summers, and I am sure I will find a home there too. I hope I do. The idea of leaving home to find another one is scary, but it’s a spiral. It’s turtles all the way down. This duality never ends, and there is some comfort in that too. The beauty of homes are that no matter how much time you are gone for, you can always come back to them. Because it’s hardly about the brick and cement. It’s about the memories you made there. And they don’t change with time. Preserved in snow globes on the shelf, waiting to be remembered.