Consistant change

Well, apparently my last post was a bit too 'pinky'.True,it did indeed get a little too mushy and i am definitely not the girl who likes pink,but to sum it up,let's just say that every girl has a feminine side and every guy,...... a rich side to him!! [;)].

Just back after a very refreshing long vacation. Each time i am back from a vacation i always realise that i am more in need of a vacation than when i was when i left for home. Each visit to my home, i decide that this one visit i am just going to sit and loiter around home and be a nuisance to my parents. But invariably, each visit i hardly get to be with them or at home.It's only when i am about to board the bus (For a change, this time it was by air!) that i see my parents face and realise that i dint get to sit home and exchange my stories. That's when i feel the biggest tug at my heart and just want to jump out and head back home.

Each one of visits home had always been like going back down memory lane for me. But this visit was one heck of a shocker for me. On every other vacation,every time i walk in with my bags, the house had always looked the same, as it was 2 and half years ago when i had walked out to set a place for myself in this big big world. I always felt like i was just returning after a day at college rather than coming back from an entirely different state after three to four months.It hardly took me less than five minutes at home to feel like i never left home, like i had always been there all the while. But this when i walked in, my room with the big cot and my computer table and my treasured book collections.. everything was different.The cots had been moved aside and re arranged.My computer which i had always maintained as the centre piece in my room had been moved to one far corner of the room, hardly seen and used.The big huge shelf which held all the books me and my brother lovingly treasured looked like a famine had hit it. One minute in the room and the next thing which i did was shout out 'ammmmmaaaaaaaaaaaaa'!

Frantic my mother came running out from her workplace - the Kitchen. What happened to the cots? Why was my computer table moved aside? Whatever happened to more than half the books in the shelves? All my tinkles,Archies,Chandamama's,Champaks, my enid blyton collections, my brother's war time books, the sidney sheldons,my college reference books,even the lab record books right from school..i never let my mother throw out any book....I have a perfect count of each and every book in that house. Very dramatically i opened my cupboards and even the clothes in there were missing.Instead it was all stuffed with the un-usable items in the house and many stuffed dolls (Thank god they survived!).What happened to all the clothes which were mine.. the ones i grew up wearing?

I was bombarding my mother with a zillion questions all at the same time. And she was just giving me a very quizzical look and looking very surprised.I am sure that for a moment she even thought that i had gone mad. One by one she started giving me answers.

a)You have outgrown all the clothes in there.I have given them away to the maid's kids.

b) The kids in the apartement come asking for books to read or for reference.I let them check and take whatever book they like.

c)No one uses the computer anymore.Why should it take up so much space in the middle of the room?

Noooooooo..i yell. The clothes.They are just mine. Ones i have been wearing for so many years now.My books, my collection,..aarghh..Frustrated my mother leaves the room to resume her work around the house.I am still left in the middle of 'my room'..which held nothing which was mine anymore.I felt like a stranger standing in the middle of nowhere. The room held no signs of the person who grew up in there. I had papers stuck all around the wall near the computer table, my timetables in college, prayers i loved to read, names of my favourite books i need to buy,movies i watched..and even few song's lyrics. None of them were around anymore.

I realised that 'my room' was now just a 'guest room' in my parent's house.The one place in this world where i felt my presence existed.. well i just felt it diminishing.Gradually as the realisation was sinking into me, i felt the pang of the pain that at this stage in my life,i am just really a traveller.The house in bangalore just feels like a temporary phase. Till i settle down into something more permanent in life, everything around me is just a phase.Something for me to think about and ponder over when i am reminiscing in my couch probably 30-40 years later.

The only thing which is ever consistant in life is change.........