The Homecoming

It’s been a while since I even tried writing something to add to my blog. I’ve actually missed our communication through my posts - your comments and my responses that happen over the first few days of posting, by which time all the readers have either read the piece or have forgotten about it. 

It’s not as if I’ve been really busy or really lazy or anything else of the sort. I just haven’t had anything I’ve been inspired to write about. No interesting memories that came to mind, no new adventures I could put into words that would make a for a good read. With the pandemic, hopefully behind us, I’ve been getting into the rhythm of travel again, which as always has been exhilarating but not something that resulted in stories that I particularly wanted to share. I will however, share a picture of Riddhi, the tigress who I was fortunate enough to spend about 20 minutes with in the jungles of Rajasthan. Definitely one of this year’s travel highlights.

Having lived in various places over the period of my life, I’ve written multiple posts about ‘home’, even though home is more than the building one lives in. Everyplace I’ve lived in has obviously been unique in many ways. And each time I’ve thought that this will be where I’ll live for the rest of my life, for some reason I move out and move in elsewhere. The joys of being single and weird!

A couple of days ago I started watching an Indian series that caught my attention and kept my interest (not a particularly easy thing - my ‘Continue Watching’ list is enormous). A short while back, as I was watching Episode 5, it struck me as to how many parallels the show had with me and my life. One of the characters is ‘Ratan’, another characters last name is ‘Sethi’, one of the characters used to live in Chicago, moved back to India and was running a cafe with a personality that is uncannily like mine (just from the scenes in the cafe). It kind of started making me feel like the writer of the show must be someone I've actually met. There are actually two writers, neither one has a name that sounds familiar. Of course I do meet a lot of people in the cafe and have had extended conversations with many, so who knows?

The protagonist of the series is a guy who lives in Bangalore (yup, Bangalore), loses his job and moves back to his parents home in Indore, where he plans to live until he finds another job. Coincidentally enough I’m headed to Indore on Friday. 

Without giving away too much, the story is about him returning home, adjusting to the family who he had been seeing barely for a week during the holidays over the years, not having the freedom that he had gotten used to and subsequently not just adjusting to the new way of life but preferring it to the alternative of another career in a bustling city like Bangalore. While I still have one last episode left to watch, I pretty much know where the show is headed.

Many of us feel like our lives are unique - at least I rarely come across anyone from my generation with a similar story as mine. However, I do come across a lot of younger folks who seem desperate to retire early and live a life that isn’t driven by their employment. Easier said than done when you have a family but I hope that at least some of them are able to do it. 

Although It’s been forever since I gave up my life in Chicago, I still get asked the question as to why I moved back. Earlier I would fumble through my response because you think that there isn’t one single reason but a host of them. Over time though, I’ve learned to tell them what the single most important reason for my being back was. It’s not as if I was unhappy in the US - I really had a great life but even after living there for 11 years, I realised that something very important was missing. 

More than anything else in the whole wide world, I missed that warm fuzzy feeling of being home. 

For those of you who watch Hindi shows, the one I’ve written about is called ‘Ghar Waapsi’ and can be viewed on Disney Hotstar. I just got done watching the final episode and am hoping that there will be another season.