When tomorrow comes: chapter 3

This is the third installment of the series.

It was years ago, but it felt like it had happened yesterday. The smell, the sight, the colors were so well etched in her mind- she could almost live them again. Suddenly, she was glad to be going home. Even if it meant that a lot of things would have changed over the years, and the snapshots from her memory would have hardly any semblance to what she would see. She knew of the possibility- but it didn't disappoint her anymore.

Truly enough, a lot of things had changed. The airport of the small town had expanded and gnawed into the surrounding forest. She didn't remember seeing so many flights taking off or landing either. It was the mark of progress -or that is what some would have liked to believe.

She met her parents at the airport lounge. Her father brought her a bouquet of her favorite flowers and her mother smiled and hugged her quietly. She had always been a silent woman- appearing almost stoic. It took Pri years to realize that she was conditioned to be so. Expressing emotions openly was considered vulgar in the family her mother was wed to.

Pri loved the way her mother smelled. She had a unique fruity fragrance- her body esters. As a kid, she missed her when she went out to work and Pri would cling to her clothes and go to sleep in the afternoon.

She walked out with her parents. The luggage was taken care of. She greeted Dinesh Kaku who had been driving for them since she could even remember. She sat in the back seat between her parents. The usual questions followed. Dad asked if the flight was ok and the food was good. Mom kept smiling and looking at her with a smile that only a mother knew how to flash.

They crossed their old school on the way and she promised herself to find some time to visit it and the teachers who had taught her. She saw a yellow bus with her school's name on it. She looked at her father questioningly. He said: It's a State Government regulation now- all school buses and other forms of public transport are to be painted yellow -has been almost years since they have implemented it.

She sighed and thought of the bright colors the buses had when she was in school. Each one was painted in a different color- red, green, yellow, fawn. And each one had a name- after the sisters of the missionary school. The standardization made them look all alike and soulless. They lost their individuality.

Individuality. Identity. Those had been the mantras of her life. Her parents had made it very clear to her as a child that the only way a middle-class family kid could make a mark was by excelling in something. She look the advice seriously, and all her life till then, she had tried to raise herself to the next datum plane of existence - in every possible way.

Her father had gifted her the book ,'Jonathan Livingston Seagull' on her 16th birthday. And she believed truly that Jonathan lives each one of us. Now, she looked back and felt maybe it wasn't enough. She had done everything possible to be a perfect woman- and yet she wasn't happy. Something was missing. Something she couldn't put her finger on.

And then she knew..

(to be continued)

When tomorrow comes: chapter 2

This one is for DJ ("Part 2') and Kapil ("..take chances")
Starting from where I left it.

She closed her diary and shut her eyes. A thousand thoughts came rushing in. There would be some time before she wrapped up her work here and joined the new account office in Europe. Good enough to visit home in India. Why not?

Home. She often wondered where her home really was. It had been a while since she visited her parents in their hometown. She called them up almost everyday and had sponsored their visit to US twice in the last two and a half years, but she hadn't really been spending much time with them even when they were around. There was always too much work.

Honestly, she didn't feel much attached to the bungalow they now lived in. She had grown up elsewhere- in a small, cozy home which had windows facing the southern winds. The new house was in a posh locality, glamorous and decked up like a new bride - but it lacked the soul and the memories she had of her childhood in the older house. The guava tree that bore fruits all year long. The white, fragrant jasmine flowers she picked from the dew-clad grass on Autumn mornings. The Banyan tree that changed its color and form with seasons. It had a betel nut tree growing from inside it which she considered a wonder of nature. Pri asked her mother once how it was possible. Her mother surmised: 'I think a bird eating a nut might have sat on that tree and you know...' She didn't want to accept that something as beautiful could be born of pure shit. Now, she reconsidered a few things she disbelieved as a child.

She thought more of the green fields and the cows grazing in the meadows, and the narrow mud lanes that ran amuck. She heard herself laugh and giggle with the neighbor's kid as they sat on a brick wall with their legs dangling in sync. On Summer afternoons, they ate watermelons and spit out the black seeds to see whose went the farthest. She proudly claimed him to be her best friend until she joined middle school. And then, suddenly, his running nose, his loose pants and his inability to converse fluently in anything other than the vernacular seemed to matter. Her new friend was a classmate who had fancy clothes and the poorest grades.

She wouldn't have befriended her but Nita's mother had come over to Pri's house one day and asked her mother to help them with their ward. Pri had felt disgusted initially. She had sat next to her in an English class once. Nita wouldn't note down the homework the teacher marked for the following day. When Pri asked her the reason, Nita rolled her eyes and said: 'I don't want to!'

In the following years, when she got to know her more, she saw her do that often. Everytime Nita didn't want to do something, she would roll her eyes, make a tortured face and say: 'I don't want to !' Nita's mother was a very good friend of Pri's maternal aunt. That made things difficult. Maya aunty thought her daughter to be 'a little soft on the head'. But Pri knew that Nita wasn't stupid- she just didn't want to work hard. She had a severe aversion for studies. Maybe she had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Who knows? She didn't learn the name of the syndrome then.

With Pri's help, Nita's grades improved but it didn't last. Soon she moved to a different school, which Maya aunty considered to be 'more humane with the kids' in terms of homework and discipline.

(to be continued)