Friends, a Homecoming, and a writer

So, he, or I, if you prefer it that way, was left stranded in what had once been home, a habitat, at least, a place well known, that had now changed, and become unrecognisable, like the corner shop that suddenly has another owner, or even that PCO you used to visit as a kid, before you got a Mobile, and now suddenly you find it’s become something completely different. I was stranded, I felt like I should know this place, I did, but it didn’t make me feel like it used to.

Of course I wondered, what had changed, me, or the place, college, and finally it struck me, neither had changed, I just didn’t belong here anymore. That was a strange feeling. Ever gone home to find a different family living in your house? That’s what it felt like.

A Homecoming, Friends, and A Writer....

The auto ride was bumpy, and it was uninteresting. The route was the ring road, quite obviously a part of delhi, no one can have much affection for. Not because of the traffic, but because everyone knows the ring road, everyone knows where it goes: around, or to say it differently, no where. It is only when they turned off the ring road, or actually, when the driver asked him, (yes this is the same Eduard) which exit would be best, that he felt any sort of connection.

He sat back, watching the lights of the ISBT flash by, that unending hub of human coming and going, which never sleeps, nor appears to know night, another place in delhi, which holds no personal connection for anyone except as a start, or an end of adventure, but never as a home, or a even a place, that he started to think about home. And homecoming was finally cemented, when the driver asked him where to turn of the ring road.

Ring roads, highways, medical, all these places, are just things, there is nothing sacred about them, nothing inviolate, nothing secret. They are, everyone uses them, and just that. No one thinks about them, there are no or few memories of a ring road. Ring roads do not take you home, it is exits from ring roads that do. And Eduard, too felt that, home was approaching now, now that he had to find the right exit.