It's a perfect day to say goodbye

One evening around 2 weeks ago my friend called me and asked,

'Where are you?'

To which I just replied - Bari jachi

Returning vs Going back

The call lasted for about a minute,

but I never heard a word of that.

My mind went numb after vigorously oscillating between - bari jachi vs bari firchi.

What's the difference anyway?

Just a simple translation to English would show - going home vs returning home. 

To go, you have to know the direction, but to return,

you have to know the direction and the meaning. 

You have to be away for a really long time to forget how

the touch of your father on your head melted away all your anger.

You have to forget how your mother ties her braids each night,

alternating painkillers and early alarms – how her day begins before your night ends.

You have to forget what home meant when you left.

You have to leave in order to return.

It was 6:45 pm in 2005 when my mother brought a plateful of sugar apples,

and I had to bear the embarrassment of asking her,

'How do you eat it?' I've forgotten – it has been a year. 

I was 6, and the air felt lighter on my chest back then.

I turn around at the sound of my sister's laugh mocking my memory,

but the joke's on her because I get to taste the world for the first time once again.

I turn again, and my father hands me his prescription with frail hands;

his hair has grown thinner, and his cheeks have sunk in.

I try to remember how he used to have fewer lines on his forehead

back in the summer he brought in sugar apples. 

The night when life drew a curtain between me and my childhood,

I found all my crayons broken and my slippers replaced.

Now every evening, I try to "return" home, 

To smell the steaming curry little longer, 

To carefully count the increasing number of visible veins on my mother's feet,

To watch my father's hands filled with more medicines than memories 

To sneak beneath the curtain of childhood and reality.

But homecoming is a myth

For you could never return to what you once left.

And today, a Fevi-Quick lies beside the photo frame that says 'family'.

- Snigdha