There is a point in the course of a day, when having done our duties and laid aside all the little details that make up our lives, we come back to our beds….like tired children to the waiting arms of forgetfulness. The conflicts lie unresolved, the plans for the next day still unmade….and suddenly a quiet stillness falls over the entire house…nay, our very lives. And in that moment, when one is neither asleep… nor awake, but hanging on the edge of existence …half dead… half alive….in that unguarded weakened state, there is no lying to one’s self…just staring at one’s demons in the dark.

      Why is it that in that last hour before sleep, before we release our grip on life, almost like a mock death, we all long to be home…. cradled in the warmth of familiarity, to belong some place? And memories come back like swift waves, dark and misty, leaving one drenched in the sweat of one’s past….

    I am back home then…the land of eastern flowers…monsoon soil and rust coloured sunsets that take ages to set, so that even the clear night sky is tinged with deep purple. There are no wars there, no finality of death….no goodbyes. And faces I love are still gathering for the afternoon tea, the table laid out in the shade of mango trees in the garden outside. Our home stands intact, the chink of china and smell of freshly baked cake welcoming us…..and a yellow warm hue envelops all. And my mother is still alive..no blood smears her face…and my father still has arms to hug my tiny body close. My whole life is before me…unscarred, secure….familiar…empty of horrors such as ‘normal’ lives never know.

    I watch my mother pour tea….seeing her soft hands who’s touch I knew so well…her eyes crinkle at the corners as she smiles. My father reclines back in the chair….with that calm unruffled air about him that I loved…as if having reached the end of his struggles, he can relax now. And there are my brothers who I spent hours chasing in the lawns…their hair smelling of grass and eyes shining with the warm sun above......

.....Where are they all now? Are their bodies still lying in the rubble where the bombs fell….or were they bulldozed like the rest in mass civilian graves? Why did I run and hide with other refugee children instead of letting myself die with my loved ones in the grave of their broken wounded limbs? Ah… the survivors of wars always walk away with guilt in their hearts…and regret for which there is no cure.

       Yet, given time, there is no loss in life one cannot get over, at least, outwardly, and in the aftermath of war, lives do begin to pick up pieces again. Carving a new life for yourself, you find newer horizons….borders…houses…and strangers you come to love. Like walking into a crowd and losing one’s trail; or taking an eraser and slowly nullifying what was, one detail at a time.

       Faces you loved, places you grew up in, turns you knew, the smell of familiar streets you walked in, all suddenly nonexistent. The faces are often the last to go, but given time, even these start turning grey and fuzzy…till the road one’s travelled on stretches so long, that it seems impossible to retrace one’s steps backwards. Except you are always an outsider trying to fit in. Often an ‘illegal’ one…who has no right to exist. And no past either, not even or paper.

      So there are secrets one keeps for one’s darker moments…when all alone at night, you unlock the key and let the memories infiltrate with their musty smell, the smell of wet soil and eastern flowers. And always the same dream at the end: To be back with people  you belonged….the land you grew up in….the only place that ever felt like home. Not a red taped existence, but an unconditional one. And the tears you thought were all shed and done with…from some place deep within, begin to fall again.