His hand turned the golden of the door knob; a shiver ran through his veins on touching the cold metal. He entered the door to his empty home, no not a home, he thought to himself. This was just a house. The home is where the heart is and for him, it was amongst the Lodhi garden where he had let his sister score a ten thousand runs, the mama road staircase where she had written K anna with the mother’s red lipstick, on the study table in front of the window near the guava tree where me mugged for his board exams and the most in the kitchen that was once small but had been turned into what his grandmother pointed out was unnecessary extension by the new lady who had taken over the reigns. He remembered a particular day when he had tugged the sarree of his sleeping chitti at one in the night asking for roti and beetroot subji.“Also a glass of bormee, chitti” he quipped, as she made her way into the kitchen from the bathroom.
He entered the coldness of the room and habitually switched on his laptop. The Microsoft opening credit gave a little tune to the otherwise serene surrounding. His stomach grumbled and mumbled as his laptop, Archie revealed the picture of his family. He would do anything for a plate of sambar sadam topped with the home-made nei. He waited for the wi-fi to connect him to the world he wanted to connect physically to but couldn’t. He carefully arranged his socks and shoes in the stand. Everything had to go to its rightful place after it was done, he always said.
“What about you? Don’t you have to go back to where you came from? Isn’t your work done in this place?” He closed his heart from taking over his head any further and made his way to the bathroom and took a quick bath while chanting the hanuman chalisa. He made his way to the semi-pseudo-ish God’s zone which he had tried to recreate like his pati’s, bare-chested but for a thread did the sandhyavandanam.He skipped to the kitchen to grab a bite. His mind half wandered through the pages of naukri.com and his institute job site and absent-mindedly re-heated the day before yesterday’s daal and the yesterday’s rice. The monster hunt for a job was taking a toll on him. The recession was sucking from within and without.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to have a wife who would make hot meals for you when you returned home? Why don’t you get married da?” the sister had casually pointed out yesterday during their usual morning conversations. She was half hoping he would reply that wives weren’t robots who only cooked and cleaned but equal partners whom you loved and cared for and vice-versa. When he hadn’t, she just rolled her eyes. Men!
(to be contd, when feel like)
