Yes!!!

A has left for home. And within next fortnight, I will leave too. Really, really looking forward. Dad says winter is the best time to come home. He doesn't understand. Even if I have to travel unreserved in the heat of May, I will. Coz it's home. And anyone who comes from that part of the country will understand that that's saying a great deal. Coz it's not any summer...it touches 47 C and stabilizes if you are lucky. Now, if you are unlucky, it may rise further and go upto 50. Add to that load shedding. No coolers. No fans. The only respite is water and keeping yourself drenched all the time, but mostly there's no water, too. Anyway, the point being, it doesn't really matter. Wanna take bath three times a day? Stay and rot in Bangalore. Wanna rejuvenate? Head back home. Coz any season, any time, home is the best place to be!

Because it's only at home, with friends and family that the magic really dwells.

It's there that you spent some of the best years of your life, with some of the best people you would ever encounter. When you didn't even have a concept of a friend, some of them were your bestest friends...and what an irony, today when friendships and relationships break over not having enough time together, those, of the childhood times, with whom you haven't met for years, still feel so close.

The mangoes were never so perrrfect again! Neither was anything else...The taste, the aroma of the food lingered in the memory long after leaving home...

Swings tied onto sturdy neem branches, loaded with every adult and kid in the locality, throughout the day, till the vacation would get over, never broke even once in all these years. Talk about small reassurances...

It's there that you stop worrying about getting wet in the rains. Rather, you go out and soak yourself like a 5-year old kid at the first opportunity.

Standing on the water tank and scrutinizing the whole area with hawk's eye, the vast greenish-brown fields, the scarecrows, the bullocks and the carts, the tillers in between the planted rows of crops...all this while, a steady, pleasant drizzle from the top...and a rainbow if you are lucky for bringing the sky out of its blues...

Cold winter mornings and the thick rajai...

Common bed for everyone during vacations...same age-groups carefully kept together...a mass pretension of sleep beyond the retiring time and as things would quieten down, slow awakening of nudges, whispers, and stifled laughing fits...

..........

It seems like yesterday. I'm gearing up for all this and more, once again!