in the balcony

We live different lives and we also live our lives in different rooms/houses/buildings. How does it feel to go back to your first home? Well you need to feel it to know it.

Yesterday I went to Kalkaji (DDA Flats) with mummy and saw the flat which was my first home. Mom wanted to go and meet her old friend Baby (I know too many Punjabi Aunties called Baby). Though she lives in Mumbai she was here visiting her father. Of course I was a toddler when we stayed there, but there was a weird familiarity with that place. I felt very comfortable there. I don’t know ….

It seemed like a metaphorical womb. It was strange to be there after so many years. But for my mom it was a lot more… She seemed thrilled…excited …I dunno…. I mean I was excited and all, but I had nothing to go back to…..you know like when I visited our house in Agra almost after 12 years (or my school in Agra) I had memories…. And there were so many of them, in all different colors and stories…. So much of “nostalgia”….

When she was standing outside, in the balcony, I swear I saw her trying to do away with her tears. I guess a lot was going on in her mind at that moment…memories of Vinny growing up and then me as a new born baby. All that time she spent alone in that flat, all the time she might have spent waiting for Papa.

It would have been too much of “nostalgia” for her; it was that time when we didn’t have a phone (Not that she could have called back home too often any which ways: STD Calls were too expensive back in 80’s). I know for sure that Papa must have been late everyday. Damn…that time must have been quite tough for her …all alone in this new city with us little devils... I guess that’s when she became friends with Baby Aunty and got cozy with the rest of her family too….I know, I am what I am because of what happened in her life….I wouldn’t have been here, if some other man would have been in her life. I mean it would have been some other damn sperm. But then it wouldn’t have been about me (it’s not about me anyways right now)…. How her life would have been then? Happier? It’s hard to say…..very hard indeed!!

While Baby Aunty was in the Kitchen preparing Chai, Mummy was in the balcony….. Perhaps in the flashback living through those seconds, minutes, hours, days she spent waiting for Daddy. She had no idea about the other woman then. Now, the fact that the only man she ever “loved” disgraced that relationship, sucks. She hates him now.

Be it a man or a woman, everyone wants to cherish each moment of their love life and take it to their grave. But mom really doesn’t have any of those memories…..it really doesn’t matter that we are doing pretty good as a family now (with Papa gone)…..She probably stands in the balcony thinking about all those years she spent raising three kids ....without much help from her husband. I wanted to go out in the balcony and ask her what she was thinking about…. But I just couldn’t….I don’t know why…..