Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Going Home !

It is getting closer and closer everyday - my journey back to India. It should not be a big deal for any NRI like me. In fact this should be an exciting time for some one returning home to be with friends and family. This could be the most satisfying time in ones life - to be with your own people.

Not me. I am terrified with the thought that I will be flying to India in a couple of months. Terrified – because when I came to America 6 years ago I had given up on it. I had burned my bridges with India. When things were going bad for me in America, I remember having late night lonely talk with myself. In those conversations I used to convince my heart and mind that India does exits for me any more. That America is everything I got, good, bad or ugly. There is no turning back. I had remembered a story about a prince who was given a curse that “in the search of treasure, if he ever looks back – he will turn into a stone”.

I never came here in search of treasure – but that is a different story. Nevertless, I kept moving – never to look back.

Six LONG years later it dawned don me that I never left India. India came with me. It hid somewhere in the bottom of my heart and surfaced with a bang. There is no choice now to look back. I want to look back inspite of the fear that I may turn into stone – into nothing -- again.

Couple of months before I go to my home country-