Relocation

The clock reads 4:27 as I write this—in a cold bed I now like to call my own, in a city far away
from home that once held the key to all my overripe hopes and aspirations.

I have to go home this weekend. "Home" is a city whose nooks and crevices I know as well as I
do my corporeal body, where my parents wait upon my call every evening.

This weekend I will go home to put all my limited belongings in neatly labeled boxes to be given
away or locked up inside a cabinet.

You see, my parents will relocate later this month.

They will move on to a house wherein I only occupy the guest room. A house where the pantry
isn't packed with my favorite foods, where the cable isn't subscribed to the TV channels only I
watch, and where there is no need for a bookshelf housing books only I read. My shoes will no
longer crowd the tiny shoerack and my father can finally have the almirah all to his own. A
house that no longer smells of my favourite scented candle. A peaceful house devoid of the
sound of my mother nagging me every hour of the day. A house where my father can enjoy his
morning chai the way that he likes it and not the way he has to make it to suit my taste. A house
that would no longer be mine.

Their path has deviated from mine for the first time in nineteen years.

I can't help the bitterness creeping in at the idea of them wanting to leave behind the house I
grew up in, but I must accept that my mother's aging body can no longer dust my vacant room
every morning. I have made my cold hard bed in a city miles away and now I must lie in it.
Besides, how cruel it is of me to want my parents to never patch hole in their lives that I so
willingly left when I took that train to Pune.

It is far too late in the night to ruminate over emotions I should've already made peace with. I
need to wake up early tomorrow and catch the early train to bid my final adieu to the 100 square
meter house where I uttered my first "papa". The house of my childhood.