Diary of a Lost Wanderer: The real homecoming

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“Rows and rows of lights adorning the sight, 
I wonder if they will illuminate the darkness of my soul. “ 

 
Dhara scribbled down these lines in her diary as her tears left marks on the page dampening her words just like her spirit. Tonight was Diwali, one of the biggest festivals of the year. A time when every corner is illuminated for goodness to enter and yet a corner of her heart was always in the dark. The celebration of the homecoming of Lord Rama, but she was still looking for a thing called home where she could come back to every evening knowing this is where she belonged. She didn’t know what hurt more – the fact that she was alive or the fact that she was born in the first place. For her 16 year old heart couldn’t think of anything else! 

She could hear her parents’ voices in the background, as she tried to see those happy faces from her balcony. Celebrating joy, they were resplendent of love. She wondered if they were real, for she had never seen such celebrations in her house. Her heart yearned for such endearing moments where she would experience inundated joy. She stared at the box full of firecrackers waiting to be burst. Somehow they didn’t seem to interest her at that moment. Dressed in her pink laced skirt she made a pretty sight tonight but somehow wallowing in self pity she could barely see its beauty. At this moment, her costly clothes, those heaps of firecrackers, nothing seemed to interest her. She could giveaway all of them for one moment of joy with her parents by her side. 

Her head was full of questions at that moment, ones that she needed answers urgently to. They had been gnawing her since the time eternal. For her the world was always black and white, when she disliked someone she couldn’t act nice to them at any cost. And when she loved someone she couldn’t bear to hear any reasons to hate them. She thought of all the instances where she had fought with her friends and then stopped speaking to them for some reason. While on the other hand she knew of people for whom she had fought with others as she saw no wrong in them. Wasn’t how this was all supposed to be? She wondered if the grown up world had a different rule book. 

That is when a huge rocket flew past her making a loud swoosh sound, taking her attention towards her parents who were now standing at the door wishing a neighbor. Standing next to each other their smiling faces added yet another colour to Dhara’s dictionary of relationships – grey. When you love someone, you need not show it just the way when you hate them. The grey linings just got a bit accentuated that night, for it was finally homecoming for her. She had entered the mystical world of the adults tonight leaving behind her childhood far away.

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