Memories

No complaints, no regrets

About moving bag and baggage here

To the mighty US

But every once in a while

My heart begins to pine

And my mind begins to wander

To another place, another time

My senses are as if transported

And I can smell the rain – kissed earth

In my ears is the sound of rustling peepal leaves

And my eyes behold the flaming Gulmohars

It’s as if my nose remembers

How divine the air smells in autumn,

And the capital all decked out for Diwali,

etched in memories never to be forgotten.

They say that Delhi has changed –

It’s noisier, faster, more crowded… and just not the same,

But how can one forget the joyful days at school,

Prancing ‘coz the rains finally came?

The merciless sun of summer,

The heat and the gusts of hot air

The bitter cold of winters past

The thick, all-enveloping fog

So what if this was a choice I made

To start anew so far from home

I know that no one asked me to move

To leave my comfort zone

But how does knowing this help

What difference does it make?

When one is feeling estranged and bereft

Of the land they once chose to forsake?