We are preparing to leave for India. You know how you feel when you pick up a book you always wanted to read, settle down by a quiet window, and smell the pages as you tease your eyes over the preface? I always have that eerie sense of triumph when I prepare to go home. The chapters of this book are interspersed with long silences—once a year I get to feel what a boy feels nearing summer vacation.
This is Leena’s first visit to India. I will see India through her dreamy blue eyes. Taste that golguppa on the streets of Bombay with the same sense of suspended trepidation. Possibly be amused at her coveting one salwar kameez or another. This is how one touches that common weft and warp that make us—call it what you may. We are in our expressions of wonder.
It’s snowy outside. I am dreaming of the sun.
My father tells me that the house has been repainted for the celebrations. Our sisutree had to be trimmed. A tropical tree in a small plot of land is not an ideal companion. It loves to spread out, cast that bewitching spell of cool breeze, and simply take over. I had planted it many years back. I wanted something wild and untamed in our garden. While I have been away from my homeland, the tree has send his roots far and wide. I like to think of him as my brother. Our ways are different, but we are both watered by the same clouds.
