20 years is a long time…..very long..

Situated at 22° 48' 0" N latitude and 86° 11' 0" E longitude, Jamshedpur is a city in India…but it’ not JUST another city…neither for me nor for the history of India. Who can forget the contribution of Jamshetji Tata in the Industrial revolution in India? The city is situated around the factories set up around 1900 on the banks of river Swarnrekha. It’s a beautiful city with greenery, organization and management peeping from every nook and corner.

As for me, the importance exceeds…it was where I was born and tonight, sitting in a guest house at Jamshedpur (J) near the most beautiful area called Jubilee park, I am not able to contain my excitement over the happenings today. My father was posted here around 20 years back, and that is when I was born…I, my parents and my elder brother lived here….yes two decades back…sounds like so much time…J however, it passed so quickly. Since we left the city on my father’s transfer when I was merely one year old, I have been to the city twice, every time packed with schedule. It’s yesterday morning that I came back to the place I was born….a place that connects to me mysteriously, that surely has a call for me…The reason of course is materialistic again…a training in Tata Steel, previously known as TISCO. However, my father and I finally took time out to roam in the daily market at Sakchi, eat dosa at an old restaurant and savor kulfi in the rain. I don’t remember the place a bit but it seems I have always been here, as if the place belongs to me.  Suddenly, I had a yearning to see the house where I was brought up, where I was showered with the love no one can ever again give, where I was sung lullabies and where I was new to the whole world….

We started off to what is called Adityapur. As my father depicted the new locality he saw, I could see in his eyes that it had changed…or may be fully transformed. The houses were no more identifiable and there were a lot of new shops, malls and apartments. We neither had the house number nor the name of the landlord, only memories. My father started remembering things the moment we reached the street. However, among hundreds of identical houses where does one search for a 20 year old house that was 1 storey at that time, painted in white, and that was near a shed? I was getting nostalgic with the memories I never had….The air getting into my lungs was showcasing my whole life to me. It all passed as a beautiful movie in front of my eyes. I almost narrated every incidence of my life, honestly,….to the CITY. I was really desperate to have a look on the house, the house without a name, but since always inscribed on my heart. After a search that lasted around an hour, someone finally got an idea of what we were speaking…it was the same cow shed…it stood there at the same place, and now memories could no longer play hide and seek…My father recognized the house at once!!! It was THE house. I literally ran to it…I was in the true sense not able to contain myself…didn’t even think that it was not ours now…A few seconds passed very silently…without me knowing for sure because till then, people had come out of the house and my father was already in a talk with them. I had visualized the scene since childhood so many times that it all was more of a déjà vu!  I ran inside the house and saw the whole of it in one go…Memories or rather visualizations started coming from nowhere when I saw the room I always slept, the cow shed I was taken to in mornings, the market where my parents shopped, the water supply pipe just outside the house, the police station where I was taken to in evenings for fresh air (:D), the door that I saw in an old snap, the field that was barren then, the courtyard where my father once encountered a big snake, the kitchen where my mother made those mouth watering dishes I didn’t eat, the corridor where I was left for playing, the place where I slept everyday munching biscuits, the gate that was intact after 20 years too, the street that saw me run for the first time, the trees that must have seen me growing up…the place that was the world for a one year old kid.

We were invited in for a cup of tea and as I sat in a chair, I could not explain the tears that started rolling out, even to me. The house was more so of a Pandora’s box for me, that held in store a willingness for me, that had so much to show me and it waited for so long, that had missed me, that had loved me, that had once protected me, that was standing there as t was amongst the tall houses that changed their looks over time, that was rejoicing my arrival…May be it sounds stupid, but the house made me cry, really, the adrenaline rush through me every other second was equally unaccountable….I was no more understanding all happenings around me, all that I could see that I had repaid a debt, that I held. It deserved a visit, for sure…It has made me happy beyond bounds…I don’t think words will ever be able to express what I am feeling now…. :)