Some years back when I was in the first year of my engineering, during an English class we were asked to do creative writing and the topic was 'The Morning after rain". Since it was a creative writing assignment, I knew I could associate the topic to anything that came to my mind when I read out the topic aloud and start writing, which is exactly what I did. May be it was a homesickness season or may be it is that I am always homesick when I am all alone and away from home, whatever it was, 'The Morning after rain' reminded me of my tears when I was leaving New Delhi to go to Engineering College in Thanjavur. Needless to say, that was the first time I was going away from home, away from my mom :(. As I was leaving for the airport with my dad who was accompanying me to Chennai and then to the college, both me and my mom couldn't control over tears and burst out literally pouring a rain of tears. I knew my mom would have been crying all that day too, as for me, I was crying all through my flight. It was an evening flight and I reached Chennai, where I was again crying and my mouth didn't bother tasting even a single morsel of food served as dinner and I was busy crying. It was just tears all over the place. I cried all night and somehow my eyes got dead tired at one point and I slept off unknowingly at some point. It was like it had rained all night and the next morning, there was no rain anymore, I was calm and my eyes had gotten drained and no more tears were coming. I was all quiet and my eyes were hurting thanks to all the crying the previous night and my eyes felt like the ground which was exhausted of putting up with all the downpour of rain over it all night. I didn't cry beyond that point, but my mind was like a barren land, and after that slowly my mind got trained to be like that barren land which would get some rain in the form of my tears and but despite the rain never had any greenery what so ever. Somehow I got used to living away from home.
Then it was time to come to the US, I had ambitions to fulfill and they were the only thing on my mind and homesickness was stowed away in some corner. But over the last year, I have come to realize that I have been pretty much fooling myself like so many of us, avoiding thoughts of homesickness and loneliness. India trip was a huge catalyst in making me realize how lonely I am in the US, with boyfriend living far off and parents living far off and me having everyone, yet feeling lonely. After coming back from India, I seem to be once again coming back to the same situation I was in the first semester of Engineering where I used to cry because of loneliness. May be having a lot of friends helps people live away from home, but a reserved person that I am, I have limited number of friends. But even then deep inside, people living away from home obviously miss home a lot. Some people manage to live away from home, like I have been doing for almost 7 years now, but there is a difference, homesickness being more manageable when you have some ambitions to look to, or having a lot of friends and spending time with them. But US has made me such a loner that the only people I talk to are parents, boyfriend, three-four close friends. Ever since I returned from my India trip, I am still waiting for that morning after rain.
Labels: loneliness, morning after rain