Notes from Delhi: Summer Stupor

To you,

Most people I’ve met in India are products of many places. There’s an enviable fluidity between cities over here. You’re born in one city, sometimes school in another, go to college somewhere else and maybe settle wherever your work takes you. Back in Sri Lanka, all roads almost always seem to end up in Colombo.

P wrote this nice piece of prose about home both as an abstract concept and a physical space. Where is home for you? Is it a place, a state of mind? Is it where your roots are or is home, where a special person is? Is it perhaps the people you surround yourself with? Or are you one of those people who belong wherever they go?

Summer has come and how. This heat saps any semblance of energy out of you. My day begins only at dusk. The morning and afternoon are passed in a wilted summer trance. The only good thing about this horrible season is that the Ehala (they’re also called the Golden Shower Tree – isn’t that a lovely name?) and Araliya trees have bloomed and brighten up the city.

I had draped myself on the swing this evening futilely trying to decipher my notes and break out of the indolent stupor which had enveloped me the entire day when I happened to notice a cobweb on the swing. I’m averse to spiders, but partial to cobwebs. Framed against the light, every intricate detail was visible in the setting sun. The stage was set for one of those profound moments (a sunset, a moonrise in the distance, a cobweb- you know the kind.) I thought I felt an epiphany coming on but it turned out to be a sneeze.

– Me