Why Do We Leave?

Why do we leave the acacia tree lined streets in which we ran with naked feet? The house that watched over us with quiet patience? Why do we walk away from that swing in the garden that carried us? The coconut tree that listened to whispered secrets on many a lazy afternoon? Why do we forget the wall we sat on to tease the boys that cycled past? Why do we forget the comforts of the cot in the backyard on moonlit nights? Why don’t we remember the dancing marigolds and the sulky rose bush in our mothers’ flowerbeds? Why don’t we see the red hibiscuses beside the West side gate? Why don’t we recall the sweet papayas from the tree in the East garden? Why have we forgotten the taste of parrot pecked pink guavas in the evening? Why do we walk away from the cool shadows of the ivy that screened the Westside balcony? Why have we forgotten the swinging black gate that took us to Paris and back within a swing? Why cant’ we remember the thrill of hide and seek around the house in the gathering dusk? Why have we forgotten the porch on which we spent many hot afternoons sipping soda with bosom buddies?

I don’t know why I left that porch, that swing, that backyard, that house, that street in Vizag. But they have not left me. I remember more - the Rajus’ dog, Whitey, the overbearingly friendly grocer across the street, the college kids who lounged under the peepal tree at the end of the street, my Sai school right across the street, the cawing of crows in the afternoon, the yarns of our servant maid, Bangaramma in the backyard, the vegetable sellers making their rounds in the hot afternoons, the drone of television, the flourish with which the milkboy delivered, the bhajans in the mandir on Thursdays and Sundays, the colony aunties who exchanged recipes across the walls, the chatter of the servant maids, the well at the bottom of the garden, the whispered secrets under the coconut trees, the Sunday afternoons spent digging for enchanted buried treasure, the milk that I threw surreptitiously into the jasmine creeper, the scaling of garden walls to visit neighbours, badminton on the terrace every morning.

This February, I went back to that house on the acacia tree lined street.
I wish I hadn’t.
There is very little of all that. What remains is an old and unloved house.
And a street in which I cannot even live in without a visa.