What I love about going home

Mom

Do you need further proof that cuteness is inherited?

Sweetness personified. The glue that has kept our family together through thick and thin. She has had the unenviable task of dealing with two very disparate personalities-polar opposites, in fact, in the form of my sister and me. The referee when we have our screaming matches, and is sometimes unintentionally funny. She has taught us, through word and example, to be honest, respectful, compassionate, and to hold our heads high, and persevere with patience and determination.She is our guardian angel, always looking out for us, always thinking the best of us, always expecting the best from us. Wanting our happiness more than anything else. I have been told that I possess her features, and some of her charm.Ahem. 

OK, that last bit I may have just made up, but let's just pretend that it's true.

The Cuddle Club

There are dog people, and there are cat people, and I am definitely the former. Give me cute, wet noses, slurpy licks, and wagging tails over the scratching and spitting and the hissing of cats any day. Cats can climb walls! That is unnatural, and just wrong.

I long to have a pet, but I live by myself and that's just not an option, so I wait till I can go home and spend time with these cuddle bunnies. I love everything about them. The yucky dog-mixed-with-shampoo smell after we've bathed them, the pinkness of their bellies, the freaking mess they make when they eat, and their scary teeth all lined up in a row. I even love the absolute insanity of them chasing their own tails, or trying to catch a fly by snapping at it, or dragging their bowls all through the house as if to say CHOW TIME! C'MON, I NEED IT NOW! Though they all have their own unique personalities, I admit, that I do love Yana the most (yes, she does share an element of cuteness with her namesake, but doesn't wear a LBD and flash her hoo ha at charity events).

But, seriously, who wouldn't be kicked to know that the simple act of walking into a room has rocked someone's world so much that they can't help wagging their tails right off and peeing themselves  a little?


Wide open spaces

Not a soul, as far as the eye can see.

When you live in the city, you can't remember ever stepping outside and looking down the road and seeing... nothing, zilch, nada. But there--no traffic, and not a person in sight. This is one of the things I miss the most about being home. Walking down the road, the silence envelops me, and I can actually concentrate on the voices in my head my own thoughts. Everything just becomes clearer. And the air. Oh, the clean air! My lungs just become overwhelmed with gratitude and want to kiss me on the mouth.

I know. Visualizing that makes me want to hurl too.


The not-a-secret-at-all garden

In the monsoon, everything just turns a lush emerald, and makes me want to run out into the fields on a sunny day (yes, there are actual fields!) and burst out into 'The Hills are alive' a la Julie Andrews. The likelihood of getting bitten by a snake is the only thing that holds me back, because you know how crazy I am about those critters. However, Mom's garden is a little piece of heaven throughout the year. Everything is tended to so lovingly and painstakingly, and the plants are all lined up neatly in a a row in flower pots and flower beds, that it all just soothes the part of my brain that craves for symmetry, and order, and oxygen.

Not much space for running and twirling around, and bursting into song though. Maybe I can stand outside and yodel 'High on a hill was a lonely goat-herd' for a bit till I get a flowerpot thrown at my head.


Other quaintery

Yes, I know, but since it's my blog, I get to make words up.

• We actually have a brass bell instead of a regular doorbell, and every time it goes 'ting-ting', I imagine a Holstein grazing in a green field with a Swiss cow bell around its neck. Or a kulfi-wallah who's passing by and ringing the little bell to entice us into buying kulfis made of milk whose origin is very questionable. What? No, of course I don't eat them! I'm a raving germaphobe. Might as well lick the door-handle of a public restroom.

• This town has houses that are old, so old, that I like to imagine that there are ghosts haunting their rooms and grounds. A secret, illogical desire of mine has always been to buy and renovate one of these houses, and live in it.Till I encounter a ghost in the hallway, that is. I will then  promptly drop dead  if I see one, and will never get to enjoy the house. So, yeah. Bad idea. Unless I get to haunt the house after I'm dead. That would be so cool.

• There are horses, people, horses! Right outside our house! Safely tied to a tree, so that they can't kick me when they realize that I am taking pictures of them to put on my blog, and writing about them in sentences that end with exclamation marks! How absolutely awesome. 

• Since Devlali houses the School of Artillery, there are guns there. Big guns, which were probably used in some war, or perhaps only for firing practice. Either way, they're really impressive, and even though I've lived there for most of my life, I'm very tempted, every time I pass one, to stop and pose in front of a gun. Or better still, a tank. The best part is, no-one ever stops you. You can climb on top of it and pretend that you're a soldier, defending your country's honour against the evil enemy. Tormented by heat and fatigue, you carry on, sans food and water, ever-vigilant, your heart bursting with pride and valour, humbled by the fact that you have been chosen to lay your life down for your country.

My apologies to soldiers everywhere, for babbling on incoherently. I have obviously watched too many war movies, played too much Modern Combat, and sniffed too much glue.

That last part is actually not true.

I only sniffed whitener.