a homecoming

Clouds of spun flax adorned in a monsoon sky colored shades of bougainvillea pink, indigo dye, flecks of black. Gregarious greenbottle flies buzz amongst decaying alphonsos trodden into muddy ground. Women, skin tan under the harsh summer sun, cavort beside the bank overlooking brackish backwaters. Ivory white jasmine flowers suspended from threads in their hair diffuse a sickly-sweet aroma into the evening breeze alongside: sea foam, saltwater, ripening bananas, coconuts, damp moss, water lily, buffalo dung, cow dung, petrichor. You breathe it all in, then out.

She calls you back inside. You oblige, the resolution to rebel forgotten in a land unfamiliar to yours. She’s sat by her father’s bedside, feeding him cold dessert, parental-infantile roles reserved. Her brother is sat on the ground, tucking into a meagre meal of lemon rice, fish and mango pickle. His wife toils away in the kitchen, battling beads of sweat and a plethora of soiled dishes. Their kid plays in his grandfather’s lap as your mother feeds the withered man his last bite.

He beckons you to sit near him. You don’t want to look at his face; rendered gaunt and sickly by the cancer that eats him away - skin more wrinkled than it is freckled, murky brown eyes sunken by years of wear and tear, sullen cheeks peppered with skin tags and acne scars. He’s lost his two front teeth, but a smile doesn’t seem to induce the same type of exhilaration that a child in a similar predicament would.

He mumbles something incoherent in your language, one that seems you get more unfamiliar with as time passes. You smile politely and nod. He reaches forward to touch your hand. You finally look at him, and you see in his eyes he is content. It’s a feeling you’ve never seen before; in the eyes of those that live in the big city miles away, nor the country you’ve learnt to call home even more miles away, nor the eyes that seem to stare back at you from a mirror. You excuse yourself, on the pretext of fatigue induced by the tiresome journey that brought you here.

You lie in bed, unable to rest and unable to get up. Outside, thundering droplets thwack thatched roof. Mosquitoes ridden with disease gather by a flickering incandescent bulb. One finds its way inside, through a window and onto your leg; introduces a blemish then countless more. A woodpecker at a distance bores into a banyan tree trunk, scavenging for loitering pests. Croaking frogs perched on lotus leaves abruptly leap, disturbing the delicate dewdrops they rest alongside. Uncomfortable, writhing in restless insomnia. A cool wind settles in. Humidity induced sweat, sweat induced chills. Night beckons around a corner. The bulb breathes its last, superseded by fireflies. The deafening thunder dissipates into gentle pitter-patter, lulling you to serene slumber. In the next room, it does the same to your mother’s father.

The funeral’s a blur. No one talks to you; small, insignificant, burrowed in the corner of a room filled with relatives you’ve never met and those you’re told you’ve acquainted with but can’t remember for the life of you. Your mother’s cried for days but today she is quiet, forlornly comforting her sister-in-law as her brother greets the guests. The old women are inconsolable, the men demure in their sadness. They all wear white and not black like in the movies you watch back home.

The priest comes and everyone sits down for the prayer. There are no eulogies, no son talking about how much the deceased meant to him, no brother recollecting their mischievous childhood adventures, no epiphanies about the meaning of death and the existence of a better place. Just an old man in a white tunic reading from a book of scriptures in rapid succession, his monotone voice the only one heard in a room filled with people.

After lunch some of the men take leave with your grandfather’s body and your mother goes with them. An aunt leaves her kid next to you, a young boy of three or four. He laughs and pulls at your pigtails. He’s bored of you soon after when you don’t reciprocate his antics, running off to play with the others. You then hide in the toilet until evening strikes, when you hear the last of the guests leave.

Your mother holds you close that night as you both try to fall asleep. The mosquito-repelling incense burns near your bed, any smoke dispersed by the ceiling fan noisily whirring a seamless breeze. You’re both dressed in the same clothes from before. The weariness aches your bones, but sleep is a distant goal. You think you can hear her cry, her face muffled into your neck, suspicion confirmed when the liquid dampens your clothes and wets your skin. You don’t know what to say. You pretend to not notice - feigning sleep, until it induces a sincere drowsiness.

You leave early the next day. You say your goodbyes, not only to the people but to the birds whose chirping you’d almost gotten used to. The stray dogs that barked incessantly but never quite seemed to bite. The insects that came with the rains and had left your skin bruised and bumped. The cows that mooed noisily and came too close for comfort.

Your mother’s brother drives you to the airport. All three of you are silent throughout the drive, eyes fixated on the view outside your corresponding windows. There’s the hustle and bustle of traffic, but today it’s rather manageable. A child knocks against the glass of your car window, younger than you. She’s selling roasted peanuts; hot, crunchy wrapped in cones of newspaper blackened by the oil seeping through them. You ignore her forlorn gaze, the tattered skirt she dons, the hypertrophic scar near her left eye. You try to ignore her bare feet, dragged against the rough gravel of the hot road as she walks to the next car.

Your mother’s brother hugs you two at the gate and leaves almost immediately, wishing to get to work before traffic clogs up the highway. You watch him leave, disappearing almost instantly in the crowd of a million other faces. You clutch your mother’s hand tightly, not wanting to become lost in them. She squeezes back.

The plane waits on the runway, delayed due to the heavy showers the day has brought. A petulant passenger bores his feet into the back of your seat. The distant crying of a child threatens to elevate your headache into a full-blown migraine. You search amidst the in-flight magazines for a pack of ear plugs.

Your mother beside you has fallen asleep, having spent the better half of last night crying her eyes out. You look at her face and realize in the moment you look nothing like her, and yet everyone can tell she is your mother. Maybe you just think you don’t.

You look out the window, the sun hidden amongst the thundering clouds. Wisps of blue sky barely visible amongst the dismal grey. You don’t know what you believe in, or if you believe in believing. Whether he’s looking at you as an angel from heaven, or maybe as a reincarnated bird that defecated on someone’s windshield today, or as a rose in the bunch of dozen being sold by orphaned children on the street.

The plane finally awakens, easing into a snail’s pace before a frenzied scurry and then liftoff – you look at the lush green of the trees under you, the hustle and bustle of toy cars on the streets, your ancestral country – your mother’s motherland. You place a palm against the cool window. You bid silent adieu to a home you’ve never known, a grandfather you’ll never know.