Monsoon came early this year.
Instead of the first week of June, the rains started in the third week of May, pouring down like the clouds intended on drowning the earth. Today, halfway through July, it is a light drizzle, cold and gentle like snowfall.
You sit on the old wooden swing that hangs from the banyan tree in your grandmother's garden, listening to the wind rustling through the trees and the rain pouring down on grass and stone pathways. With every pass of the swing, your silver anklets tinkle: a gift from your grandparents, because they miss you.
Since you started college, your days at the family home have decreased. From thrice a week, they have dwindled to once a year. With half an ear on the muffled echo of your grandmother singing an old Marathi song coming from the opposite wing of the sprawling bungalow, you wonder why you ever went to college. You could have stayed home, instead. You could have stayed with your grandparents.
You miss reading with your grandmother, going to business meetings with your grandfather: he never made you work, and you did not understand half the things the old men in well-tailored suits discussed, but you enjoyed sitting in anyways. You miss solving the daily crossword in the newspaper with your grandmother, discussing the news of the day as you worked on the clues.
"Ashi ka basli ahes?" (Why are you sitting like this?)
You look up with a smile as your cousin sits down next to you, white-painted nails closing around the swing's chain. She flicks your hair back over your shoulder, and you laugh.
"Just vichar karat ahe. Maybe I shouldn't have left for another city." (Just thinking.)
"You're made for greater things than ghar ka chula chauka, and you know it. Why do you think I'm doing the same thing? Being housebound isn't for the two of us."
Oh. Yes. Your baby cousin is growing up.
She begins her first year of engineering school in September, and you wistfully remember the time when the both of you were little and would argue over who got the last bite of the amba until one of your mothers cut up another one out of exasperation. She still has not lost the chubby cheeks; they are still as soft as ever, and you grin as you reach out and pinch the one closest to you.
She slaps your hand away with a playful scowl, charm bracelet clinking with the move.
"Khara boltes," you tell her. "Homemaking isn't for us. But think: Ajji sarkhach, apla hi ghar, when we have earned enough to build one." (You speak the truth.) (Just like Grandma's, our house too.)
She hums. On the other side of the expansive garden, a couple of deer appear from behind the rose bushes and head straight for you. They both settle down at the foot of the tree, unafraid of you and your cousin. You smile, and pull a few strawberries from the depths of your pocket, bending down to extend your hand to them. Both of them munch the fruit straight from your palm, and you giggle at the tickle of their tongues.
It is normal for wild animals to wander into the gardens. Peacocks, deer, foxes, mongooses, monkeys, dogs, wildcats, and even a rare wolf. Your grandmother forbade the building of a fence, and the animals that visit eat the fruits from the trees and the vegetables from the vegetable patch. Nobody minds it.
"A music room," your cousin says suddenly. You look up, and there is a soft smile on her face. "Our house will have a music room."
You nod. "Sitar, piano, basuri, tabla, and violin," you add on. "Ghungroo chya don jod, one for you one for me." (Two pairs of ghungroos)
She giggles. "We'll invite friends over and do a Baithak. And of course, we should have a good huge kitchen."
"For huge parties and events," you agree, sitting up properly. One of the deer noses at your pocket, and you absently hand out mulberries. "And a library, for books in all the languages that we can read."
"Marathi, Urdu, Hindi, English, Sanskrit, Bengali, Spanish and French for you and me, German for the othersтАФ"
"Yes, yes," you laugh, "sagle pustaka asnar. And a huge garden!" (All the books will be there.)
Both of you titter, heads leaning close to each other. Your chest feels warm, and suddenly you're hit with the realisation that neither of you really left your childhood behind.
This is exactly what it was back then, wasn't it? Both of you, sitting with your heads together, eleven years old and nine years old respectively, planning out a barbie house to live in when you grow up with a slide from the room straight to the pool and a pink car just like Barbie. It is the same, even now, when you're twenty and she is a month shy of eighteen.
Your childhood never really ended.
This is still your home: your grandmother's singing, the animals in the garden, your bonding with your cousin. Your home is still yours, even though you don't return to it as often as you used to.
Maybe... maybe growing up is not as terrifying as you thought it would be.
@yehsahihai @caterpillar-in-disguise @mad-who-ra @budugu
