I don’t feel like home anymore!
Home is not a place made of painted bricks,
Home is somewhere you feel safe and secure,
Home is somewhere you feel dependent & independent at the same time.
Maybe it’s my fault that I am unable to adjust with everyone.
Maybe I don’t deserve to be at home.
I live in a joint family which is always struggling to be a family!
Where the women are free because the men gave them the authority to be free,
Where the teens are always trying to get & not to get attention at the same time.
Where if you are a boy you will be taught not to cry but to be sensitive!
Because being a part of a pseudo progressive family crying is really-really girlie
But not being sensitive is problematic!
I lie down on my bed,
I lie down on my bed & look at the ceiling-
And I think how all of my family members deserve to get awarded
Because of their brilliant acting skills.
The most important time & the most important place are dinner time & dinner table.
Because that is when and that is where I always get to know my family
Most prominently every single day.
We sit together to have our dinner,
Oh, now if you are thinking together means everyone,
Then no it’s certainly not!
Together means everyone excluding my Maa,
She stands besides the table to serve and make sure if everyone is okay.
When she starts serving, everyone starts evaluating her anger, manners, kindness,
And most importantly her talent, because she is not as privileged as we are!
So that she can show her talents by doing something in front of the whole world!
And this moment of evaluation ends when we all get up from our chairs.
We talk while having food and that conversation certainly Maa starts.
Maa starts the conversation by telling that why the Daal is not perfect today and not to mind,
And then she says maybe Pishima will come tomorrow and she will be staying with us for a while.
Dadu suddenly asks me in English why aren’t you eating much today? How is your study going?
I tell him ‘don’t worry, everything is fine!’
But those English words hits Maa & makes her anxious,
So she shuts up her mouth
And later she tells me “you know, I wish I knew English so that I can talk while you people talk”
I tell her “don’t think like that maa, it’s just a language not a pedestal”.
After answering Dadu I focus on my food while Papa, Dada and Boudi start debating about politics.
Then Maa asks me “why you always keep using your phone these days? Only typing and typing,
With whom you talk to? Now also you are rushing a lot to go and use your phone. Eat okay eat.”
And then my Dada and Boudi starts kidding me.
They be like areh Maa you don’t know- He has a girlfriend!
He talks to her all the day
Boudi asks “Who is this? Who is this girlfriend?”
Dada asks “Who is this ‘her’?”
I stop eating for a while & keep quiet then I think,
I think how this will break her, how this will break my whole family!
That I am in love like all the other teens are in love,
But I do love a boy & isn’t being a boy loving a boy a crime?
I think & I ask myself, how I am supposed to tell them,
That yeah I talk to somebody but it’s not her I talk to,
It’s him and it was him, it is him & it will be him!
And I think how this will destroy the situation,
Then I ask questions & questions & questions to myself, hate comes next to the question!
How? How I am supposed to tell them? How I am supposed to face them?
How they will react?
I really don’t feel like home anymore!
Home is somewhere you feel safe & secure!
Maybe it’s my fault that I am unable to adjust with everyone,
Maybe the bad is in me! Maybe I am mad!
But I hope, I hope one day everyone will be mad like me or more than me!
And I hope one day I will feel at home,
I will feel at home with all those wrong people with insanity,
Because this world full of sanity has certainly killed the essence of being at home!