Oh, so you won't be going home, this winter!

I had barely turned a corner

When I stumbled upon a bunch of scholars 

Wending homewards

Rucksacks on their shoulders

Leaving their snow-bound hostel life behind

Their burrowed faces glowing with excitement

A spirited alacrity in their deliberate stride

The prospect of going home

Had made turtles of them all  

And my mind had raced back to you

Or what you’d said

When I asked you, if you, too, would be going home? 

With a lump rising in your throat

You had looked away,

Refusing to let me see the mist in your eyes,

Fighting back your tears, you’d said:  

‘I don’t go home that often,

Going home is not always an option  

If you have a home,

And if you don’t, it’s probably much less,  

You have to have a home to go back to,

Memory of a concrete structure alone is not enough, 

Brick, mortar, wood and plaster make wonderful houses

Spreading a roof-like canopy overhead

Houses give us protection, no warmth

Well, if that is about all we need to know,

Hostels, too, have ways of rooming us in, 

So what if a mother’s love doesn’t flow

With room heaters on, warmth oozes slow.’

Something had stabbed deep inside me

When you had said:

‘Dark caves in which we all lived once

Do not always make a home

With sunlight filtering in, occasionally

Or playing a feverish game of hide-n-seek

With shadows dancing upon the walls’

Your philosophical musings had wrenched me

Inside out  

Leaving a gaping hole where my heart was,

I had started wondering about Doris Lessing  

And her ‘Going Home’ to Africa

Not so much to discover a past that wasn’t there

But to trail a future she had dreaded the most

Sensing that I had begun to enter your space

You had felt violated, as it were,

And then breaking into my thoughts, you’d said: 

‘Home is where the spatial boundaries of your hostel room

Simply melt away

Home is where a mother waits with open arms

Home is where kicking up all your stuff into a corner

You just curl up like a snail to read a book, undisturbed

As your father fusses over you, endlessly 

Tolerating a hundred thousand tantrums

And your squeaky little whims.’  

My heart had lurched into my mouth at the thought

That you won’t be going home, this winter 

And remain snow-bound,

Imprisoned, inside your hostel room 

Oh, what is this bondage of fear,

That makes us deny someone we love

Both warmth and care

After all, we humans are not like hermit crabs

That we can carry our homes on our backs,

Fold up, shrink or expand

Shifting the awesome burden of our home

From one jelly-leg to another       

John Donne I never was

Nor do I ever hope to be, 

Or I’d have made a room for you everywhere,

If not a ‘sanctuary’ for your quiet dignity, 

At least an Igloo of words

Somewhere in the dark alleys of the Arctic

Where temperatures fall below sub-zero  

Knowing well, you won’t be going home, this winter.