Homecoming

The door was open. The home belonged to a family living in Calcutta for seventy years, and built by a couple who came from the border of Bangladesh at the dawn of Indian freedom. Why the home was built in the first place has an interesting story. One evening, while they were sitting together in their rented house the wife, Ashima told her husband that they must build a home.

"Why? You know we have a family of five brothers, two sisters and I am the earning member. We also have our own children. A house means money..." the husband said in a serious tone.

"No, not a house. A home. We need it for our children. Tell me something, would you enter a big home while passing by it on a random day?" Ashima asked. Her eyes were curious to know what her husband thought.

"Never, if I do not know the owner!" Sometimes he knew that his wife imagined the future and lived far away in time. He believed in her wisdom.

She said after a while, "If we have a home, magnificent and majestic one, even if we do not have enough money to eat good food and I feed our children plants from the garden, isn't it true that people will think twice before entering our home?"

He looked into her eyes. She knew how to convince him, "Yes, they will even in the years to come my love..."

And now that home was waiting, the door was open. The clouds rolled by, the birds came and go, the sun rose and fell each day. The children has grown, some left and some stayed behind. The photographs of the couple could be seen at various walls of the home and perhaps through them their essence remained. 

It was three months that the family came to know about tumor; not that they were not aware but no one in the family suffered before. Also who would research on something that has not affected them personally. Now they knew that there are various kinds of tumors and their stages. For the treatment of the loved one they went from one hospital to the other and finally felt helpless when they realized that Calcutta needed a revolution in the arena of hospital management. It was 2018 and perhaps there were places on Earth that had already been kind enough to take care of the patients afflicted by the modern diseases. However, there are different stories in the world and this one was a common one.

The loved one got cured in South India, a place that still believed in wisdom and love. But the journey of any medical care can never be easy. And for days the home remained silent. The travel from Bengal to South was a mammoth task and the middle class family struggled to get back to the mundane life again. The home witnessed the entry of a crisis, while the family members went through the cycles of life.

Once the home had people, there were laughter and joy, there were fights and accusations, there were dreams and sorrows and in three months the voices turned into whispers. The son of the couple was the father now and he always wanted authority. Everyone must listen to the head of the family no matter what; sometimes the daughter of the family wanted to spread her wings and fly away. The son of the family married and gave birth to a girl child, the mother of the family spent her days in her own ways. But the family catastrophe interchanged all roles and altered the entire story.

The loved one needed attention and everyone scattered to bring a change soon. Human cells die when they grow old or when their work is done and in their places take birth new cells; nature has made human a phoenix within and without. And when that family needed to solve the complication, their genetic function went through a rebirth and each one transformed in different ways.

The father had always thought that no one would ever leave home. It was after all a home built with care and meant to be always the same. He took pride in his ancestral creation and how none could build a home like that one. And after three months he realized how life played games. But life and living were not illusions.

We are perhaps those simple cells within our skins that silently keep working, living, dying and continuing the cycle. The father came out of the door each day and waited for them to come back. He stayed alone in the home since the loved one was going through the journey of healing.