My Homecoming

Every evening I come home and let myself in with a duplicate key I carry. I never ring the bell. My wife does the same when she comes home after work, almost an hour after I get in. Since all of us live on the first floor, it is pointless for someone to come downstairs and unlock the main door.

It has been a practice for many years now, from long before I got married. Each homecoming of a family member is acknowledged with a brief nod at best, and being riveted to the television at worse. We live like islands till dinner, when we meet over food and briefly discuss our day. Ours is a very impersonal and independent family, and overt shows of emotion are frowned upon. We are a joint family which in essence is a loose association of many nuclear families, each family constitutes many sub-nuclear members. Each in their own world.

It is changing. A girl, all of eight years, is wiser for her age. She hears the ruffle of my feet on the garage driveway or the tinkle of the main gate as I let down the padlock, and comes rushing down the stairs. She switches on the light, smiles from across the grille gate and unlocks it with her nimble hands. she rushes out and hugs me. She stays that way for an interminable time, silently hugging me, with grime of the streets all over my aged frame.

By then, I am, true to my flock, am thoroughly embarrased at this expressive behaviour. My arms frozen by my side my long perfected inhibition, I don't return the hug.

Then, she pulls me down by my neck, an irrepressible force in her tiny hands, and kisses me on the cheek. Not a peck, a full blown kiss of a daughter for a dad. I shut my eyes in embarrassment, but my eyes start burning, not all of it in the unbridled emotiveness of a child not chastised enough.

She holds my hand and serenades me up the stairs with a tumultous cascade of words depicting her busy day at school. Once upstairs and I have taken my shoes off and eased into my slippers, she is ready with a glass of water.

I start to melt.

That water. There is nothing that ever tastes sweeter in the day or night. I have come home. At last.   --- by Jayanta Ray Feb 28th 2013.