Hyderabad

The harder you try to hold on to something, the quicker it slips away.

The Hyderabad of my childhood was filled with cousins, piles of mangoes, my grandmother's authoritative voice, my grandfather's soft hands soothing away cuts and bruised egos, a Maruti 800 car packed above and beyond the limit with children of all ages, shapes and sizes, dogs that were fed on the sly under the table, the burning heat chased away by coolers fed with water by a Mali more aged than I could ever imagine and finally, the inevitable train journey home towards normalcy.

Now, when I sit in my grandfather's chair (which seemed big enough to hold all four granddaughters at one time), and feel the new material that covers its arms... I am looking desperately for any reminders of the Hyderabad I used to know. My grandparents are long gone, their only remnants are pictures on the walls and their extensive library collection. The cousins have moved away, some married, some gone stranger than they ever were before. And the house - the one constant that encompassed it all, has changed slowly, subtly... so that I did not even notice it until four years later.

For the first time, my holiday refuge where I never cast a backward glance towards Bombay, is making me homesick. As I dish out advice to others about 'living in the moment' and 'accepting change or you will never be happy with the present', I am finding the practise harder than I ever imagined.

Every alteration is bewildering, every inevitable transformation is making me long to go home.