Ganpati brings me home every year. This time it was two weeks in Nagar, the house full and the festival going on around us.
I had my laptop open and my mind running in several streams at once: a handful of knotty problems with real consequences, each its own world, and me switching between them all day, all in. Around that, there were the hills: going up them, getting soaked in the rain, running through them. There was home-cooked food made by my mom: modak, vaangyachi bhaaji, kothimbir vadi, kadhi, shev bhaaji. There were hours of poker and every kind of Uno with the family, and hours spent reminiscing about old days. The days made room for everything.
Running beneath all of it was a wait. My brother’s admission had come through a month earlier. But the admission rounds were running late this year, so his college wouldn’t say when classes would begin, only that they’d announce it a few days before. So every morning, all of us woke up to the same question: had the date come out yet? Without knowing, we kept packing his bags and planning his departure anyway. And there was one stretch we all quietly hoped it wouldn’t land on: the two days mom and dad simply couldn’t step away from work.
Then the date was announced. It landed on exactly those two days.
So the two weeks ended with a train ride, just me and my brother, to a city he’d never lived in. His bags had been ready for a while, after two weeks of mom and dad making lists and packing whatever he might need for his first time away from home.
Dad drove us to the station early in the morning. The sun was gleaming, Khwaaishein was playing on the radio, and we sat there with all our bags. On a bridge lined with glass buildings, I could see the silhouette of our car, and of us inside it, reflected in the glass. For a second I was watching us from the outside, like a scene I already knew I’d miss.
At the station, I hugged everyone. I put off going in, trying to stretch the conversation a few minutes longer. We took pictures of all of us.
At his college, I attended his induction program. The dignitaries talked about the college’s clubs, the syllabus, the fests, and I caught myself smiling, knowing the time he’s about to have.
I helped him set up his hostel room and spent some time there with the hostel mates he was just getting to know. It took me back to my own first days of college, eight years ago. I wondered which of them would become his closest friends.
Then it was time for me to leave. I said goodbye, walked out, and caught my flight to Mumbai. September is nearly over. It was a good one.
