I sniffed my mum's hands at the airport on Nov 14, 2024.

On my way to work I thought, “I could always make stuff up about how my trip was!” I could tell them that I climbed to the Mount Everest base camp or went for hikes across the country, or that I went to the Lakshadweep island. Maybe Scuba dived in Andaman. That sounds exciting but where were those photos? I don’t know, man. Lost them. New memory card for the phone.

Nah, I went to my dear Motherland, and to the city that raised me. Engulfed by the hot sweet air, I lay on it with the cloudy condensation of humid air sitting on my face, the whole time. The haze catching my eye immediately, the smog surfacing alongside the thought of “bad AQI”. Truthfully, as soon as I got off the airport, I was me but 23 again. I’ll always be 23 on “meri mitti” that kinda sorta translates to a full-blown emotion of “My dirt, my ground, my playground, my roots”. I know - glorification of borders that don’t actually exist. Patriotism that is left far away when we leave home for better opportunities and “access”. And wealth. What’s even the point of "meri mitti”! I agree, I don’t know what’s the point. But what can I do, can’t figure much while at home, can’t see the point amidst the rise in pollution there, bwahahaha. Bwaaaaaaahahahaa. Sorry.

But I saw them. There they were, the latest new additions to my family, the parents and sibling of my now husband. I hugged them for the first time. They cried happy tears as their eyes met my husband’s. It had been so long, indeed. Bloody interesting how time and distance can feel so rewarding. Makes me angry and grateful in a twisted second. It was the heat that brought me back to the moment.

I waited a little longer; “Where are they?” She was there first.

Mum with her lion cub face. She is a bit fragile on the physical plane - if you press any part of her limb for more than 3 seconds, it goes blue green. But she won’t let anyone see that - she operates mainly on the mental plane. So, at the time, I only saw what she showed me. I saw a big smile on a rushed figure approaching me with short skippy steps.I smelled her. With the scent of her talc and maybe some perfume mixed with it this time. I liked her perfume. I like all of her anyway, anytime and always and forever. Then I took her tiny hands with slender fingers. I sniffed the same hands that cooked for me after scolding me. Mothers need to fucking learn to signal their love better.

Papa was parking the car, she told me when I asked anxiously. We have a car now!! We have also had a Tata Nano - the much joked about, peculiar case study for car models, the infamous dream of Ratan Tata for Middle-middle class Indian to own a car. The dream that was apparent to the Indian market as a mere prototype of safety hazards. Pretty much a prototype of the nation. Well, it saved us on many rainy days. Many a times we took it for a ride, our tight, handy family ushering in the guitar, the list of songs, and we had the tea kettle and sandwiches, thanks to the mother of the family.

Papa would drive us along and that same Nano car took us places that are now photographs within frames in our bedroom. And that bedroom that we never had? We have it now. It has now been destined for our sleepover dreams to become reality. Mum and dad sleep next to each other in a separate room. Isn’t that lovely? It looks “normal”. Beautiful. And desirable, even. Mum always knows how to make things beautiful. She’s like the jasmine flower. Her scent is pressed in her skin so she need not be in a pleasant place from the get-go. She coo!

Papa is like a Banyan tree. So stubborn. Nobody can imagine how free he used to be. How stupidly adventurous he still is but hides it so well that he doesn’t remember being a risk taker. He sucks up so much of our freedom because of his fears. Fear projector father whose years of compounding efforts later grow into his aerial roots on which I get on and swing myself to faraway dreams. And I realize that the transformation of a dream into a fear is pretty philosophical, and I think about it under the shade of the same banyan tree that is my father.

And their younger offspring, this sibling of mine, morphs into creatures like a donkey, horse, monkey, goat just to be the gift of my life. Our teasing goes interspersed with Harry Potter movies, Hamilton musicals, Guitar sessions, and becoming each other’s parents. He might be the smart kid for everyone else. For me, I’m grateful he exists, getting blazed or working the clock away through days and nights.

I was thinking of all this as I reached “meri mitti” with bad AQI and smelled and sniffed my mother’s hands. Time and space can be hurtfully rewarding, the banyan tree tells us.