Navarathri Days !

 Happy Mahanavami ! 

Few days back, I went to home at pooja time, like after say 4 years. Each and every minute at home, at those places where I had best of my childhood holidays, I was happy from my heart. 

The place where we, as school kids, used to sit together and chant those prayers, was empty. I started reading those prayers and I realized how much I forgot them, those mantras which I grew up listening to. Then the time I spend at temple, no school kid showed up, probably they would be at school. I had lunch at those premises alone, once I was around my gang. After that I went home, had a short nap and realized it was time to go to temple. I was fiddling through my phone and I realized how I used to give a miscall to my friend in her land line, we had our own code, 2 rings, cut the call, we are starting from home. Thinking about this, my eyes caught up the sight of the landline at the drawing room, covered with an old table cloth- we don't use them anymore ! When I stood in front of the bhajan mandap, prayed and saw the lights, I remembered a girl who would smile and jump at the sight of that. After a day, I came back to work but I found myself thinking about those days. I forgot that it was mahanavami unless I saw one of my colleagues in a bright blue saree. And tomorrow its a day which will go as usual, may be. The day may not come back where I would go to temple in the morning, writes letters, numbers and at times equations in the sand, play with it and read the textbooks at temple premises. The day where I would spend it with friends, learning and re-learning the love and companionship. 

After these many years, sitting in an air-conditioned  work place, working at an odd hour like this, glued to my laptop, I realize those days were the best. Those days where I used to be that girl with a broad smile, happiness and much love for her friends. Many more years will pass and this too will change. But this time, this day is what I have, may be to go back and meet my friends, enjoy the liberty of things which are present there. At least I wish I could go.

"Yes I miss the smell of the soil,

in which I learnt to write and play.

The friends which held me so close

That I forgot I might miss them, one day.

Those days where nothing but smile was

the only happy pill

The time where I was the happy pill

for many people around me

Forever, longing to wish to go back. 

May be one day I will wake from sleep and realise

all these were mere dreams,

And I am that little girl in her penny frock school uniform"