Homecoming

I know, I've been very silent. I was on a 2-week business trip that ended today. As with all such trips, the days immediately preceding it were manic, to put it mildly. So for the past month there's been little time to think clear thoughts, let alone write them down.

But now I am back home. Mentally I roll the word 'home' over my tongue a few times. After 6 months of living here it seems that Boston has finally become home, if only for a time.

I felt it the moment I got off the plane. The smell of burnt Colombian coffee and freshly fried hash browns drifted through the corridors. I guess that is the smell of mornings now.

I stepped outside to get a taxi; this time I did not reel back at the exposure to the winter air, even though I had just returned from balmy Mumbai. There was a time when I would have said that my face was blasted by a gust of dry, freezing air. But now I would tell you that I felt invigorated by the sharp, robust breeze. Cold, but invigorated nontheless!

The grimy grey snowbanks by the roadsides seemed natural now, not regrettably ugly. And it was only natural that the taxi driver would have a vague African accent.

It's nice to sit on the staircase landing in my drawing room and munch on warm buttered toast. It's nice to look out at the sun shining on the deck outside, and to imagine how nice it will be sit out there again in a couple of months.

Most of all, it's nice to come home to the waiting hugs.