There are some moments when you feel that, if you shut your eyes really tightly and wish with the purest and sincerest of hearts, your wish will come true. That what you really, really, really want will appear in front of your eyes if you simply really, really, really wish for it to be there. Whether this act is triggered by faith or by madness (or both), may depend on the individual, but there is in every case a tiny feeling of hope, hidden beneath our layers of logic and rationale, that somehow or the other our wish will come true, however crazy and unlikely it may be for such a thing to happen.
As I opened my bedroom curtains to welcome in the rising sun's light, this was the feeling I was flooded with. There was something about this morning's sunrise, that reminded me so strongly of my early mornings in India. It was the shade of the sun's rays - the rays were the exactly the same shade of soft gold as they were in India.
And all of a sudden, I felt a little tug coming from inside me - the kind of tug you feel when you are longing for something, that leaves you wondering whether there really is a physical response for longing, or whether you are simply imagining things in the madness of the moment. I really wanted to be back on the rooftop back home, back in India.
I wanted the brick-paved street in front of me to morph into the grey tarmac streets surrounding our building back home, and have sand (and occasional blobs of cow dung) bordering the streets on either side, instead of the picture-perfect pavement I was looking at. I wanted to see rickshaws crawling along the tarmac streets, on their way to pick school children up, and women in saris carefully navigating their way around the cow dung, carrying their baskets to put the vegetables that they were on their way to buy in with them. And little children getting ready on the road sides to sell jasmine flowers, to earn money for their family. And men opening their shops behind them. I wanted to see people brushing their teeth on their balconies, and women picking up the dried washing that would be hanging on the clothes line on their rooftop for their husband and children.
Despite seeing the hustle and bustle of getting ready for another new day whichever direction I turned to, being on the rooftop gave me a sense of serene solitude, especially during the early hours of the day. It was during those moments, standing amidst the morning breeze and watching the world around me getting on with its life, that I knew the wind was happily flicking through the pages of my mind, that were more often than not occupied with silly and curious thoughts and dreams of a young girl. (This was perhaps how my love for sunrises began, although I cannot pinpoint the exact moment for sure..)
And - I don't know why today, why at that moment, save for the shade of the sunlight giving me a sense of déjà vu - I felt a desperate urge to go back (in time as well as in terms of space) and re-live those moments again - on the same spot on the rooftop outside my maternal grandparents' flat, in between the washing area and the stairs, overlooking the little 'dump site', that used to be the recipient of many a glass of orange juice that my grandmother used to make me drink (alas, it is no longer there) - with my morning breath and messy hair and innocence.
