Home Coming

I am 40, yet i feel 16 when I look out my window and watch the warm October sun roll up the hills outside my apartment. Partcularly this week brings home many memories of childhood events, fun and gaiety spent in the folds of forgotten history. I watch through clouded memories, images of an old grandma, doting parents, noisy siblings. I smell the century old recipe that has lodged in the deep recess of my olfactory nerves. I hear endless sounds of preparation for the occasion, the merry making and excitement of a full household. This week brings to me the significance and festivities of Dasai - an annual home coming culture, which brings home the flock and shepherd together, once again.

I never realised the sands of time burying us deeper and deeper as culture gave way to modern urgencies. The demands of a boarding education, challenges of turning into a progressive citizen, career competition and the metamorphosis of cultures and societies continued to bury us even deeper. Many festivals including Dasai came and went as simply another date on my wall calendar. The home coming and bonding became blurred as the dates marked just another wining & partying evenings.

I look at my daughter working on her science project, oblivious to the significance of this week in my memories. I then tell her many accounts from the archive of my mind, but only get a superficial nod of understanding. Obviously, our children have missed out on the celebrations and actual festivities.

I take a bold step this week. I am preparing to take my wife and daughter home to my parents, to revive the culture, to re-kindle the true meaning of Dasai as family get together, and to re-establish fragmented bonds and disjointed cultures. Evolution should strengthen these bonds and not mutate them into some different guise.

As we come together this week as grandparents, parents, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, grandsons, grand-daughters, uncles, aunts, friends, cousins, relatives I hope to re-establish all broken bonds and awaken the feeling and significance of this simple but important date of home coming.

I look forward to re-live the colours, taste, sights and sounds of my childhood together with my family and friends. Our children will hopefully continue these with their children, and so on.

In this spirit, I wish to extend my warmest thoughts to all who celebrate Dasai or any other home coming festival this year, and ever.