Finding Home Again – Our Quest to Belong’ written by Richa Sharma explores the themes of displacement and stories from North Eastern States of India that rest of the country knows so little about…Read for the special extracts published with permission
When a train derails in flood-ravaged Assam, it disrupts the lives of Mridula, Maya, and Kranti. Amid the search for their loved ones in the wreckage, repressed shadows come to the fore. Hyderabad-based author Richa Sharma’s book ‘Finding Home Again – Our Quest to Belong’ reflects her experiences while growing up and having lived in different parts of the country, especially in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.
Her experience of displacement, innumerable train journeys and first-hand experience of monsoon-led floods that the rest of India has no knowledge of – all these find place in her characters Mridula, Maya and Kranti and the situation that they find themselves in. And her fiction based on real-life experiences explores three of her protagonists straining to break free from the burden of childhood and shifting homelands. And if they withstand the awareness that change often brings if they seek refuge in their old selves―Mridula, in accustomed abuse; Maya, in denial; Kranti, in Maya!!
Fridaywall publishes with permission three different excerpts from Richa Sharma’s book ‘Finding Home Again – Our Quest to Belong’ which give a glimpse into the various layers in the narrative style of the author.
“Eventually, they decided to walk near the river. Kranti saw a finely shaped log, smoothened by years of the river’s effort. He immediately picked it up. Handing it over to Maya, he told her about his father’s fondness for these pieces, who often transformed them into functional pieces of furniture. Never to keep in his home, but to present them to those he knew. Searching for another piece, he went further into the shallow waters.
‘This water. It’s good, feels nice, but no one should be like it,’ Kranti said as they walked on pebbles with clear water running over their feet.
‘Meaning?’
‘It doesn’t have any shape or colour. No fixed identity. There is no resistance at all. It will just fall into a glass. If I freeze, it just turns into ice. No revolt, nothing. And if I boil, it will vanish.
Not a trace would be left of its existence.’
‘But we all know that we need it to live,’ said Maya while looking at her feet and feeling the river bed. ‘See yaar, how much importance do we give it? Not much. It’s not like we revere water and cherish it. It has a granted presence in our lives. That’s it.’ ‘Not always. It has different avatars. Sometimes we love it and sometimes we are scared of it. I mean, think of the ocean.
Especially the sea during a storm, like a tsunami. It’s scary, but at the same time, we try to reduce our fear of ocean water with a glass of water to drink. That’s its beauty, da.’
‘Not beauty. It’s chaos na. We polluted the sea. We take that glass of water for granted. And water, if you see, is either in submission or mindless rage.’
‘You know, my mother is like water,’ he said, as though wanting to end the discussion and bring it to a point of reason.
‘Mine too.’ Not a glass of water, but an ocean, Maya thought, aware how this search had transformed Ma for her. Her mother, a sea, with so much mystery and depth that no one but she knew. No matter how deep Maya dived, she got only what her mother chose to show. Maya knew it back then too.”
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Nature and love
‘Have you ever noticed how love changes with the change of places?’ he ruminated. ‘Like how lovers’ quarrels pause when the sun dyes the sky orange,’ she replied. She had often seen lovers holding hands and hugging longer when the waves rose to greet and the wind blew to caress. And how, around mountains, words of anger were swallowed, following the unsaid rules of silence that they bestowed. Love often became encompassing when nature
beckoned it. With nature watching them, people would become timid in their expectations. Giving would come easily. ‘This love, even though not as divine as nature, will become similarly elusive. It won’t last long enough to be recorded or ‘It will last only for a moment. A moment of purity and trueness. In that fleeting moment, nothing but love will matter.
Its tenderness—incited by nature.’ ‘The love that nature beholds for generations, that we can experience within a second. The second that will be as important ‘The lifetime we will live in, just in that moment.’
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Maya was sweating and shivering when she got up from her chair. Unable to bear the heaviness, she paced around the room.
After a while, she went to the balcony. It was raining. It had been drizzling since evening, but now the rain fell heavily, without a break. Clouds seemed to burst open, and the sky veiled in a thick grey blanket. The houses stood oblivious to the havoc outside. The darkness within them merged with the one outside, slowly sneaking out of the windows and hugging the sky above. Maya stood still, looking at the dark sky. Darkness had become
the only shade clouds seemed to acquire. Dark. Enormous. Black. Black, the colour of her life, as she felt. No, that’s not the colour of my life, she thought instantly.
Why did we brand dark as bad? Why couldn’t the light be wrong? What if it was the light’s mistake of illuminating the wrong side? It might be the one that plotted the accident against her, and wronged the right, she thought. She was questioning herself, her decisions, and even wishes. But nothing resented her with any answers.
Finding Home Again
Nu VOice Press
Rs 349
