Call of the Roots

I feel an overwhelming sense of despondency at having to revisit the family ancestral home. For the first time in the twenty five years of my going there, it will be uninhabited by anyone. Usually my in-laws and some extended family would always be found, but this time there will be no one but the long time family retainers, and a long list of people ‘who need to be acknowledged’.

I will once again walk those paths, visit the family temples, dress in the ‘appropriate’ manner and validate the roles that each of these elements has played in building up my current identity that I present to an entirely different world.  Both how I perceive the world and relate to it on an everyday level. How often do I acknowledge this?

In the world I inhabit, there are no traditions, there is no how to be, there is a freedom of expression, an almost boundary-less overlapping of states of being constantly as one multi-tasks constantly without a pause, without a breath.

In the short while that I will spend in our village far away, I hope to not only temporarily lose myself in the simplicity of a bygone era, but to absorb the stillness and permanence of its essence in my body-mind, and revel in the part of it that continues to breathe in me. In hoping that I somehow manage to subliminally transfer my sensitivities to the teenagers I leave behind. Is that a big ask? I wonder…