22/07/2026
--- ROOTS ---
I lie in the grass.
It can feel its soft prickliness through my shirt.
Right above, the sun glows lazily.
The warmth of the afternoon,
Like a heated blanket,
Tinting my eyelids the blueish-orange color
of light
I open my eyes,
Huh?
Where is the sun??
There!
Trying to slink behind the great banyan tree
But I can see its red-gold bandana
It can't be setting already!! I just woke up, I just got here, there's so many things to do I just...
I trudge up the stairs, knock on the door.
The one labeled "104". This is the one right? Though I didn't see any "Block C" that would've confirmed it for me.
I knock, or maybe I ring the bell
I'm greeted by a woman with salt-and-pepper hair. She tells me it was "dyed". I couldn't tell it was a joke
Oh well
And I sit down on the red sofa. My spot
Soon I'm called on "stage", my heart tries to jump out my ribcage. And I begin to read, fidgeting and swaying like a reed, the epic tale of "Bunnicula", the vampire rabbit.
Kirtana told me to grow roots, to breathe.
So I did, feeling my feet grip the cold, golden tiles.
The sun casts its crimson profile onto the banyan tree
It stretches, reaching up, tall and majestic, towards the heavens, but its long arms always find their way back towards the ground. Towards the roots
One day Kirtana gave us a surprise exercise
Write a poem about when you were five
Write it in five minutes
(And I'm SURE kirtana always counts fast)
Somehow, I spat something out
It was about the time we moved out
The first time my roots were yanked out
As we flew out to a new land, to Banaglore.
I nearly cried then. I thought the feelings were buried, decomposed, but it all came back out
onto that page
But, after that day, somehow,
the pain retreated gracefully
into the sunrise
And now, here I am again. On the cusp of my return to the land of the Brave and Free.
The gold of the sky transitions into pink. Into purple. The sky looks like mango-raspberry-blueberry icecream. I know
the light will never
fall this way again
No, it can't. can it?
Should it?
And I Iook at it and,
wait
why do I always hide behind these flimsy metaphorical masks anyway?
People tell me I cling onto the past too much. But what can I do BUT cling on, should I just watch as 12 years of my life just.... end... on a flight?
I'm not dreading the future. Quite the opposite, I'm really excited!
But, I liked my present too. I've spent so much time here, hours watching the light fall on the trees I tried to climb as a child
Hours memorizing metro stops and timings, burning the geogrpahies of this city into my mind's GPS
Hours laughing at inane jokes, noting them down - 955 of them.
Hours creating a labyrinth of inside jokes, cursing at Sarjapur "roads" and Whitefield traffic, reading kannada signs about cockroaches, and
making friends,
who I've grown to really love
who will now be reduced to phone screens. The difference between us, night and day.
Or, actually. It feels like I haven't spent enough time here.
I've finally untangled myself from the binds of my own design. Tried to open my damn eyes. My roots finally plunge from my feet into the mud, finally intertwining with the fingers of the city, with the hands of everyone in it.
And now it's time to fly, to yank everything out again.
And I just wish
I'd been more present
While I was here
Oh well. My eyes are open now.
The sun has finally set, casting the trees in jet black shadows
But I think
If I wait long enough
I'll see
the stars.
- by Rahul Maru
