The Warmth of Familiarity

It’s the comfort of your bed. The particular stiffness of the mattress. It’s the sight of empty, old shampoo bottles kept along your bathroom’s shelf and of the same pairs of shoes lined up in your shoerack. It’s the taste of freshly baked chapatis and it’s the distinctive, peculiar scent of your old room. It’s even the bustle of the city, which makes up for a rather strange backdrop of your present. It’s the revving of engines, the perpetual cycle of honking, the zig-zagging of vehicles, things which make you wonder how order and chaos can coexist so beautifully. It’s the train of thought that you develop when you are driving on roads that you are highly familiar with whilst blasting music that you absolutely love. It’s the fuzzy feeling in your chest when you see your old friend, your neighbour, the security guard or the stray dog who always sits by your house. It’s the first sip of chai, and it’s the last bite of that extra spicy homemade pickle. It is what you feel when your fingers run through the dusty pages of old books and magazines that you collected as a child. It is the faint nostalgia that you acknowledge as you take an evening walk in your verandah, and it is the subtle freshness that slowly rises when you watch the sunrise at the top of your terrace. It’s the sizzle of a traditional breakfast, and the drizzle that spruces up the flower bed in your garden. It’s the triviality of political arguments before dinner, and it’s the sweet sugar rush of the dessert after. It’s the sound of silly chuckles over senseless banter, and also the sound of all the familiar sounds. It’s embedded in the drowsiness that you feel as your eyes dance through the last few words of a book that you read before going to bed, and when you wake up, everything is reset.

You experience it again. The sublime feeling. The feeling of being home. The feeling which makes you think that everything is the way it was, and everything is the way it is supposed to be.