India beckons

I use my local library a lot. A LOT. I mean my taxes and fines are being used to construct a new self-help wing. They are even considering naming it after me.

Seriously, what's bittersweet about my library books these days are the due dates on them. March 12th has turned into September 12th as if in a blink. I read books now and turn to the page with the card that has the due date on it and I feel my heart sink. Soon the books I borrow will have due dates of October, then December, and then January. And as January rolls to an end, so will my relationship with my library, for that's around when I will stop using it, at least as a regular member. After that if all goes well, I will use it during the summers I am here, being nostalgic about these very times.

Our time to return to India draws near and so do my fears about adjusting, making good there. It is the right thing to do, no question--parents miss us and need us, our son should know his heritage and be close to family as he grows up etc etc. But spoilt brats as we've become, coddled by an efficient, no nonsense nation of haves, it isn't going to be easy going back to a country where toughness is taught at the crib. My parents though, left my brother and me too soft, too protected, too sheltered and yes, way too privileged to be well-adjusted Indians. So perhaps its poetic justice that I must do the adjusting now and be an adult about it.

Its not going to be all bad of course. With money, India can be the perfect place. Maids, cooks, afternoon tea. But my library I will miss. Sorely. Besides my friends. But truly, the library is one of my closest friends too. So it will be one of the many lovely friends I have made here that I will miss. Sigh, sigh, sigh.

Come on, you say, no real tragedy here. Its not as if I am leaving a burning house, a platoon of blood thirsty gunmen and all my possessions to go to an unknown banana republic. It's my motherland for Pete's sake right?

Sigh, sigh. I am building nostalgic memories even as I write this on this humid Sunday night, listening to my three year old talk to his cars in bed, trying hard to squeeze more into the final moments of a long, fun, almost end of summer day in Chicago.

The countdown has begun...