My dad stays in Varanasi and most of my childhood was spent there.
Spent in the teeming, smelly, noisy ghats. Amidst bulls and monkeys and sadhus. In a throbbing, bustling city which was very very very alive.
And today.These random terrorists just came and destroyed my childhood haven. A place where I always turned to for solace.
I spent the worst 45 minutes of my life today.
I heard about these blasts on TV and I couldn’t get through to baba, pisi or any of my friends or my dad’s colleagues. I was sitting…watching TV.. watching those familiar roads and temples spattered with blood and gore..littered with the stray chappal, the purse, the chhata…watching those decked up politicians talking utter crap on all the news channels… while I was almost physically sick with worry.
I did manage to get through to baba and pisi after sometime… ( and I know that the university campus is the safest place in the entire city), but the worry still doesn’t go away.
Maybe it never will. And maybe in some distant future I will learn to deal with it.
But right now…I think I need my baba. In flesh and blood. And I need him to give me a great big hug.
Because my childhood memories were bloodied and blasted today.