An Old Pair of Jeans
It was the day before Christmas. Piu’s flight had just landed at the Calcutta airport and she was waiting in queue to collect her suitcase. As she stood there at the baggage reclaim area, staring at bags of varied shapes and sizes slowly making their way around the carousel, her mind was shrouded by a mixed feeling of excitement and nervousness. It had been 6 years since Piu had visited her home in Calcutta. She wondered how it would feel to go back, to acquaint herself with the lanes and by-lanes which she had once known like the back of her hand. How would it feel to sleep in her old bedroom, adorned with numerous photographs of her childhood and adolescence, reminding her of the times gone by? Had her mother torn down the Shah Rukh Khan poster at the back of her bedroom door, in all these years? Had the Neem tree outside her window grown tall, or had it been cut down again by dwellers of the nearby slum? The questions were too many. Having spent 4 years abroad and the last 2 years...