Dear Diary,
Got my passport today! Yaay!I was genuinely horrified that it wouldn’t reach me. My past history with courier companies and packages has not been very pleasant, to say the least. But this one reached without much hassle. Although delayed by 1 day. Maybe it’s because mom posted it. I told her how I worried I was about it getting lost and she reassured me, ‘Relax, if I package it, it will reach on time’. Bless your hands, momma.
It was wrapped in an old madhuri hits cd Album cover..and then by another two layers of transparent plastic covering. I removed the plastic sheaths and this strong odor of old cassette tapes wafted through… I can’t say if it’s pungent or pleasant....but just that it brings back a lot of memories...Suddenly my mind is being flooded by memories in which I remember smelling the same odor..
We had a lot of cassette tapes at home back in the day..And even after getting rid of them, the shelves, cupboards and the showcases smelled the same..We put books and music CDs in the place of cassettes..cook books, yoga books, novels, geography books, maps,..all sorts of them..occasionally I’d take one out, sift through the pages, put it back...They have been there for 20+ years..
It really is a weird smell...but it brings back so many memories lived in place I cherish so much. Home. And it made me smile...I kept smelling it once in a while every now and then. These days, life at home has changed so much..The place has changed. The people are aging.. Buildings, malls and all kinds of crazy development activities are taking place...Each time I go back, it’s becoming less and less familiar. I find something new that wasn’t there in my hometown before. And I haven’t even been gone that long.
Even life at home is changing so much. Mom and dad have done so many renovations over the past few months, and they’ve started renting the empty rooms to working women. There’s like, idk 6 people now? somehow I feel that home will never give me the warmth and comfort of being home again. I fear that whatever nostalgia and longing I have is for a place that exists only in my memory.The way my home existed exactly the way I remember it when I lived there…Now every time I go back, I miss it a little less than before..
And I think that’s why the album cover makes me so happy...It’s like a bottle with a message I recovered from the sea. A blast from the past..Something tangible that took me to the home that exists only in my heart. I think I’ll keep smelling the vinyl cover till the odor fades completely.