Native of a Nomad

I lived in 4 cities in 22 years, regularly visited one another. I liked all the places I lived in for different reasons, and therefore don’t really think any one place to be a favorite over another.

During the last few years that we spent living in Gandhinagar, I was often asked a most baffling question – ‘Tum ho kahan key?’ to which I wish I had a simple one-word reply, but unfortunately I didn’t. So I would say...

“I don’t have a native place. My father grew up in many places, but you could say he is a native of Jamnagar.”

Before they jump to the next assumption, and say “But you don’t sound like..!”

And I would say, “I’m basically a native of Lalpur, a small town near Jamnagar. Hmm, even though I'm from Lalpur, I was brought up in Gandhinagar. And lived my early years in Radhanpur and a small village nearby…”

And they would say… “Forget it, man!”

For a long time, I wanted to visit my native place. So I went there this summer.
It has been sagely said that "everyone has a native place;" and with this unanswerable proposition we couple the remark, that they are prone to consider it the most Eden-like spot on earth's surface.

When you fall short of words you begin to spout poetry. Sounds illogical, but when you are the only soul sitting by the river under a canopy of stars with just waving trees and a lonely temple across for company, believe me, it’s easy.

But when I arrived there, it was something I never expected.

Those lofty trees have disappeared, whose trunks were covered with deeply carved names, and mill-wheels dash passionately in Nature's once secluded sanctuary. The money-changers have come into the temple.

Maybe, in revisiting my birth-spot, it would have been pleasanter to have found it the way it was. But it matters little, since its picture hangs in the halls of memory, to fade not till she herself is dead.