I desperately searched for old photographs from my childhood spent in my maternal grandparents house in Godavarru. Pictures of the makeshift swing we used to play with all day long, the cool and cozy dining room with the red oxide floor, the kitchen with earthen stoves and musty smell of burnt coal and a cat curled up in the corner, the village school with charpoys for the kids to sit, the green fields lined with the irrigation canals, the huge banyan tree in front of the my grandparents’ house, the cupboard where my granny stored the goodies that she cooked for her grandchildren, the village well and many many more, all kept somewhere safe and secure.
I was pretty sure I put them all in that old wooden chest.
…and it dawned on me suddenly that they were just images in my mind that were so vivid, so alive and so real that I have not realised that they were only my memories which pulled me back to the place that I loved the most.