Destination Digboi

I craned my neck out of the window and took a long deep breath. The sky was a soothing blue. The unending stretch of tea gardens on my either side draped the place in a sgorgeous green. The air was humid in the stillness of the noon. Yet, I had not felt so refreshed, so rejuvenated in a long time. The windmills of my mind went aflutter with memories mercurial.  I smiled, as much to myself as to the place I belonged to. ‘Welcome to Digboi’, read a signboard on the roadside.

I was headed home after six years. My eyes welled up. Emotions find their own expressions. Tears of joy trickled down my face only to erupt into a smile that would linger for days to come. When you go back to where it all began, and trace the footprints of time, you know the clock has ticked on, but several moments have frozen for a lifetime. As our car veered through roads much travelled and familiar lanes, the snoozy little town was only waking up to a bustling evening.

While in Digboi, I stayed at my uncle’s place, an old British-era bungalow flanked by many more of the same kind. The layout of the house was a carbon copy of the one I had spent my early childhood in, albeit in a different para (as localities are commonly known there).  It was Deja vu every bit. One moment I saw the little girl in her favourite frock prancing around the garden, the next moment she was there playing hide-and-seek with her friends. There I looked, and she stepped out of the blue school bus, and lo and behold, here she was taking a stroll in the veranda with her mother and her pet cat! I wallowed in nostalgia.

Digboi had grown old and acquaintances older, but the warmth they brought along had only grown stronger. My camera in tow, I looked back at life, this time to see how beautiful it was. I went visiting the house I had lived in, till I left the place over a decade ago. Yet again, a torrent of memories left the shores of my eyes moist. I had long craved to be there. The once-manicured lawns looked wild. The jackfruit and mango trees stood in their place, just a little droopy, just a little weepy.  It was as if the empty house too was waiting for me to come by.

The mornings and the evenings once again seemed familiar. My grandpa’s red-brick house, the school where I spent the sunshine years of my life, the temple, the bakery, the church, the local market -- how often I had thought of them, dreamt of them several times.  Tucked miles away from the restlessness of a city life, it felt time too was on a vacation with me.

The small-town girl ate, slept and made merry, till it was time to say goodbye. What a beautiful lingering it was.

(Digboi, the oil town of Assam, is where the first oil well in Asia was drilled. Digboi refinery is the world’s oldest oil refinery still in operation.)