The World That Was Mine.

I sat in my room, admiring the fairy lights out of my window sipping onto some tea. Tea and pre-winters. My room's window that showed me how beautifully well-lit are the houses outside. My window, that fills my room with the sweet November winter air. The air that carries festivity in it, wherever it subtly flows. This is the best possible weather, cool, moist, breezy.

This makes me so, so, so incredibly homesick.

I've lived away from home for sometime and yet, winters have the power to make me want to leave everything behind for even a single day back to where I grew up.

November set in a week back, bringing with it the familiar, brutal colours of nostalgia. How these approaching winters make my heart ache, my soul yearn for the home that was. All I embrace now are memories of memories, repainted repeatedly till everything is tinged with a vintage shade.

There is something in the air that's making me melancholy. I miss home, being younger, being less responsible, that illusionary safety. I miss the late afternoons, early winter evenings back at home. I miss the wintry smell of grass and earth; this time of the year smells like nothing else. I'd jump around in my verandah, my terrace, waiting for the sun to set, for weather to get chiller yet happier. For the street lights to fight and manage to twinkle through the thick blanket of fog. I would wait for the folks to wake up from their siesta, for the little family tea-time that I looked forward to almost the whole day. Warming our hands around the hot tea-mugs we'd discuss about our days. Kids running around the house, making it livelier kicking away even the bout of gloominess that winter might bring in.

Nights would be cold and snuggly, falling asleep under the heaps of blankets, in the perfectly decked bed that Mom would set. Tucked in, next to the bed side bookshelf, I was safe, smaller and more innocent. That was my world. With fog painting the entire little town hazy, I, in my warm bed, listened to the quiet little part of the world that was ours, yet drawn to the outside sounds, imagining how being far away from here would seem like. To be in the world that wasn't ours.

I'm not sure what I miss more - the memories of my time in the past, the house or being younger.

Another puff of air.

Another sound of crackers.

Another kick of nostalgia.

I think about how life changes, how this November is different from the last one. The same city feels more like home this time around.

But nothing like the world that was mine.

*Excerpts of this post have been inspired from a friend I follow on Instagram. :)