homebound 🌳

I remember being 20 when I first took a solo trip to Dharamshala. I hopped onto a bus from R.K. Ashram Marg in Delhi, without knowing what was going to happen, what it would be like, or where I would stay. I had no awareness of the terrain I was plunging into, no parachute, just a seat in a bus and a backpack. Little did I know that one decision would lead to the beginning of my life.

As someone who did not have deep friendships or a sense of self, I would just get lost in the soulful villages I visited. The mountains were enveloping; they felt like the warm hug the little lost girl in me had always needed. I was in love with how mysterious and open they were at the same time.

Mostly though, I was in awe of the freedom, the independence I was experiencing for the first time. That fear that was slowly crystallising into curiosity, those horizons that were broadening, the conversations I could have with anyone. So much newness now, at 30, overwhelms me, but for that 20 year old, it was magical. She could see the change, feel it in her body, feel it in her smile. That spark in her eyes, that seed of love for her own country, had been planted. It grew into a big, beautiful tree.

But the soil kept getting polluted; the tree refused to grow. It didn’t understand what was happening. The way the government was functioning, the condition of our country, the noise, the exhaustion, it all began to wear the soil down. The fabric of India that once felt so vibrant and full of heart began to feel tired, threadbare in places. And I think somewhere in that heartbreak, my love for the tree simply diminished.

I hopped onto different pastures, looking for myself in Turkey, Germany, Borneo, Bangladesh, Mongolia, and Sri Lanka, while the tree stayed. Seasons upon seasons arrived and left, but the tree stayed. Unattended, yet resilient.

I met the tree again in Hampi this September. I stayed under its shade for a whole week and let it know how much I missed it, how I thought I’d lost her, how far and wide I’d gone in search of that feeling. But I seemed to have met no one like her. I told the tree about my adventures with love and gratitude, for they led me back to her when I was capable of seeing her in a different light.

So I did what I thought was best. I opened a magic coin purse in front of the tree and asked if it wanted to come along, this way she and I could be together forever, and I could show her more of what she deserved to see. The tree smiled, considered the proposal, and then she laughed softly, her leaves rustling like a secret between old friends. “I can’t come with you,” she said, her voice somewhere between the wind and my heartbeat. “You don’t need to carry me anywhere, Srishti. I’ve always been inside you. I was never rooted in Hampi or Dharamshala, I was growing in you all along.”

I stood there for a while, stunned, the kind of silence that only truth can bring filling the space between us. The air felt different, like she had just handed me back a part of myself I didn’t even realise I’d misplaced. I looked up, and for the first time in years, I saw the same shimmer I used to see when I was 20, the shimmer of possibility, of love not tied to places or governments or systems, but to the sheer aliveness of being here.

Maybe the soil wasn’t the one that got polluted after all. Maybe it was me, overstimulated, overexposed, constantly trying to run away from the noise instead of tuning into the stillness beneath it. The same stillness I first met in those mountains a decade ago.

So I sat under the tree and stayed, for hours. I let the wind tell me stories of everything I had missed while I was gone, the rains that came and went, the monkeys that fought and made up, the pilgrims who left offerings without ever asking for anything in return. I watched the sunset, the sky burning gold, and realised that the tree didn’t need to move for her world to expand. She had learned to belong, even amidst the chaos.

And maybe that’s what I was meant to learn too, that freedom doesn’t always mean leaving. Maybe it means staying and seeing your home with softer eyes, inspite it all.

When I finally got up to leave, the tree whispered one last thing, a promise disguised as a goodbye:
“Wherever you go next, take my roots with you. They’ll be your companion.”

And so, I did.

A video story of the same