I arrive.
On a sleeper train from Delhi
Journeying across states
whose dust I have brought

Activities of a station
Horns on the roads
Noise and colour sprinkled
Like the mad artist
had flung his brushes

My first foot falls
In these chample
Upon the land
of my father
The soil of a village
The roots of my ancestry
Anticipation in this moment
to feel I am part of
this place
Of which I have been told

This house
Left as dad left it
The old veranda 
shows its age in the worn timber
A single-story building
with floors of whipped mud
A cordoned corner
for bathing, I'm told
Beside it the stove that is the kitchen
Bamboo tall and thick
Standing side by side in a corner
Next to the bullock cart

Bats have taken up residency
In the attic of the empty house

I break the lock to the trunk
The ancestral collection
of plates and books and things
Dad's diaries
recall thoughts, I presume
Scribbled in Gujarati
I wonder what it says
Does it share the stories of childhood
Are they of joy or trauma
Growing up in this village
The loss of granddad
Becoming the bread-winner
before reaching his teen years
Do they tell of the bamboo
or the journeys in the bullock cart
Pages dated old
Hold stories to tell
In this empty house
Inside the locked trunk
They remained alive

My search for a place to belong
Shattered by spoken words
From the resident villagers
who call me the stranger who came
and became like one of us
Not one of us
'Like' one of us
A lifetime of thought
Of the village where I'm from
Announced to identify me to others
Now turns to another place
Where I'm the friendly stranger

Yet the soil speaks to me
In whispers
Faded footprints still show
beneath the grass
Where my father tread
Telling me of my ancestry
The blood that runs within
The language upon my tongue
In its unique variation
The customs and culture
Connect me to this land
To this soil, to this dust
Though a stranger I be
This land 
Is where I am from.