The Lunch that took me Home...

 

Hi… I am Ayaan.

And this is a small story about a lunchbox that wasn't even mine.

Today a colleague called me to the cafeteria for some work.

I sat beside him, we talked, and somewhere in between I glanced across the table. Another colleague, a friend, had brought lunch from home.

Dal. Chawal. Dry cauliflower sabzi.

Simple. Humble. Ordinary.

But the moment I saw it — something inside me stopped.

The smell, the colors, the way it was packed — all of it pulled me somewhere far away from that cafeteria in Bangalore. Back to a small kitchen in Mumbai. Back to school lunch hours. Back to the sound of my mother's voice calling us to eat.

Me and my friend Hrishi. Sitting together. Eating the exact same thing, dal chawal and dry cauliflower, without ever appreciating how good it actually was.

We just ate. Like it would always be there. I smiled at my friend's lunchbox without saying anything.

He didn't notice. But for that one quiet moment — I was not in Bangalore anymore. I was home.

Then work called me back.

A message. A task. Something that needed my attention.

I smiled to myself, pushed the feeling gently to the back of my mind, and carried on.

That's the thing about living alone far from home, you don't fall apart every time you miss it. You just carry it quietly. Like a familiar weight you've learned to walk with. 

Home doesn't leave you.

It just waits patiently in the small things — a smell, a color, a simple plate of dal chawal on someone else's table.

And when it finds you, it doesn't ask for anything.

Just a moment. Just a smile.

Just a quiet reminder, that no matter how far you go…

You always belong somewhere.  

I am Ayaan. And I am still finding my way — one day at a time.