Homeland

Seated by the window of a plane… waiting to take off. 

Ground reality is my homeland. My house I can’t see, but I know it’s there somewhere.  Everything I can see is so real. Looking up. Clouds are adding on to the weight of the sky. The plane is preparing to take us there. It takes off. In some moments, through our stone deaf ears, my eyes realise we are up in the sky. Looking down. Can’t make out which is a hut and which a sky rise. All are dots now. The clouds are real. They have started melting onto the earth now. It has become lighter, clearer, cleaner, brighter. It is space. Is there conflict here? Well, earth is also space, and so is the space between the earth and the sky. We have one sky, one earth. The plane is moving I know, but I can’t feel it. Not at all. Just as I don’t realise when the earth moves. It appears as not real. That which is flat is round, and that which is still is moving, and space which is thick with things is also space. So what is real? Is the conflict I see real? Is the killing I see real? The sky which was not real from the ground, and the ground which does not seem real from the sky! Both are real or nothing is? So is it the distance that’s causing the shift from the real into something it is not? So will the conflict seem unreal with distance I wonder. It’s worth making the effort then.

The plane landed. People speak, eat, dress, and even think differently. The language I use in my land is not real here. Nothing is real and constant. I see conflict here too. What causes this conflict in a place where nothing is real. I am away from my home, away from my food, away from my familiar smell. But I see conflict here too just as I see in the land where my home is. I feel at peace here. Nobody understands what I speak, so I am in conflict with none. I find this strange when people here want to know about my land and go there. They say they are tired of conflicts, and that people are bad there. Strange, because I have seen people saying the same thing in my land too!

Like this I move from land to land. And everywhere I find that people are tired of conflicts, of their own people, and they want to travel to be at peace with themselves. So it is the distance may be! Not sure, there is a may be. Or is it the way of looking at your people as if they are not yours, to be able to imagine that you don’t belong to the land where your home is makes all the difference.

I am on the plane again. I am in the sky. I am seated in an aisle now. This is my home… this space is my home. I have imagined similar roads, tea shops where I drink tea with friends in the sky. I can’t see it, but I know it’s there somewhere.

My plane has arrived in my homeland now… can’t wait to reach home. I see me telling myself that this is not my home...it is elsewhere, in a space where there is infinite peace. With this I reach my homeland and I see my people running into me to say hello.