After All This Time Read Online Free PDF

her mother’s body, so she just held her tighter. She had no words, and she herself was fretting about meeting her father.
    ‘Mom,’ Lavanya whispered.
    ‘It has been so long since I saw you . . .’ her mother sobbed. ‘My child.’
    ‘How have you been?’
    Her mother did not respond to the question. Instead, she peppered Lavanya’s cheeks and forehead with kisses, holding her as if scared that she would run away again.
    It’s okay, Mom, I’m here now.
The words were at the tip of Lavanya’s tongue, but she could not bring herself to say them. She was not going to be there for long . . . not even if she wanted to. Hiding the truth was one thing, but she did not want to lie to her mother. She stayed in the embrace for some time, because she was stalling having to greet her father, because her mother needed it and because no one had hugged her for more than three seconds in the past six years.
    When her mother let her go at last, Lavanya took one step, just one step, towards her father. Placing an arm around his narrow waist, she leaned into him somewhat, and stayed there, half-hugging him for one second, before pulling back. She congratulated herself for managing that feat.
    ‘It’s good to see you,’ he murmured. She had not heard the deep baritone of his voice since she had left Delhi. She had called her mom occasionally to check up on her and how things were, but never once spoken to her father.
    Lavanya nodded.
    In the car, an awkward silence settled over them and no one spoke for the first five minutes. Lavanya sat in the rear seat so she would not have to be close to her father, who was driving. She looked out of the window, at the city,
her home
. This was the only place that she had ever called home, that had ever felt like home. The honking cars, two-wheelers trying to overtake everyone else, that too, from the wrong side, pedestrians crossing the streets haphazardly, with speeding vehicles driving right at them, screeching to a stop just millimetres from them. Nearly everyone was abusing everyone else. It was chaos.
    New York had been a different kind of chaos. It had been organized—even though there were pedestrians everywhere, not waiting for the walk sign to tell them it was safe to cross roads, cabbies driving like mad men, newspaper stalls and halal carts on every street. But it was still quiet. There was a rush, but it was a silent rush; it showed in the way people walked—swiftly, taking big steps, single-mindedly heading towards their destination. People rarely bumped into each other on sidewalks, so there were no
excuse me
s or
I’m so sorry
s; they all knew where they were going, they were all used to the pace.
    Here, in India, especially in Delhi, it was a contrast. It was loud. The first five minutes after Lavanya got on the road drove her crazy. So much honking. People were in a rush, yes, but only half of them. The other half was walking or driving leisurely as if taking a stroll through the park. There were abuses flying around. Ah. What a pleasure to get home to expletives in your mother tongue.
    Once they crossed the Delhi Cantonment area, a place much quieter than most parts of Delhi, they found a roadblock ahead. Some politician was on tour, leaving behind traffic havoc in his wake. The hustle-bustle of the residential-cum-commercial neighbourhood, Karol Bagh, cheered Lavanya up. As they rounded a corner, they reached the Hanuman temple, with a 108-feet tall statue of the god standing proudly, watching over the city. His hands were folded at his chest, and between his feet lay the head of a demon he had defeated. Lavanya had passed that temple hundreds of times, drawing strength every time.
    The silence in the car was killing her. Lavanya rolled down her window, feeling the morning sun on her face, mixed with the cool air. She closed her eyes for a minute and breathed in—it smelled of leaves and concrete, and dust and petroleum oil. She had missed the city. There was no place