Home.

I'm at that point after every exam when you slowly and delightedly get used to the fact that you don't have to procrastinate anymore. There's nothing hanging over your head, nothing that you have to desperately forget for a few more hours until the last minute panic guides you through the day before the exam.

There's still packing to be done, mess bills to be paid and other minor stuff to do before I finally get on the train. The train will take 15 hours chugging up the coast while I very obviously avoid catching the eye of a co-passenger, because I hate the awkward, stumbling conversation that happens in trains. But I will stare at them later, thinking about their lives making up their background stories, not because it's fun, but because I'll be really really bored.

And then I'll be home, free for almost two months, to be able to wake up at noon everyday. And patiently listening to Parents, Relatives, Neighbours and Hangers-Ons exclaim how thin I've become. They will then ignore me and debate amongst themselves ,in the tones of ones who have seen the ways of the world, about food and illnesses and children not eating. And I will contentedly, for a while atleast, feel like I'm three again. And then I will go back to sleep again.

For weeks, I'll be able to lord it around, doing the "tired-child-returned-from-college" bit, till my dad starts vaguely telling me to go do work. And I will promptly move out of his sight so that he doesn't figure out that I have absolutely no work to do, and decide to give me some. While I eat all the food in the house and subtly let the parents arrive at the conclusion that life is hell in college, my sisters will start whining and start pointedly asking me when I go back to college. And then I will sit back and watch happily while the parents shush and hiss at them.

Then I'll walk the streets of Mumbai feeling like I own them again, while I eat at every sev puri wallah. They will ask me, concernedly, where I've been. And I will explain to them how difficult it was surviving without chaat food in college. And I will feel the pulse of the big city, the noise, the constant movement, the people.

And then I'll meet the friends I haven't seen for months and check whether they've changed at all. And if they have, I'll change them back and keep them that way for the weeks I'm at home. And there will be lot of pretending to be interested in their "my college sucks" stories or "my college's freaking awesome" stories. Then there will be nostalgia, school memories, teacher-bashing sessions.

And then I'll travel in Mumbai trains and feel the dirt slowly seeping back into my body. And it won't bother me. Actually it will, but not very much. And then I will whine because the route of some bus changed. And then I will scoff at another friend who whines about it because I knew before him. I will lecture to him about how in the big city you must get used to change.

Then when the holidays are about to end, I will talk philosophically about the meaning of life and perspective and all that. And then I will start procrastinating again.