These are a few of my favourite things.

I've never considered myself to be the home-sick type.
But I'm staying back these vacations, working toward our-very-own animation film festival Chitrakatha,that's happening in just a week now,
and the hostel passages are clean-swept,
the birds' calls are shriller and more in number,
and the room's colder and smaller,
when I return to it.

Which is nearly every hour.

So all of a sudden I miss being alone at home, in my sister's quiet little room behind the staircase,with my mum in the next room fixing something light and appetite-friendly in a large ceramic bowl.

There's more.

|The smell of baking is overpowering;chocolate cupcakes and slightly crackly coconut biscuits and lemon tart.Sitting on the cool granite counter and licking cake batter off your fingers.

|Boiling hot filter coffee with a comfortingly burnt,bittersweet after-taste. The second sip( after the tongue-scalding first one) comes close to heaven.

|Heavy footsteps up the wooden ladder;feeling the walls becoming hotter with your fingertips as you climb up,and taking in a deep breath as the terrace door swings open with a rush,as the bracken-filled fields,dark green tamarind trees and peacefully inclining hills greet you.

|The whisper of furtive post-dinner plans with your grandmother.She swings out a bottle of mint Baileys from Thatha's wine cabinet(Johnny walker being the most wine-y of the lot!) and declares that there's no one she'd rather 'get tipsy with'. As the years go by,the company that you drink with can be strange,fruitful and myriad all at once.

|The couch. It's chequered and slightly squishy at one end. This customisation ensures maximum compatibility with my holiday schedule of bed-roll-shift-loo-shift-sofa-shift-bed. Interspersed with fridge breaks.

|When it rains, the whole farm goes silent. Everything is rained upon, and the coconut fronds drop like muted bombs in unison. Every single person stays silent when they look at those blackening clouds. The earth opens her parched throat in prayer. The feeling of being washed over,washed away and being cleansed by something earthly and powerful is prevalent.

|Mor. I see buttermilk being poured in a jug shaped like a bunch of amazonic bananas. If that's not exotic sounding enough,there's so much to see and inhale in deeply. At the bottom lie black til seeds,crushed whole ginger,garden-fresh kothamali(coriander) and chopped green chillies. An day's visit, before the rains set in.

|The gleam of yellow bulbs through cane landshades,over hot-cooked meals, spells familiarity and comfort.

|Being able to look through old photographs of those you've lost in your own time,not seconds borrowed or stolen. And finding it easier to not avoid that hollow feeling, when all you have in your hostel room are passport size nothings.Thats the real comfort of being surrounded by what makes your home.

|Tilting a bottle of mineral-rich and slightly sweetish waters at your lips for a good 30 seconds and staring at the ceiling fan. This beats icy steel cooler water anyday.

|Hill-top breezes in speeding cars with a hot packed drink balancing precariously on your lap, as the city slowly becomes a jewellery box of twinkling, firefly-like dots and patterns.

This is all I remember for now.