A Feeling of Quiet in a Noisy Place

My parents’ home in Chennai is not a quiet place.  In fact, the noise from the traffic and the people on the street, when combined with the dust raised by the vehicles passing by the front of the home, can make it a place that one may want to escape from under other circumstances.

But that is not necessarily the way I feel when I am here.  When I sit down in the verandah beside the garden to read a book, or walk up to the terrace to putter around with my camera,  when I  hear the sounds of the street, be it the voices of the people speaking in a language that I can barely follow, or the familiar rumble of the engines of the city buses, when I watch the birds flying high overhead in the fading evening light, it is feeling of peace that one experiences.  Even if this state of mind is occasionally shattered by the loud honking of an impatient bus or a truck passing by, or by something else, the disturbance quickly fades away as the other sounds of the street once again take over the senses to soothe the soul and bring back that comforting sense of familiarity.

I have arrived at a time of year when the weather is very pleasant.  I am avoiding the heat and humidity of summer and the rains of the monsoon. The evening breeze cools the air as I relax in the open spaces of the verandah and the terrace.

I am back in a familiar place that I can call home.