ON: HOME AND TIME
As these 5 days spending time in my village, or my parents’ hometown (or more correctly, their first home) finally slowed down, this still mind stretched, and yawned, and began to set foot into the field of wondering, with a bag full of questions to seed the earth so that one day these questions will grow into a tree and give comfort in its shade, or will bear fruit and give contentment when I am in hunger, but such task require patience in the face of uninvited sense of immediacy.
Hometown is such a simple concept which bears a heavy emotional load on the generation before us. Often it is attached with long journeys, waiting, sentimental rejuvenation, intense longing and other, if not equally intense, an overwhelming experience. This particular matter is in my apprehensive sphere of mind because, in my worried and naive speculation, urbanisation will consume these traditions in five decades, like the sun being swallowed on a full eclipse.
As roads become more interconnected, and migration decreases (as the local area experience more growth and stability, luring its residents to stay in the district instead of migrating to big cities, where statistics from UNESCO 2017 reported a decrease in rural to urban migration in this country) I feel that this experience and all of its enchanting sentiments will sooner or later diminish, and become something of a fancy recollection rather than an actual experience; from counting days to the day of departure, to the long distance travels and the anticipation of the first sight at a familiar, longed and reminisced places and faces; these will all bear lesser weights compared to our parents’ sentiment, where they migrated to where we are born, to confiscate a chance for a better life, a life unavailable to them from seeing the sweat and tears their own parents summoned to give them a promise of a decent life.
As time passes, and these small districts develop, these interstate travels will also become faded in its traditions; becoming more of a visited memory (maybe quite oftenly recalled with “I still remember when..” to display an upper hand when comparing realities) rather than an experience that people shared comprehensively. When this homecoming come to an end, a seasoned manifestation of “home”, a word every human being is desperate for its existence (whether consciously or obliviously), will also disappear. Then we will be left puzzled, about what will take its place and fill its void, and how does it feel like to exist in a world where we do not need to be as distant from our parents as they were when they grew up; a place where growing pains will be remedied from a quick nod and visit to our childhood homes, where all of us obtained our first scar (we all know the reason our parents are desperate to make these journeys is because the city does not provide the same childhood serenity their hometown does).
Does it mean an unnecessary burden is alleviated?; no more long road-trips and exhausting journeys? or does it mean a loss of a once treasured emotional experience; the splurging fountain that gives life, one which our parents had in their bones to supply their difficult long travels and replenish their planned surplussed expenses just to feel the relief of being where for a moment in time, all their present pains and sufferings were just yesterdays they cannot even recognise anymore. If this is lost, will I, a mere chip in the modern demographic of an urban society, be able to even grasp the colossal value of home, of sacrifice and of being deprived from insufferable longing? will my future longing for home will never amount to what my parents’ felt?
As these 5 days receded into a final evening, these questions are begging for a promise to grow into answers, or maybe even into a brief summary, begging for a place to be bounded to before it multiply uncontrollably into thoughts that rob the night from my sleep. In these pages, then, I request these inked beings to be well fed by the glares of the ones who are reading it. May one day it will bear a fruit for your contentment, or provide shade for comfort on an unenduring blazing day.
