Yes, there will be no homecoming this monsoon, my son ! We will together move, run, ride and trek all through the hills and vales in Himachal during your vacation. We will have long hours to walk side by side and to sit by some unnamed poolside in some idle evenings. Together we will lay our ears to hear nature’s own tune that it plays forlorn in deeper world and will also breathe in full with different smell of its soil, foliage and air. Yes, togetherness is always enjoyable, be it on homecoming or being away from home; it only brings homes together—homes where souls reside.
My dear son, once I read about homecoming for a son separated for years from his parents. It was during tragic Second Great War. The young scientist was Sam Goudsmit. When back to his own place where he had had spent the most beautiful years of his childhood, his youth, his eyes sparkled in joy and glistened in sorrow—in remembrance of those happy years of togetherness and its melancholic absence.
When Goudsmit, as a member of American Intelligence on German progress in science, could afford a homecoming in an idyllic Holland countryside during later part of the war, he thought of comforting lap of his blind mother, her smiles and gentle presence, and those comforting pats from his ever-caring father.
No, it was a homecoming, but without those most beloved souls. The war had already set the destiny. They were dead in Gas chambers. And, when he scanned the records a few days after, he could only be shocked again to learn that they died suffocating on the day his father had his seventieth birthday.
If you want to cry aloud, read what Goudsmit himself wrote about it :
“The house was still standing. But as I drew near to it I noticed that all the windows were gone. Parking my jeep around the corner so as to avoid attention I climbed through one of the empty windows…..
Climbing into the little room where I had spent so many hours of my life I found a few scattered papers, among them my high school report cards that my parents had saved so carefully through all these years. If I closed my eyes I could see the house as it used to look thirty years ago. Hear was the glassed-in porch which was my mother’s favourite breakfast nook. There was the corner where the piano always stood. Over there had been my bookcase. What had happened to the many books I had left behind? The little garden in back of the house looked sadly neglected. Only the lilac tree was still sanding……”
No, it was a homecoming, but without those most beloved souls. The war had already set the destiny. They were dead in Gas chambers. And, when he scanned the records a few days after, he could only be shocked again to learn that they died suffocating on the day his father had his seventieth birthday.
If you want to cry aloud, read what Goudsmit himself wrote about it :
“The house was still standing. But as I drew near to it I noticed that all the windows were gone. Parking my jeep around the corner so as to avoid attention I climbed through one of the empty windows…..
Climbing into the little room where I had spent so many hours of my life I found a few scattered papers, among them my high school report cards that my parents had saved so carefully through all these years. If I closed my eyes I could see the house as it used to look thirty years ago. Hear was the glassed-in porch which was my mother’s favourite breakfast nook. There was the corner where the piano always stood. Over there had been my bookcase. What had happened to the many books I had left behind? The little garden in back of the house looked sadly neglected. Only the lilac tree was still sanding……”
That’s all before we move out for the vacation….
[ Acknowledged with deep regards ::
Brighter than a thousand suns
by Robert Jungk ]
