{"id":515,"date":"2020-12-18T07:52:11","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T07:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/?p=515"},"modified":"2020-12-19T05:45:19","modified_gmt":"2020-12-19T05:45:19","slug":"a-walk-to-belonging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/a-walk-to-belonging\/","title":{"rendered":"A Walk to Belonging"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ria Singh<\/em>
Heritage Xperiential Learning School, Gurugram, Haryana<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dear Diary,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stranded in the city with no work opportunities at hand, I walk with my companions. Yes, my feet ache, and I am exhausted, but I yearn for the comfort of my belonging, my home, my village far away. I have forever loved my village, the pond, the trees, and the sense of belonging in the whiffs of air that stroke my hair. Sustenance and ambitions drove me to the city, where I often feel lost. The air is unclean, and survival is brutal. I work day in and day out to earn a meagre sum for my family. I live in filthy slums with a lack of basic civic facilities. So, I walk. As if the heat was not enough, the virus haunts me too. I don\u2019t know what exactly it is, but I know that it\u2019s dangerous. With no transport, no aid, I evoke the resilience beneath my vulnerable yet tough exterior. I walk to the soil of my belonging, where life is simple and beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I continue to walk, days pass by. With minimal resources, there is an urgency to reach the land of my origin. I have no idea where and when I will have my next meal or where I will find a place to rest. Sleeping under the stars on the muddy streets or some grass on fortunate days, I wonder what is it that keeps me going and helps me fight all odds. I realize that it is the hope to reunite with my soil, with my near and dear ones, and the camaraderie that I share with the place I grew up in. I also wonder if I would have left my home behind and come to this strange land of uncertainty had my village offered enough work opportunities to sustain a living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I continue my journey ahead, my thoughts keep switching between the past and the present. I keep going back to all the bitter-sweet experiences I had in the last few months. I remembered how once my employer accused me of stealing a gold chain that was found later, and I came out clean as luck would have it. My thoughts also went back to how my employer made sure that I got complete rest and three-square meals when I suffered from dengue. He stood by me as each cell healed and fueled me with the energy and enthusiasm that he always loved in me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I kept thinking about how life was a roller coaster of events and how every experience left me with feelings of joy, sorrow, happiness, or worry. I was thinking of a past that I wanted to run away from and yet cling on to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proceeding towards my destination, I wondered what it was that left me unhindered despite such hardships and impediments. Though every day brought along some new challenges, not once did the thought of giving up cross my mind. There was an unwavering inner strength that came in along with these hardships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After days of walking, reflections of my life, going through numerous ups and downs and facing multiple adversities, the walk to my belonging concluded. As I saw my son run towards me with happiness that only his eyes could speak, every obstacle seemed worthwhile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Warsan Shire once said, \u201cNo one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.\u201d<\/em><\/strong> I fling a plea to the one who listens that my land prospers and thrives, and no one is ever compelled to leave the land of their belonging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ria SinghHeritage Xperiential Learning School, Gurugram, Haryana Dear Diary, Stranded in the city with no work opportunities at hand, I walk with my companions. Yes, my feet ache, and I am exhausted, but I yearn for the comfort of my belonging, my home, my village far away. I have forever loved my village, the pond, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[47,192,226,225,191],"class_list":["post-515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-dimensions","tag-diary","tag-free-online-publishing-platform","tag-heritage-xperiential-learning-school","tag-riia-singh","tag-vov-writer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":516,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions\/516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}