The apple tree

A trip back to India is always a learning in more ways than one. You look back at times you have spent in your motherland, you reflect at what has been and what has shaped your life to the point at where you stand on that day. You look around at places and people who have also had a formative influence on your life and you try and put them against the mental pictures you had of them before. You find out a lot of people have actually changed, but maybe its just you who has. Maybe you have matured and gained a different perspective of them or maybe its just them. A lot of questions remain and a lot of questions remain unanswered. One of these people you get to observe quite closely is your parents, one of the most important things in your life, people battle hardened in life's war, people to whom you speak to almost everyday but who still are separated from you by the physical distances. However you notice how these holders of your genetic pool are really splitting images of yourself split only by spaces of time and a generation. You slowly notice uncanny similarities at they way they handle situations, the way they react, the way they handle people. Its scary at first to finally notice these things which you might have missed when you were less mature. But at the end of the day I realized it was a learning curve. Its a time to pat yourself on the back for the good things you have imbibed and admire in your parents and on the other hand its a time to consciously bring about changes if you think need be, on things which make you incompatible with people while you still can because you are still in a position to do so. Which way you look at it I think if you look hard enough it will be there for you to see that the apple never falls too far from the tree.