It’s the same.

The green building of my school, and the windows that look at the road. The damp road, of the monsoon rain, which stretches like a snake towards the Mangaladevi Temple at one extreme and the Hampankatta at the other, the road that I have tread holding my parents’ hands, still withheld the nostalgic feeling; treading the flowing rainwater stained with oily colorful grease from roadside garages. They say water carries memory. Perhaps this is it.

I see that it’s a double road now, with blue and tall-looking streetlamps. They are installed to guide drivers it seems. But, where are the big banyan trees that drove us nostalgic? I miss the road lined with those huge banyan trees, whose scattered fruits we would crunch beneath our walking feet, whose tender shoots we would snap without care.

The road was a boulevard then. Beyond the banyan trees and down below, was the mud road, where Avon cycles of schoolboys and girls raced on muddy puddles.

The roads are now levelled to make a wider stretch of tar, on which, the same old bus numbers tread, on which, now stands the blue and tall-looking streetlamps guiding the new travelers of this road. The road seemed to be like a scar on my nostalgia.

Although, I missed the road of my past that dictates my feelings for the town, the new air makes me search for what I still long for. To say, it was my hometown. To say, I was home.

It did.

Because the rain was the same, so was the memory in the water that I tread.

And so was my school, and the kids walking with their colorful umbrellas and rain coats on the very road, splashing muddy puddles and holding their parents’ hands.

The road will now carry a memory for them.