Vijayshankar beautifully captures the complex emotions of a child anticipating a father’s return, featured on DifferentTruths.com

Before the father’s return,
the house alters its very respiration.
Evening lingers at the threshold,
and the faint suggestion of arrival
circulates within the interior.

With our small, anticipatory hands,
we would descend into the father’s bag—
still in transit, not yet present.
The fibrous scent of bananas,
the granular sweetness of Allahabadi guavas,
the translucent geometries of petha—
all shimmered in the speculative space of desire.

The father arrived wearing a smile—
muted, almost ashen,
like an obligation quietly endured.
We invariably lunged first toward the bag
and he, invariably, forgave us.
At times, something emerged—
and the courtyard expanded into plenitude;
at others, the bag opened into absence,
and even the steps seemed to falter.
The mother dissolved her tears into the lentils;
the steam of bread spoke less than usual.
The father remained seated for long intervals.
brushing away the dust
from the faint line of fortune upon his palm.

When evening fractured across our backs,
the bag passed into our own hands.
The market called out—
khurchan, water chestnuts, jalebi—
as though memory itself
were still arranged upon those carts.
On the days when the pocket had emptied,
the act of returning home grew indistinct;
the door opened like an ascetic renunciation.
Children smiled, retreating into their books.
even as something within quietly cracked.

When children begin to discern
the tonalities of the father’s inner weather,
he diminishes within their gaze—
and, in the same instant, enlarges.
For love persists,
even in the grammar of empty hands.
We endured—
through some bags,
through some hands,
through some incomplete anticipations.

In every household,
there arrives an evening
when a child understands the father’s pocket
before the father himself arrives.
Some bags we fill.
Some children, in turn, fill us.

Even now, upon the threshold,
a fragment of childhood remains seated—
carrying the father’s smile
from departing hands
to those that are yet to arrive.

Picture design by Anumita Roy

Vijayshankar Chaturvedi

Vijayshankar Chaturvedi is a senior journalist, author, and public intellectual with over three decades in the Indian media. He spent more than a decade on Jansatta’s editorial team and now contributes incisive columns on public policy, international affairs, and socio-political issues to Jansatta, Navbharat Times, ABP News, Samalochan, Jan Chowk, and Hindi Saamana. His recent explorations delve deeply into human consciousness, decision-making processes, and the profound transformation of agency in the AI era.