Someone Waiting

Life is beautiful when someone waits for you to come home and you yourself, too, can’t wait to see them.

They may be your sibling, your child, your spouse, your parents, or even your pet. Coming home becomes an event, something you may not think about while submerged in the suffocating routine of daily life. Yet when that moment arrives, it recharges your drained batteries completely.

Parents grow old, become forgetful, and eventually fade into their sunset, leaving behind an orange afterglow, beautiful but fleeting that soon gives way to lasting darkness.

Children grow up, and you find yourself wondering if they’re the same ones who used to wait eagerly by the door to welcome you home.

Your spouse may be burdened with their own struggles and may no longer show the same warmth that once drew you to them.

Things change over time. Even you change, sometimes into someone barely recognizable, though the mirror may tell you otherwise. But the mirror’s job is to flatter, not to offer honest feedback.

Yet, there is one thing that never changes:
Your pet will always be waiting.
Always joyful, never losing the instinct to show it.

—Shashikant Dudhgaonkar