Fur Elise

167 Days Later

There are days that pass quietly.

Then there are days that change something inside you forever.

And then, there are days like today when everything feels the same, and yet,

YOU are the one who has changed.

It has been exactly 167 days since I last stood in this room , My room.

167 days since I touched the familiar door handle with chipped paint, since I ran my fingers across the soft curve of the bookshelf, since I looked out of this very balcony and watched the leaves move gently, without the burden of time pressing on my chest.

I’m seventeen now and maybe standing on the fragile threshold of adulthood. The world expects me to know things. To be decisive. To be solid, like stone. But standing here, in my childhood home, I realize something softer: I’m not a stone. I’m soil  perhaps rich with memory, growing still, shaped by the rains of people and places I’ve passed through. And even in the middle of this gentle storm of change, I find peace in the most unexpected of places: wiping the windows, listening to instrumental music, sticking my papers on wall, folding clothes, arranging books in alphabetical order or sometimes according to the colours, small rituals that remind me of rhythm of mine, of return.

This morning, I woke up before the sun rose and not because I had to revise my notes or getting ready for school, but because I wanted to. The sky was still painted in blue-gray whispers, and the air that rushed into my lungs from the balcony felt like a long-lost friend. It smelled of rain-soaked soil- just exaggerating, it didn't rain anyways,a bit of wild jasmine, and the hint of incense stick smell from someone’s early morning chores. I sat cross-legged near the railing, watching the leaves move like quiet prayers. There, with a cup of tea in my hand and no one rushing me, I remembered what stillness felt like. Not boredom, but stillness.

The kind that whispers to your soul, You’re safe here.

I came home after months in the city and the nights don’t always hum with warmth.

But here… here, the rain feels different. It doesn't just fall ~ it glistens. Each droplet caught in bike lights and rickshaw beams, scattering like frozen stars across the streets I grew up in. The alleys, though dark, shimmered with stories.

And then I see, Maa, waiting with her half-scold, half-smile welcome. Soon enough, we were back in rhythm, walking side by side to the grocery market, that familiar place where time folds itself like old newspapers. The smell of coriander, the clatter of weighing scales, the shopkeeper who still remembers me as “bitiya.”

I talked too much. About the city, the people, the stray dreams. My words tumbled out like marbles, and she let them roll, catching the important ones, smiling at the silly ones.

Coming home in the monsoon means wetter clothes and muddier shoes.

My old bedroom is still a map of my younger self. The corners of the wall are faintly scarred by tape marks like reminders of charts I once put up, quotes I once lived by, dreams I used to spell out in glitter pens.Those colours do not feel anymore in this phase of life.As if I am in a tessaract of observation.The doors creak in the exact same spots. My old books still carry my scent as a strange mix of my bellavita perfume and ink. I notice how my handwriting has changed in the old notebooks  now more larger, more intentional. Like I’m slowly claiming my space in the world or maybe creating it.

In this cocoon of familiarity, I feel strangely beautiful. Not the kind of beauty you get from mirrors or compliments but the beauty of awareness. Of being seventeen and slowly growing into your wisdom. Like Belle from Beauty and the Beast, I’ve always sought refuge in books, in solitude, in meaning beyond appearances. I’ve come to realize that wisdom doesn’t always wear robes or quote philosophers. Sometimes, it just makes tea, breathes with the trees, and knows when to let go.

And today — in the middle of dusting my mother's room, I found it~ My childhood music box.

A soft, wooden thing with two glass dolphins on it on the lid. I twisted the key on its side like I used to, and the first few notes of Für Elise played trembling as if it was forgotten.It's melody wrapped around me like an old blanket. I sat on the floor, knees pulled to my chest, and listened. And something inside me cracked open.

I remember when I first got it was my tenth birthday. I didn’t know it was a Beethoven piece then. I just knew it made me feel something indescribable. And then, years later, I saw that same piece of music in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, when Hermione plays it on the abandoned piano. I remember being breathless. How could something so far from magic just simple notes  feel *that* magical? I realize now: it wasn’t just the music. It was memory. Connection. Soul.

There’s always a reason why we cling to certain art forms — a painting, a song, a poem, a dance. It’s not coincidence. It’s emotional gravity. They pull us back to a version of ourselves we thought we’d forgotten.

Für Elise is more than a melody to me.From last two years, it is saved in my Feeling Alive music playlist.

It’s a mirror. A time capsule.

Coming home reminded me of who I was. But more importantly, it reminded me that I am allowed to change  and still return. That peace is not in places, but in the small things we love without reason. That sometimes, the wisest thing you can do is come back to where it all began, breathe in the breeze of your own past, and let it remind you that you are still whole.

As Sylvia Plath once wrote,

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”

And today, with Beethoven in my ears, sunlight on my face, and the soft heartbeat of home around me-

I believe her.

In the backgrounds,Fur Elise still playing.

C.P.