Sundays

I still remember when Sundays sounded like everyone was home.

Back then, Sunday always arrived before the calendar said it did.

The smell of mustard oil. Bedsheets drying on the terrace. Rajma simmering since morning. The pressure cooker refusing to stay quiet.

Their father claimed the newspaper before anyone else. Their mother opened every cupboard, only to rearrange things that weren't really misplaced. The children complained about homework... and then disappeared to play outside.

By evening, someone always returned carrying ice cream. Or jalebis. Or samosas wrapped in yesterday's newspaper. Nobody called it family time. It just... happened.

Years passed. The children left for colleges. Then jobs. Then cities. The newspaper became a phone. The terrace became a balcony. Even the cupboards stayed exactly where they were.

Now Sundays are quieter. The rajma still cooks. The bedsheets still find the sun. But there are fewer voices arguing over the TV remote. Fewer slippers waiting near my door.

Sometimes the bell rings. The children visit. For a few hours... I'm young again. Someone laughs too loudly. Someone asks, "Is lunch ready?" Someone leaves wet towels exactly where they shouldn't. I don't mind.

People think homes are built with bricks. I know better. Homes are built with ordinary Sundays... the kind you never realise you'll miss until they stop feeling ordinary.

Stories live in the little things. I just put them into words.

A note from Arjun

There was a time when Sunday wasn't a day to “recharge.”

We didn't have a word for it.

Sunday simply meant...

Oil in your hair that you desperately wanted to wash off.

Bedsheets occupying half the terrace.

The pressure cooker whistling from the kitchen.

Papa disappearing behind a newspaper.

Maa deciding that one perfectly organised cupboard needed to be organised again.

Homework waiting somewhere.

Friends shouting your name from downstairs.

And that evening question—

"Samosa kaun khayega?"

Nothing extraordinary happened.

Maybe that's why we didn't think any of it was special.

We were waiting to grow up.

Waiting for college.

For jobs.

For our own money.

Our own homes.

Our own Sundays.

And then we got them.

Now Sunday can mean catching up on sleep, scrolling through our phones, ordering lunch and preparing ourselves for another Monday.

And somewhere, without us noticing...
those old Sundays disappeared.

The strange thing about nostalgia is that life rarely tells you when you're living something you'll miss one day.

There is no announcement.

No photograph for every moment.

No “remember this.”

It is just another Sunday.

Until years later...
you would give anything to sit in that living room once more.

To hear that pressure cooker whistle.

To fight over the remote.

To hear your mother shouting from the kitchen.

To see your father behind that newspaper.

And to have absolutely nowhere else you needed to be.

Because maybe homes aren't built from the big days we remember.

Maybe they're built from the ordinary ones we never thought we would. ❤️