Rakhi as a poem from Vikram Seth talks about nostalgia and homesickness, diaspora and displacement, time and distance and the conventions in a flux though the spirit remains the same. It is a re-working of the location, the re-location of the home and a re-thinking over the roots of nativity reminded through a rakhi sent by postal air mail and the mapping and re-mapping of a human mind and brain coping to adjust under the diaspora dais. How have our traditions gone under change? Instead of it the rakhi matters it, lingers as a sweet memory for a brother who has got displaced or has moved overseas. The rakhi may reach in time or late, but the memory lingers on, and it gives solace to when reminisced as does it Wordsworth after his visit to Tintern Abbey.

The poet forgot it when the rakhi came, the time of the year. He will have to re-map and re-locate it. What has gone a-miss he cannot say it? It is not that he has forgotten, but the schedule is as such this makes him forget or miss, the busy moments of present day-to-day life where there is no time to think, to give time to, as the things go slipping past and we too seem to be in a hurry to go and this continues on and when time and distance seem to be a factor, situations too do not remain the same. Life has become so busy, fast and active and it has both its plus and minus points of own. We are but mechanically and technically yours. The things too have taken a turn.

It was a contract of trust. He now remembers how he left his home one-day breaking traditions and conventions. It is now years in being away from.

How have things changed in the past, how have memories, what have taken on them? He ruminates, but there is none with to share his feelings and emotions, his nostalgia and homesickness as he has turned into a diasporan. Overseas is his inner space away from home, the canvas of his delving and drawing upon.

There was a time when things were within reach, but now they seem to be out of hands. Far from, how to think of homegrown thoughts and ideas? What can one do if is far from? Even though the mind seems to capture and re-capture the images, everything gets lost when out of context.

Let the time wait for that, when we shall meet as strangers. The home will not remain a home if not lived. Time’s house, who can but say it about? It may turn  into a haunted house with imaginary beings dwelling inside the locked house and those phantom listeners listening to the knocks of the unknown, identity-less knockers. The tradition will stay on, the time-tested convention in the form of the sisterly love felt and the auspicious day assigned to it as for to commemorate and  anoint. The red and golden threads of relationship will remain showing the clasps of sisterly love so sacred and sacrosanct with the promise from the brother that he will see her and protect her in times of trouble if it may befall her anytime. We may change our days and times, but the pious bonding will keep retaining its sanctity from age to age. The sacred things will remain sacred and so will remain the feelings connected with this rakhi.

I had forgotten the time
Of year. Your rakhi came,
Showing how things have changed
And are the same.

It was a contract of trust
With more than you.
I know I left home too many
Years ago.

I place the golden thread
Across my wrist; that done,
Struggle with my left hand
To tie it on.

You should have done that; I
Too have lost half the rite
I promise you your gift
In ' 78.

Those future numerals
Look curious; and your brother
Too will be strange when next
We meet each other.

How we must both have changed;
Only the custom stays,
Educing from the past
The undying days.