It started with a few clicks on a flight booking site. Alisha stared at the screen, her fingers hesitating over the Confirm Payment button. The destination read Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport. The departure: Sydney Kingsford Smith. A quiet thrill bubbled up — not the nervousness she remembered from three years ago, when she had booked her one-way flight to Australia with shaking hands and teary eyes. This time, there was something else. Something warmer. She clicked. The flight was real. The countdown had begun.

Packing began with a checklist, as always — but this time, it felt different. She didn’t start with clothes or toiletries. Instead, she opened a drawer filled with fridge magnets, postcards, Tim Tams, jars of Vegemite (which she still didn’t like), and tiny koalas wearing cowboy hats. The souvenirs were small, but they felt like pieces of her second life — the one she wanted to share with those from her first.

Shopping wasn’t for herself. It was for them — for Mama, for Papa, for her elder brother who always told her she’d always be his little one, and for her baby cousin, whom she would be meeting for the first time. She folded fewer jeans and more kangaroo t-shirts. Fewer earrings, more chocolates. This time, her suitcase wasn’t filled with things to start a life — it was filled with things to celebrate the one she’d built, and to bring it home to where it all began.

After so long, packing didn’t feel like a departure. It felt like a return to the place that shaped her, grounded her — her home.

The flight was long, but every hour passed with her heart racing — not with nerves, but with anticipation. She wasn’t leaving anything behind; she was retracing her steps, journeying back to the beginning — to memory, belonging, and the version of herself that had always lived there. When the captain announced the descent, her eyes welled up. As the clouds parted and the city came into view — the scattered lights, the familiar outline of her world — a wave of warmth rose within her. It wasn’t just an arrival; it was a homecoming. A piece of her that had been missing all these years clicked back into place.

After collecting her baggage, she took a deep breath and stepped through the arrival gates. And there they were — her parents. A little older, perhaps, a few more lines on their faces, but in that moment, they looked exactly as she had held them in her heart. Her mother’s dupatta fluttered like a flag of love in the warm air. They didn’t speak — they didn’t need to. Alisha melted into their arms, her eyes finally spilling over, breathing in the scent she had ached for: sandalwood, sun-dried cotton, and that unmistakable fragrance of home.

Everything was loud, alive. The honking outside, the chaos of luggage, the way her father kept glancing at her like she might vanish again. And as anticipated, the first thing her mother said was, “Look how thin you’ve become,” then a pause, her voice breaking just slightly, “My baccha, I love you.”

Then came the hugs.

Her mother’s embrace was like being swallowed whole by warmth, as if her love was the only thing in that moment that could hold Alisha together. Alisha buried her face in her mother’s shoulder, feeling the flutter of the dupatta — a light scarf draped loosely around her — against her skin. The hum of “I missed you” vibrated in every squeeze. It was the kind of hug that made her feel both small and infinitely loved — a safe cocoon, filled with everything she had missed.

Then there was her father. His hug was different — quieter, steadier. When Alisha wrapped her arms around him, it was like being enveloped by a warm, sturdy wall. The kind that didn’t bend, didn’t break. The feeling of being a tiny cub in the embrace of Papa Bear, strong, unyielding, and safe, a bear hug, literally. “You’ve come back to us,” he murmured, his voice thick with emotion. Alisha could feel the weight of those simple words in the strength of his embrace — the three years they’d been apart, the longing, the quiet worry, and the anticipation. His hug was a promise, one she knew he would keep: “You’ll always be my little girl.”

The moment was pure, filled with all the things left unsaid. And despite the teary eyes and the quiet smiles, the embrace left her laughing softly under her breath. Because somehow, in their tight embrace, the world — with all its noise and chaos — faded into the background.

That night, lying in her old bed after a scrumptious homemade meal, enjoyed for the first time in years, the ceiling fan whirring above, Alisha looked around the room that had frozen in time. Posters she had outgrown. Sketchpads she had once filled with doodles and dreams. A photo of her family in the backyard on the corner table — slightly faded, still smiling.

She wasn’t the same girl who had left three years ago, unsure and afraid. She had grown — in strength, in dreams, in silence. But here, in this room, with the walls whispering old secrets and the scent of dinner still hanging in the air, she felt something she hadn’t in a long time.

Whole.