#OOTD Back To The 90’s

My first trip back home after tying the knot was everything I could have ever hoped it would be, and more (except for the fact that James couldn’t join me – that would have made it perfect!)

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This particular visit was incredibly bittersweet since it is probably my last time staying at the home I grew up in. And while this home has been our shelter, our solace and our pride and joy for generations, it is time for us to move on and begin a new chapter. It is time for us to embrace a new dream with open arms, even if the dream is only ten minutes away from the old one!

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I know I won’t be visiting my old neighborhood as frequently as I’d like to over the next few visits, which is why I wanted to spend some time walking the streets I rode my bike on as a child, admiring the hot pink bougainvilleas in full bloom, the little corner on which I would feed the neighborhood stray cat and her kittens, the maze of little houses I still can’t navigate without asking for assistance from an elderly passerby (because who needs Google maps when they’ve lived around here for decades?!)

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The corner where my grandmother told me not to pluck flowers, the little strip of concrete on which my mom taught me how to play hopscotch, the road on which I’d walk my dog every morning before school while the neighbours would smile and call out to me as I did, the driveway where I shot my first outfit post with my mom and a tiny point-and-shoot camera.

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The four walls within which I spent hour after happy hour playing with my dollhouse or having tea parties with my stuffed toys, where I first learned I had an affinity towards fashion (my mother’s dupatta on the floor as a ‘runway’) and my first tryst with entrepreneurship (‘selling’ my toys to the neighbours and then asking for them back whist happily keeping their money!)

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This home has kept me grounded. Provided me with a lifetime of happiness and beautiful memories, not to mention the most wonderful start to life a girl could have ever dreamed of. This home has made me ‘me’. And for that, I will be forever grateful.

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And as I mentally prepare to pack the years into boxes, I can’t help but hope that maybe one day, I’ll be fortunate enough to be walking down the same street with my own kids and their grandmother, teaching them to play hopscotch, to never pluck flowers and to smile as I shoot them with a camera. A girl can always dream, right?

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{ PHOTOGRAPHY } Mehi Shah

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