25th March 2012
As yet another journey began...
As yet another journey began...
Everyone has a story, however long or short or simple or twisted it is each of us has a story. And the story changes with each moment we live, with each new life we embrace, with each decision we make. And while the road not taken is as alluring as you can imagine it, you would never know. Yes, given a chance, I would come back and take all of those roads not taken, alleys shied away from, narrow, devious yet enticing paths abandoned at the last minute for cleared, broader motorways, but not just as yet. In the last 24 hours I’ve completed a book, watched a movie, all of which talk about the same thing...am I done yet? You would think so!
I’ve deliberately kept away for the last few weeks. I’ve had so much to say that I have not known how to prioritize. Choices have figured prominently throughout. Some made consciously, some others just seeped in. In another few hours from now, I shall be in a different land, a city that left me lost the last time around. This time hence, I am a little more prepared. I know that I’d hardly chance upon an acquaintance each time I stepped out, that my closest friends are not only a phone call away, I can’t run back to the comforts of home each time I feel like hiding. But this time I know this too that the city is more than the romantic mirage of rain on the Marine Drive. So much more…but having said that, I’m not admonishing it as a bad thing! We all need to know how to hold your head up and smile, while your tear glands are swelling, how to brave the lack of familiarity and make your own, how to live amidst the chaos and still not become a part of it, and also become a part of it and yet not lose yourself amidst it. It does another thing, this whole hauling yourself to unfamiliar territory…gives you courage and faith in yourself like nothing else does. When you know you are on your own to get your shit together, there is nothing else you do better!
I have lots to look forward to. A relatively new city...not familiar grounds any longer, with new challenges, with a new rhythm, and the ever so elusive ‘Bumbay Spirit’…I hope to catch a wheeze of it this time around, if nothing else at least a brief glimpse. If not, this time I know I will have tried J
Kolkata yet again, continues to have that thread of attachment, each time in its own charming ways. Sometimes it sends a chill down my spine to see the way she smiles each time I leave, as though she knows better! I don’t know, if she does, I can only speculate. But one thing that I know, at this point, is that I needed to do this. For the sake of finding the me, as I knew her. The quirky, happy traveler, who was not so caught up. And while a friend claimed that inspite of being quirky I’ve always wanted a home to base my quirk from, I guess I still am looking for that home, one that did not have so many tangled cobwebs…In trying to settle her own dilemmas, I unfortunately was almost on the verge of giving her up somewhere. I remember just days ago two very close friends were engaged in a friendly travel-anecdote-sharing-repartee, at one point I remember congratulating one of them with ‘I’ll give that to you’, but somehow suddenly while watching Julia Roberts glide through landscapes and people in distant unknown lands in search of the uncomprehended, the memory just came back to me. And strangely I could not remember what I wanted to give it to my friend for; what he had said and done that I had then found so applaudable. That is possibly when I realized that I’d been too caught up, with everything around me that while I still advised some closest to me to stop and breathe, I myself was hardly doing that anymore. Complications happen, to each one of us, some of us are just left caught up in them and complaining about them, while at some better times, we decide to do something about them. It was one of those moments when I decided to come back to this city that never sleeps. And as the rhythm of the train sank in, I got my share of the peaceful sleep...till before I step into the chaos.
This long train journey helps me realize, how much of me I had been missing. I’m the one who smiles for no reason, not the one who is cranky for no reason. I’m quirky not scared. I have always embraced the roads, inspite of the knots in my stomach; why then was I so afraid?
Braving myself and knotting my shoelaces firm…till such time again, like a dear friend recommends I too shall keep walking...
