Day 349/366

I wish it didn't feel so much like home. It's got that same feeling of that couch you can't part with or those loose t-shirts you sleep in. They know your story and they've seen you at your worst. And yet, you go back to them, and they take you.

The Universe is laughing, for it followed you down to the red oak tree. It stood in the mist, hearing the playful giggles and watching the silhouetted figures grab each other in the cold, sipping away at a bottle of wine. Slowly, hand in hand, they walked down the woods, into the winding path ahead of them. 

Day 316/366

I'm not looking to move out at this point of my life. But if I could, I'd just get my own place. There'd be a lot of detachments that would have to be made. But I just feel that I'm meant to try that out once in my life. I want to live a life without roommates to know what that's like. I'd work through the day and come back to all my favorite things and my words at night. That sounds perfect and regrettable all at once. Wow.

Day 156/366

There used to be a charm about this place. In fact, that was the case with every place I've stayed at for even the shortest period of time - something characteristic about it that I fell in love with.

In Bangalore, I can pinpoint Corner House's Hot Chocolate Fudge (HCF) that is like a food orgasm for me. Or maybe the quiet lanes & bylanes of Sadashivnagar, where I usually stay. Calcutta has a whole bunch of things - the ferry rides, the singhadas and cha at little tapris on every corner, the winter fog, the sweet sound of the peoples' language. In Rishi Valley, it was everything about the place and more so, the kind of people one could talk to on the most random topics around. Pune was a place of two extremes - it was either too chilled out (house parties/'chilling scenes' & gigs at High Spirits every Friday) or endless hours on campus, which became like a second home.

What I'm getting at is that the charm of places tend to fade with time. OR it gets reinforced very strongly if you return to a place and fall in love with it (again?). I've not had the privilege of experiencing the latter. Yet.

School isn't the same without my friends and teachers even though the hills haven't changed. I no longer have a house in Pune to go back to, making it a less familiar city in my mind. Calcutta, I've realized, can only be truly enjoyed in the winter. (Though I'm secretly hoping that the oncoming monsoons will make me change my mind on that.) Bangalore is a city I'd love to explore more though it alienates me often enough.

Despite all these ups and downs, I'm glad that I left my base and went to see the world outside my sheltered living. I've moved around enough to be in a position where I don't know which place I can really call 'home'.  But I'm quite sure I'm better off than a lot of people who have always been stuck in the same place mingling with the same people and talking about the same thing. They're caught up in the same bloody routine day in day out. I'm just glad I've broken out of that rut. And now, possibly the greatest adventure of my life awaits me. And I can't wait to get started & find my place in the world!

Day 152/366

Life is such a funny little thing. It makes you feel such extremes of emotions when you least expect it. One day, I was walking into my house feeling unwanted. The next day, I had moved out of it and I saw my family members cry at the sight of me leaving. I could see them stuck to the airport windows trying to catch their last few glimpses of me. The uncertainty of when/if we will meet again was too strong to do anything but that. And yet, I have been displaced only to find a home again. A home in a different city where I live with family members of blood relation. There is a different force at play now and it is familiar and unfamiliar. Even Rishi Valley and the many hostels I stayed in were homes in themselves; ecosystems within a larger whole.

I wish there was a middle ground of some sort where I could have every temporary home and all the house dwellers together. But that is an interesting concept - a piece of fiction that can only inspire me to write it down knowing that it will never become a concrete reality. Perhaps the only time that the reality could come true is when I'm on my death bed and all the people I want to be around me will actually be near me till my last breath.  Being the well managed person that I am known to be, I'll be expected to have arranged for my own funeral before I die. I should go start working on that now. *tho tho* (Mallu for 'Let's hope that's not the case')

Day 151/366

To return to a city you knew long ago
Is an awfully daunting task.
Slowly but steadily, the landscape changed
But you were never around to know.

The seemingly poetic gully by night
No longer grants you warmth
Creepy anti-social elements lurk
In a region once your home.

To accept it in its new found form
They can't compel me to do
You'll adjust & make it home again
From what I know of you.