Homing

It has been almost three years since I resigned myself to being a resident of this largely urban town called Manipal. I have lived in Chennai all my life and I make it no secret, Chennai is my greatest love, as a place, a home, a connection. Every inch of asphalt I’ve trudged upon and every piece of sky I’ve wandered under can tell you of my incessant banter on the occasion of this subject being raised. The feeling that comes to me from being on Chennai’s streets is, I’m not exaggerating, quite unparalleled. And I’m sure many would agree with me on this about your own hometowns.

So, whenever the question of Manipal being a second home arose, my unwavering heart always had the same answer. Do not get me wrong there! I am not incapable of accepting a second place as home. I have housed great longing and fascination for numerous places, which I one day hope to make my home. That fascination, however, evaded me in Manipal. Until today.

The rather overly normal events of today that brought this change began with a book. As I read the last page of the book and shut it with my sigh of satisfied completion, I sat in my room, clueless about my next course of action. Right then, my window presented to me an image extremely inviting and pleasant, like none I had witnessed lately. The world had turned yellow. The sky, the footpath, the trees, the very air, everything was yellow, like a playful child had overturned an enormous paint bucket, setting off a beautiful accident.

I pulled on my pants and bounded down the stairs and out into the yellow fabric, impatient to be part of it. Before I proceed with the rest of the evening, I should mention that I have been on many a solitary walk in Manipal, but I do not recall one for the sheer joy of it. As I walked into the captivating evening, I was beginning to have a conversation of firsts. Walking the streets, I truly went down memory lane, thinking about my initial days and thoughts of Manipal. The tiny toy houses that once made me smile out of amazement now brought me an old-friend smile. The quiet corners, the bustling junctions, the beauty that has become an everyday thing, does not fascinate me anymore like a mysterious person I am eager to know. They are like family now, just their presence is reassuring.

As I walked around having these conversations in my head, I realised how comfortable I had grown in its skin. It here being, of course, Manipal. I could be in every one of its streets, nooks and crannies, and I wouldn’t feel a shred of “alien”. I will always be an old resident, going about the place, unafraid of being lost and going as far as to forsake any conscious attention to my surroundings, letting my seasoned legs do the guiding. If you have stayed in this charming little town on the west coast for long enough, you get the privilege of such lethargy.

Manipal is not a place I want to make my home in the future. It is already that for my four years here. But it is a place I would go to if I needed to get away from the everydayness of life for some familiar comfort and much-needed lethargy. It would always be that old friend waiting with a beer (lemonade? Iced lime? ) in hand.

And the next time you’re here and see a bespectacled girl looking oddly preoccupied with the sky or smiling at a clump of grass, don’t be creeped out, welcome to Manipal! 

TRANSIENT MOMENTS

Like a modern day Rip Van Winkle, I walk back after years of slumber into my cobweb-filled blog. Luckily for me, everything is still the same. It's time to dust the ceilings and get the floors back to their old sparkling splendour.

It's exam time (read epiphany time). It was 8:15 am. I was walking back up the steps to my hostel room after a hurried breakfast when something outside the window stopped me and had me paralysed for one awestruck second. A full moon glinting faintly and unassumingly in the morning light below a mass of dark clouds. And behind the clouds, a punch of bright yellow that was the sun. Before I could break from my reverie and run to get my camera (as my greedy self refused to let the moment go unrecorded), it all disappeared. The mass of clouds descended over the moon, concealing it for the day and the Sun emerged dazzlingly. I waited till I became temporarily blind and then staggered back to my room. And after a long long long time, my grey matter decided to put my pen to work, much to my excitement! A poem after a million years!

Those moments
Coy and quiet
Hiding behind curtains
All but compliant.

Mischievous smiles 
And stifled laughter
A knowing that their discovery
Insists ardent chasing after.

They peep, not strike.
Unfolding daintily
Like the sun from a September sky
Coltishly and elegantly.

Unabashedly 
They rob your senses
Leaving you enraptured
Shattering your defences.

They grow more surreal
As you gape intoxicated.
And weave a memory
One unanticipated.

They depart
Just as fast.
An ephemeral episode
Dissolving into an ethereal past.

But its presence,
That you beheld astounded,
Fastens itself firmly
Never to be altered.

And you will recollect
With a drunken bafflement
The fantastic enchantment
Of those moments! 

REUNION

This piece will always be close to my heart as it couldn't have come to me at a better time, or rather, a worse time. I haven't written anything in a long time and it was beginning to worry me. Here are all my worries happily erased.

I uncage you
As guilt bathes me down.
By dirt and neglect
Your body is now adorned.

Delicately I feed you.
A sinner I have been
To have kept you jailed.
Not to be felt, not to be seen.

I put you to canvas.
You stutter,
I cringe.
I coax you gently
And the magic begins.

Realization hits me.
A fool I have been
For the exile was mine
And the rest, now I gleam.

You are my crutch,
I a cripple.
You're a prized possession,
My glorious pinnacle.

You are my parachute
A beautiful thing.
My most loyal companion
For as long as I live.

 

The First Homecoming

 

After my failed attempts at studying for my imminent exams, I’ve concluded that the apparent abatement of guilt in daydreaming with a book on my lap as compared to daydreaming without one, is just that : apparent. So, I’ve given up trying to cheat my conscience. Instead I’m completely disregarding it. As my conscience glares at me, teeth grinding, I’m going to write about the most exciting event that has happened to me in the past three months.

It has been more than three months since I left home for college. Save for the first weekend that I mentioned in my previous post, I barely felt any homesickness in the following days. But how much I actually missed home dawned on me when the time came to go back. I was going back at a time of festive cheer and rejoicing. Diwali. Every Diwali has been a special one and I remember each for the maniacal joy that each has brought but this was a very different one, a Diwali of many firsts.

I’ve always been awed by the nomadic lifestyle with so many places, people, languages and cultures to get to know. But I’ve never experienced it myself. To me, home has always been the same place, the same house, the same neighbours, the same potholed roads, the same auto drivers, the same traffic signals and the same routes. All my friends, memories, encounters, experiences and events are tied to one place. So, I had never looked back at how much the place has given me in making me the person I am until recently.

The blissful anticipation of embracing the familiar sights and sounds of home heightening with each station the train passed, taking me closer and closer to home, and finally seeing family through the grills of the train windows are feelings of intense and ineffable ecstasy.

Now, home to me doesn’t just mean the house where I live. It’s the people, the familiarity, the sense of belonging. The same place wouldn’t be a welcome abode if the people in my life didn’t live there anymore. Now I understand why there is a craving in people to know their history. It tells you who you are and it gives you ground to stand on in the world, proud and unshakeable. It makes you possessive of your land and devoted to it. It gives you something solid to hold on to in an ever-changing world.

There will be many more homecomings in the future, but this will always be the dearest to me, the picture it first conjures in my mind being the smiles on those people’s faces that I had only seen in my mind for the last three months.

More Snaps!

A morning stroll with a fellow photography enthusiast in a place like the west coast is incomparable to anything else. So here are a few more clicks, the products of that particular stroll.

And I saved my most favourite for the last!

 

Through glass pieces

The west coast is sheer beauty! Coconut trees, ponds, the sea, mountains, every appealing object of nature is here. And there occur those moments during the day that the beauty is so capturing that you simply can't pass without in turn capturing it... through glass pieces. In my case, my mobile phone camera.

Today I saw an ad for a resort that read "Views that say Dubai, Singapore. But the prices don't"
It's a shame that the beauty here has to be compared to that of other places, which are beautiful too, to attract tourists. Dude, if I wanted a view that says Dubai, I would go to Dubai! ~rolls eyes~ Where's our pride? I'd seriously like to give these advertising guys a few lessons.

Coming back to topic, here are a few moments of beauty I've captured.
Warning : Amateur here. Keep expectations really low.. I'm talking below ground level.

 

Vicious arts and basic lessons

Long breaks from blogging are becoming something of a routine now, one that I don't really pride myself on. It's a clear and rather shameful representation of my inability to juggle time and passions deftly. Though I can hide behind the excuse of a new lifestyle, the idle hours will be a nagging reminder of my indolence.

It's been a month to the day since I began college. So many emotions have passed through me, quite a large number actually, in this time frame. Thanks to my fear of my formidable conscience, I jotted down a significant portion of them to remind me, for I seem to have forgotten that those emotions took residence in me in those first few days of newness; such is the degree to which they have changed. A single month seems to have imparted wisdom that maybe slumbered in the deep recesses of my mind, not finding the need to be disturbed just yet.

My feelings as of 3rd August, 2013 :

Why. The inquisitive, puzzling, formidable and at times scary three-letter word that so unyieldingly latches onto the mind like a leech that has found an unsuspecting body of flesh and blood. A delight to the questioner during the inevitable awkward silences of conversation, the word is an unwelcome guest when you find yourself on both sides of the conversation and realize you're talking to yourself.

I've successfully braved a week in college. It feels like it has been months since I came here. Regular phone calls to home, a long one with best friend, late night with roommates, staying behind in class to finish work, a million hello's, hi's and bye's have already happened.

I look around and see groups already forming. Pairs or gangs of  people almost constantly together in less than a week of acquaintance. Character sketches are being created thanks to the judgemental part of our mind (or is it just mine?)

Having always strutted around school with my own clique and always having fit in with any group of people I was in the company of, finding myself sitting alone in my room on a Saturday evening, I must confess is giving me my first bout of homesickness. I don't play basketball so I can't hang out at the court. The library timings are depressingly less. The few people I've gotten to know till now are tucked in in their rooms in the cozy comfort of sleep. Restrictions all around. Are these ones I'm creating or ones that are situational? And here is where the dreaded three-letter word comes in : Why am I not able to make the kind of friends I did in school? Why does it seem like suddenly the avenues of friendship have very tight security at their rather narrow gates? Maybe it is so because in school we are at a very impressionable age and making friends for life is no trigonometry test. We're still in the process of forming our identities, developing our interests and discovering new ones. But we come out of school with friends, interests, knowledge and heightened self-consciousness.

~I had paused writing and continued the next day. Read on for a drastic change~

It is quite surprising how much my outlook on college friendship has changed in a day. The best way to explain would be by starting here : my dependency on technology. It really is true that things are appreciated more in their absence. I'm not going to feign complete shock in reaction to the realization of how dependent I am on the internet. During the past year, I spent many of my productive hours of a day on the internet (which sadly speaks nothing of my productivity). It's been my most trusted, dependable and of course, entertaining connection to the world. So, yes, I'm dependent on the internet to an extent. But.... maybe a little more than I imagined. The last ten days I haven't had access to facebook, no blogging, no quora, no youtube and on and on. Thankfully, I had internet on my phone that I could use to message my friends if the network was gracious enough to grant me a signal at that golden hour.

I have a new place and new people to get to know but there is a constant yearning and an ache of separation that wants to see something familiar to assure my senses that the world I know still exists. In that way, I'm immensely grateful to technology. The cradle of connection does a lot to the psyche.

But I'm still sane, still smiling, still relishing the newness of a new phase. And this is where the reason for change comes in. Time. Yes, it's wise old time. The answer to every "why" comes with time and every "why" turns into a beautiful realization that comes like the glowing sun on a foggy morning.

Barriers are broken. New identities are formed. Common grounds are discovered. Friendships are forged. It all just takes time. Things are of course not the same as they are in school. But they get better with time.

Of all the lessons college has taught me in a week (the number is astounding), this could be the most important. It has taught me that I won't always go alone for lunch but neither will I lose my precious solitude.

~Returning to present day~

Rereading this has left me surprised. Time indeed does a lot. I look at my very recent experiences as if at a younger person's. Maybe it's just an illusion of maturity or I have actually gained some.

Weeks don't seem like months anymore. There is plenty of work to do and I find myself hearteningly enthusiastic and eager to learn though I was mildly terrified of my subjects at the beginning. But that doesn't mean my old friend laziness has abandoned me. He does chip in now and then to remind me of what a deceivingly lovely friend he is.

About friendships, I see myself patting the back of the 3 weeks younger me. And the younger me responds with a pleasantly surprised look as she sees the future. That makes it pretty clear, doesn't it?

Right now, the only negative feeling is that of worthlessness as I see and hear about great minds accomplishing astonishing things. And I hope this feeling of worthlessness gives me the push to be the person I want to be. Pure unadulterated me!