Something of Myself

The beginning of another arc.

This is an effort to convince myself, to assure myself that I have left behind all the brilliance of India and have come back again to a place where I can't say I belong but perhaps where I try to make a space for myself.

We will start once again - the empty room, the new faces together with the old streets, and the same pubs. It's a curious mxture, slightly ambivalent, slightly paradoxical - deja vu. When I sit on the plane and the moment it takes off there is something inside me that tells me that it's time again to get back to (what I call) the "student mode." This time I met people who made a deep impression on me, they have helped me to look at things in a different way and one of them has re-instilled my faith in human beings. To her I remain grateful.

Percy left today morning and that's the time I realised fully the meaning of being all alone in this place. The whole fucking idea of doing a PhD is isolating, there is very little room for social interaction. And me being the gregarious person that I am, it feels awful. But i remain hopeful. I believe I will meet people and touch them and interact with them and understand them and try to make them see that life is worth it even if it gets real difficult at times.

Missing Ma and Baba terribly. Jani na kemon ache ora. And missing Z. If you are reading this Z then this is the bit where I thank you for everything you have done. Thanks for being there, really appreciate it. Mean it.

Time now to go and do some dishes: the joys of being a bacheolar. :)

Hell, it's great to be ALIVE.

Now that there are not many days left before I leave India, somehow I feel so complete. This trip of mine has been comprehensive in certain ways; opening up new relationships, meeting new people and making new friends. There is a sense of fulfilment when I reflect upon the fact that I reached out to so many people - touched them and felt a sense of mutual respect. These people won't be there after a week but their memories will. Raj, Suvam, Joyeeta, Bui, Purbasha, Bunna and Mithun (Nitin was always there, so he doesn't feature on this list). I met them as a group and I hit it off with them on a personal note. Everyone of them is special to me in unique ways. So thank you guys for making me feel wanted.

This is the bit where I also thank India for initially annoying me with her this-is-India attitude and slowly gripping me by her it-happens-only-in-India motif. The chai wala, the panwadi ka dukan, the driver who is too old to drive, the stranger-boudi who smiled at me at the Park street crossing, the infant child at Nizamuddin who begged for a biscuit, the auto-rickshaw driver who had a BSc degree, the cabbie who taught me that life was worth every second and should be lived like that, the blind old man at Hanuman mandir, the smell of authentic tandoori chicken, the taste of genuine Kingfisher, the smoke at Dublin, the moves at the remixed version of Asha's numbers, the eyes of the woman who looked at me in a strange way, the smell of fresh air, the stink of cow dung, the chemistry of Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen, the beauty of Tagore's songs...It is endless - this phenomenon, this idea, this reality, this me in this country, this India.

I will go back and in some ways feel good about being in UK. However, I will miss thee deeply. I have loved thee truly. You have given me what nobody ever has - the pleasure and the pride of being an Indian. So thank you.

The making of a sloppy Post.

How can one define commitment? How can I negotiate your history and mine? How do we bridge our differences? How do we realise what's the best time to do so?

How do we define the "end" of something? Is it the absence or the never-ever feeling? This is getting way too vague. Let's cut the crap. But what if the crap is what I am talking about? What if?

It takes years to build a relationship - father-son, brother-sister, boyfriend-girlfriend............these and many more. You nurture it, work towards it.....seek comfort from it and then it takes exactly a minute to blow it all off....like there it goes, right there....look, that way....can you see it? It is going. Do something. Try.

Tried. And failed.

Failure makes me remember my success. My efforts. My victory. My truimph. My struggles to be the victor.

I am all muddy right now. Going back to UK in sometime. It will never be the same again. The same roads, the same buildings, the same cafe shops, the same driveway, the same passion....but a definite lack...an absence...a void....flying from the zenith and touching the nadir in no time at all!

Well, if this is what life is - bring it on. It will be hard, terribly hard, but then again, the winds of change will blow...we will rise again....we will live life yet again, everyday - never ever saying "Done."

p.s. The concluding part of this sloppy post - huh, much easier said than "done"!!!