Going Home to Come Home

Uprooting and Rerooting leaves one well............. rootless.

One stands in the middle of the new city that aims to become home, looking at the mass of people moving around, at people sipping coffee, at the easy conversation that seems to be there on most tables and knows that you are not “in” yet.

Yesterday, met two old friends who had come back to Bangalore after months of being away. Both are local Bangaloreans, kids who grew up into discerning adults in the evolving city.

For one it was the first time she came back -  ‘home’ post leaving. Only to realize that .. strangely now she referred to her new city as ‘home’.  Damm this was confusing. Why confusing? Because for the entire time that she was in the other nation – Bangalore was home. It was not where she lived but it was definitely what home was meant to be.

Hmm made me smile. Happens all the time doesn’t it.  For me home is Delhi. It will always be, the city that I will know better than any other, because I come from there,  know its pulse and have given myself the  self granted right to call myself a Delhite.

I live in Bangalore. Its home.  But in the limited sense of the ‘house’. It’s the home that for me means that my routine is here, I live here, but as I move around the city, despite the fact that by now with each place I have my own story and own history, at some level I feel a liitle it of a faker.

I know know.. at a deep level, that I don’t have the pulse of the city in me. That I don’t speak the language, that I in a gathering, everyone will know that I came here from somewhere else. Yet this is home.

A strange phenomena however is the need to come back to the original city, to fall in love with the adopted one with a far greater intensity.  Seen it happen a number of times.

-       Delhi person goes to London. Likes it but secretly knows its not India. Comes to Inida and misses London more than before

-       Someone goes to America,  and appreciates the chaos of home, the life it offers, comes to Pune, sets up home and misses America.

-       Am sure the list can go on and on

I love how the mind has an ability to magnify the parts we love and fade out the noises of things we wanna fade out.  Come home for a break, and these come whom bam slam into your face and then ouchies!! You remember why you wanted out in the first place. And hey wala. The new city looks like a place you want to head back to right this minute!!!!!!

Smarty pants me with all this insight and wisdom, no matter where I am going to go shall fall into the musings little Indian mouse, missing the street food, the noises of the fans and traffic, the blending in, and not cleaning my dogs poop once he poops. 

Re starting

September 11, 2012

Seems like an ominous day to start something new.

Seems like a great day to start something new.

When 9/11 took place the world watched shaken, the stories and the hate, the love and the final moments have reverberated for over a decade and the only thing that clear and strong that each persons sags resounded with were the simple words of I Love You.  Live your life, it’s a beautiful thing to have, make it count, make it large.

Its 10.00am, am sitting in a silent room, in a rather silent office where people are yet to make an appearance. It’s a new place.  Another new start.

Its rather ironical, but sitting in a office space makes me feel immediately more productive, happier and willing to do more.  Including write. Gives me a sense of purpose, though as I type, I don’t know how to get water, where the loo is, what is the internet password and how the coffee comes to the desk.

Yet having been in and out of several offices over the past years, there is a certain sense of ease that comes with being around one. The jabber with the colleagues, the running in on time and the banter that comes with lunch, all go towards making it a more fun day.  A conversation – that makes you scratch the surface of who the other person is.

You are aware that you know them but, there is a whole level of them that you do not know, a certain line that is never crossed,  a wall that comes up. If I was to die surrounded by my colleagues over the past years, I am sure it would feel to me that I  had been deprived in some manner of a death that I deserved. What a morbid thought na.

Its ironical that one knows spends a maximum amount of ones day in this group, yet for the most part, in most organizations the interactions are aimed at being limited, professional and non personal. A birthday holiday is equal to leave taken for personal reasons. Cute in a sense how much we try to plain jane ourselves.

Reading the article, (http://www.businessinsider.com/how-rich-people-think-differently-from-the-poor-2012-8?op=1) was an opener to assess how much we stress on the little thinks and the approach itself towards thinking/thoughts  the foundation determines the extent of what we become.

Rich people think differently. Loved people think differently. Successful people think differently. Developed country citizens think differently. Poor people think differently. How much of us thinks in a manner that the I chooses, it an interesting question to ask oneself.

For a return to writing this one is a hell of a jumbled up article, but it’s a good reflection of life in the here and now. A little bit of this and a little bit of that.