A new place. A new beginning. After a self-imposed hiatus that resulted in three-year long belongingness to the City of Pearls. Right now, in the happiest city of India or that's what a nameless survey has got to say about this city, Pune.
It feels like life has come a full circle. Same old people; yet redefined friendships. Same pals in different countries although our origins remain the same. It feels very displaced to meet someone in a place which didn't cross your mind about either of you being in there. A traveller in no man's land. A settler on his knees near an oasis in the desert.
Age has its effect on me. It is visible in the receding hairline and declining patience to withstand small and inconsequential talk. It's amusing how coming around a full cycle leaves one with wisdom that he once never knew existed altogether.
The quitter in me who had been dormant for a couple of years till yesterday almost woke up from his slumber but my determination coupled with Pune's sluggish monsoon climate could put him back to sleep for indefinite time now.
They, the buildings, almost look like matchboxes stacked up from some distance. Their mere sight compels me envisage a bustling life at the ground zeros but it's exactly the opposite. They are like the hospitals in Utopia where citizens are pink in health. Almost like a psychiatric hospital in a land full of psychiatrists.
Kin back home in Hyderabad feel happy at my eventual display of optimism, grit to secure a rewarding job. They say this is the beginning of something that's been absent to which I have been duly entitled to. But as the God once said, there's an upside down for everything except teen anorexia. I recall those wise words while wondering at their validity.
The eventual display of optimism and grit is turning out to be incessant; for this city is making my stomach sick - both literally and figuratively. With the recently found belief in the traditional virtues of patience and hope, I am hanging onto the last shard of a moderately strong creeper; which upon left, leaves me into a irreversible journey that's got no other side of the road.
The 20 year old version of me would have picked up his phone in haste and dialled all the dear but the now-me abhors the small talk in its entirety. It's unsparing even if its for injecting respite.
That pushes me into a nook corner. The warmth that emerges out of constant friction between the walls and my back can be welcoming or the corner, in its essential virtue, can depress me.
After all the novice attempts at haiku (if they can be called so), this again is a personal piece. Long due it seems but its occurrence had been doubtful; only till it has come now before your eyes.
