A typhoon, universal gratitude and a somewhat lost me.

I have watched enough movies to know that the slightest of hunch about a thing going awry, particularly when related to death by accidents, comes true. So, it was obvious when I heard about a typhoon in Hong Kong, I wanted to reschedule my flight. But such convenience was not to come my way, perhaps the universe wanted me to become more resilient, withstand higher degrees of turbulence, or just simply perish. As the hope of traveling on another date due to closure of reservation office dwindled, paranoia escalated. I battled that by promptly sleeping for three quarters of the flying time. The captain assured us of a bumpy albeit safe journey. But bless the man for he landed us amidst torrential rain and heavy storm cloud cover onto a runway that materialized out of the choppy seas all too suddenly but at the right moment. The landing alleviated my impending sense of doom which had resurrected itself as I had come back to consciousness after the slumber. Now all I needed to do was to eat an overpriced meal at the airport, buy a bus ticket and be off on the last leg of the journey.

Things however did not materialize as I had so brilliantly planned. The bus services had been cancelled, the tropical storm warning had reached 8, and If I didn’t hurry the trains too would be overcome by inertia and wouldn’t budge from Hong Kong. I hurried to get a taxi, as luck would have it, the guy knew only two words in English, thankfully one of them was ‘Danger’ , so I knew exactly how to feel on the ride to the train station. The rain swirled all around, and the taxi swayed sideways, which was the drivers cue to blurt out the word danger repeatedly. Even though the bridges were off limits, half the roads inaccessible, and my mind was running amok with huge tsunami like waves crashing on top of the taxi, I reached the station in time to catch the afternoon train to Guangzhou. But I wish the transition from the taxi to the train seat was as effortlessly brought out as the last sentence. When you add a person with my gait, and four pieces of luggage weighing more than me to the equation, the result is, well, nothing short of a miracle.

So I’d like to thank the man who helped me load on the luggage onto the X-ray machine, the people behind me who didn’t squirm or push when they crawled behind me as I struggled to maintain balance, walk, and push giant pieces of luggage onto the escalator, and the kind, kind man who helped me put on the above mentioned luggage on to the carriers in the train, and who broke his glasses in the process. Eternal gratitude is what I feel, and perhaps this is the only way I can express it. Xie, Xie all.

The end of an era

How do you fit your entire life into two bags? Your whole twenty three years of existence, your memories, your thoughts, your belongings? How do you say goodbye to the place you called home your whole life? Such a tirade of questions, few answers though.

There are some goodbyes which happen because they must and no number of wars waged against them delay their occurrence. There are some which happen suddenly, like an untimely death or an impromptu official trip, and then there are some which are carefully planned, meticulously thought about, goodbyes that have been ruminated over for a while, stewed in their own intensity, and are thus gulped and swallowed into the pit of reality ever so slowly. That is my goodbye, a heady, heavy feeling of loss that has become a part of my being now. It was premeditated, the consequences known. When I decided that this is something I need to do, I went through the final few days several times in my head. I’ve already shed my tears, and my heart has felt heavy many times now. I feel relieved somewhat. Even if I do get overwhelmed on that fateful day, I will be prepared.

Change is universally unwelcome usually, not here though, not by me. It is daunting at first, difficult to traverse, it throws curve balls your way, and you’re caught off guard most times, but that is exactly what endears me to it. It is my tonic for survival; it is what I do to break free. It is what I need to dream. It is what makes me say goodbye today.

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been -
A sound which makes us linger; - yet - farewell!
~Lord Byron

Search for my puddle

This surrogate life, that I live, tells me I’m not to live it, this isn’t my life. I watch as raindrops fall down in slow motion onto the ground, into their personal little puddles, and wonder where my personal puddle is. Has it dried up or did it not exist in the first place?
The raindrops are fortunate; they have somewhere to be, a place where they can return to their form. No wonder they do their sanguine dance with such flamboyance. Enthralling us all. They know their personal puddle awaits them.

Wind Of Nostalgia

As yellow leaves fall down between the pages of the book I read, I look up the sky that filters through between the spread of the trees. I sit on one of the benches in college, two years since I studied there last. The sights I see, the surroundings, are ever the same, yet so different.

If I close my eyes I can picture the familiar faces milling around campus, amidst these familiar surroundings. How is it that human life is so transient where as the things around me stand transfixed, a witness to the journey? Perhaps they undertake a journey too, maybe these very things that stand transfixed in their existence have changed as well.

A moment in time is an amalgamation of the people and their surroundings, all intertwined together. Their existent together makes for that very instance. When I look at the trees that have stood here all through, in my presence, outside my presence, I realize that they have changed. The leaves that they shower on me are not the same I walked on two years ago. The yellow leaves that the wind brings my way have a different rustle to them. The buildings and classrooms are inhabited by a different set of people. How could they ever be the same?

Reminiscing comes easily to me and it is reminiscing about the small frivolous bits that makes me feel most nostalgic. It isn’t the grand bash that I miss or the day I got my result that I think about. It’s the walk down the road that leads to college that I want resuscitate , it’s the pages of the book I read while bunking class that I want to browse through again, it’s the laughter of my friends, that I want to hear, as I picture myself running away from mocha the resident college dog.

All through life people yearn for those big moments. A supreme accomplishment or that much sought after accolade won, that we could narrate to our grandchildren someday. But really, it is the mundane little things we disregard in the very instant of their occurrence, that we seem to remember two years hence. Believe me, it’s all about the song you hummed while driving to college, the flutter of the heart at an inadvertent gaze, the folding of jeans to wade through puddles and sharing that hot cup of coffee on a cold winter morning